the mind is a funny thing, you know?

I've been thinking about 9/11, since it has been inescapable at work. (The smoke shop is as much a magazine-and-newspaper shop as it is a tobacco shop, you see, and 9/11 is on all the covers.)

I did not know anything was wrong until about 1pm that day. I'd gotten up for a four-hour chemistry lab that ran from 8am to noon, after which I went straight to a German literature seminar that started at 11:40am -- you will note that those times overlap. I had to get special permission from my German professor to do that, and the rule was that on chem lab days, I would sneak in as quietly as possible and sit down and join the discussion. Which is what I did.

So it wasn't until after class, when the professor was talking to a student whose family lived in NYC, that I had any idea something had happened. Even when I got the impression that something was wrong in the city, I was thinking, "Flood? Hurricane? Catastrophic blackout?" because terrorists crashing airplanes into the twin towers was not remotely in my list of things that might happen in real life.

It didn't seem real for a long time. I am still not sure it seems real. I know those events happened, but huge, world-changing events rarely stick as deeply as smaller things that hit closer to home. I remember my grandparents' deaths much more strongly and immediately, for example. I process things best as they affect me, not as they affect the world. I need to make things personal to grasp them. I think this is a common human reaction.

...

On that note, here is a record of a dream I had on September 25th, 2001, two weeks after 9/11. The text is quoted from the dream journal I was keeping at that time:

I dreamed I was one of three children stuck in a large building with slick white floors. Sometimes it was an office building, but sometimes it was the Snow Queen's palace. I had a very young sister (Vicky, more or less) who carried a stuffed animal with her everywhere, and a brother who was sometimes younger than I was and sometimes older. I was ten to thirteen. When my brother was older, I was closer to ten; when I was older, I was closer to thirteen.

We were running from the Snow Queen (or a nasty government agency), and Vicky slipped on the floor and fell behind. Our brother, whose name I think was Jim, had reached the door, but turned to get Vicky. The Snow Queen was right behind her, but our brother ran, caught Vicky, shoved her across the floor to me, and yelled for us to get out and get help. I didn't want to leave him but he had some weird power that shoved us out the door and locked it behind us. I think he was a telekinetic.

Vicky and I reached safety and fell in with a group of people who were trying to destroy the Snow Queen's city (or this nasty government agency). I was a fire-starter and they wanted me to burn the buildings. I stood in the front of a tank or armored truck, spread my hands, and brought down a building. It collapsed in fire and smoke, spewing dust and rubble for blocks in the heart of the city. We were coated in filth, scraped by falling chunks of steel and concrete. I remember screaming because I was so angry; I hated the Snow Queen (or the government agency) because she had stolen my life and my brother and scarred my sister's soul forever. The building burned, people died, and I was happy. I was insane, burning inside.

I insisted on going into the building where we had been trapped instead of just destroying it from outside. I wanted to look for our brother. But when we went inside, instead of a brother, we found Dad lying on the floor in his blue plaid jacket, slashed and bruised, with his legs and arms broken and his face covered in blood. He was dying, and all I could do was hold him in shock and scream.

Then I woke up.

...

That dream is still more real to me than anything about 9/11 itself. Like I said, the mind is a funny thing.