9/11 will always be a surreal day in NYC. For some reason I like to hear people’s stories of where they were and how their day unfolded. I find these stories unifying as help provide context and texture to a day that was marked by such exaggerated uncertainty.
Today I heard about a series of taxi cabs pulled over to the side of 5th avenue with their radios turned up and what the view looked like all the way from New Brunswick NJ.
Complementing these stories has been some good content online, one of which I wanted to share.
It’s a chilling article in Esquire (written by Tom Junod and originally published in ’03) about Richard Drew’s famous Falling Man photograph taken at 9:41AM on 9/11.
The article chronicles the history of the photograph and the attempts to uncover the falling man’s identity. But what I found beautiful, intense and devastating was this eloquent introduction:
In the picture, he departs from this earth like an arrow. Although he has not chosen his fate, he appears to have, in his last instants of life, embraced it. If he were not falling, he might very well be flying. He appears relaxed, hurtling through the air. He appears comfortable in the grip of unimaginable motion. He does not appear intimidated by gravity’s divine suction or by what awaits him. His arms are by his side, only slightly outriggered. His left leg is bent at the knee, almost casually. His white shirt, or jacket, or frock, is billowing free of his black pants. His black high-tops are still on his feet….There is something almost rebellious in the man’s posture, as though once faced with the inevitability of death, he decided to get on with it; as though he were a missile, a spear, bent on attaining his own end. He is, fifteen seconds past 9:41 a.m. EST, the moment the picture is taken, in the clutches of pure physics, accelerating at a rate of thirty-two feet per second squared. He will soon be traveling at upwards of 150 miles per hour, and he is upside down. In the picture, he is frozen; in his life outside the frame, he drops and keeps dropping until he disappears.
