I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and this is love, journalism.
Today’s entry is from my notebook, written on Sept. 11, 2001: I’m 26. A reporter covering the energy and environmental and beat. That morning I was supposed to be staking out a closed-door Senate summit on pollution standards. None of that happened.
Unbelievable. Unthinkable. Astonishing. Heartbreaking.
What words can be used to explain, express, fathom the events of the last six hours? At least four US commercial planes were apparently hijacked this morning — each crashed in kamikaze style. The two World Trade Center buildings in New York City are destroyed, collapsing to the earth. The Pentagon too has been hit, and another plane was apparently ditched in rural western Pennsylvania. It is not known how many people are dead and injured.
Washington, DC looks like a city under siege. At least for now, all federal buildings are closed. The Lincoln Memorial is surrounded by white ropes, backed nearly a mile. People are wandering around with cameras. Television reporters and producers stand in large droves at important vantage points. Horses. Police. Sirens. Fire engines. The smattering romantic couple sit with legs interlocked. People in suits and ties wander obliviously — a free day off when it was not expected.
Trying to comprehend the day’s events, it’s exhausting. Why? Why now? What are the implications? Are we going to retaliate? Go to war? What does this do to everything that was happening in the world?
I’m exhausted. Today has felt like Pearl Harbor Day, Columbine, Challenger.
Then i wrote a few poems:
Great white puffy clouds hang in the air like powder —
oblivious to the havoc below.
Sky high, arching through at sonic speed,
piercing nature to a target in the distance
like a dragon.
“This looks like a quiet place to study,”
says the man with the girl walking the dog.
Everything seems ironic, monumental, significant. The story behind the story — the human face, the emotions of a TV cameraman, what is not spoken in the moment, or maybe what is — its meaning important because it will be the memory.
another:
US flags have been lowered to half mast around the Washington Monument.
They rattle and whip in the wind.
The winding of the camera after a picture is taken —
one of thousands —
capturing the memorial immortal
on a day of vulnerability.
one more:
Motorcades, no-go zones, half-mast flags,
smoky reminders of a building —
six billion eyes on it.
Traffic, official badges, the scoop —
nothing else to even consider.
and some more descriptions:
People are walking around the Mall solo, aimlessly scratching their heads, looking about, stopping and sharing their thoughts with strangers. They look like zombies. I’ve never seen anything like this in all my life. It’s an absolutely beautiful late summer day — sunshine, breeze blowing, nearly all off work. We just experienced a terrorist attack unlike Oklahoma City or the previous World Trade Center bombing. It’s hard to fathom.
The rumors of the day: bombs exploded at the State Department and Capitol, the National Mall. Planes crashed near Chicago and Camp David.
That’s all I wrote there that day in a spiral notebook on a bench on the Mall.