HEROES

It's 6:14pm.
I'm in the office.
I just clicked on Gerry's blog and found myself staring at this illustration posted.
On the CD player, Aimee Mann is singing, "It's not going to stop, til you wise up."
And just kept staring til the song came to an end.

"I saw more than the usual number of people inside one of the largest comic book stores in the city- people were looking to get away from the tv and read about superheroes. Lastly, I saw a worker coming back from the tragic site - he was dusty and looked very tired- he was wearing a superman shirt. How appropriate."
--Rafeal Kayanan
New York, 13 September 2001



PRAYERS

Before coming to the office, I was once again glued in front of the TV set.
At the end of one CNN report, they started to show images from all over America, of the services held for those who died, and of the clean-up and rescue operations being conducted in WTC. And while the images were being shown, a woman hummed "Amazing Grace". And after all the shock and horror and disbelief, I just began to get teary-eyed and cry. They showed people, Christians and Moslems, praying.
Praying for those who died.
Praying for peace.

txt msgs frm new yrk

Quark's in New York.
I texted him on his Globe.
There was no reponse from him til the next day.


Sender: QUARK
Sent: 12-Sept-2001
03:59:57
hell budj! its hell here, people are cussing, screaming, crying but im ok. get yr messages late tho. fuckn globe :)


Sender: QUARK
Sent: 12-Sept-2001
08:09:33
no naman, but i think two more buildings have collapse. whole fucking lower manhattans being evacd. still in my apt, hope things dont get too bad.

The Man Who Saw Tomorrow


When I was a still in grade school, I watched on Betamax the documentary “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow”, which made me so afraid of the predicted events.It was narrated by Orson Wells which made it even more scary. They made it sound like it was really going to happen. And since I had an uncle who was into jetfighters and military technology, I was very much aware of the threat of ICBM’s and nuclear winter.

It’s funny how every time some mad leader from the Middle East says something against the West and then actually does something about it, I’d think that “He must be the Anti-Christ!” And I’d check if he’d be seen wearing a blue turban, or blue cap, or blue beret, or a blue hat.

Quaddafi, Saddam, and now Bin Laden. Will the real Anti-Christ please stand up. They are the modern day Boogey Men who hide bombs in our closets.

It’s funny how people scramble to decipher the enigmatic writings of a Frenchman who supposedly predicted his own death, thus proving to people that he could see into the future.

Nostradamus wrote his predictions in quatrains to hide the fact that he making predictions, so that he wouldn’t be prosecuted and executed of practicing witchcraft and black magic. And so people attempt to interpret and translate his quatrains. Makes you wonder if they’re forcing his enigmatic writings to describe what’s happening today.

Nostradamus mentioned a great war happening in 1999 and we thank God that that prediction did not come true. Then again, maybe he just got his number all jumbled up.

Back in high school, one of the guys came up with a story, on how the young Nostradamus came upon a dying man—who was actually a time traveler from the future, who gave Nostradamus a small computer that contained the entire history of the world and the Nostradamus was actually just trying to describe what he was seeing and reading in that computer.


I stayed home till 2pm watching the footage in different channels. It was unbelievable. The destruction. The senselessness of it all. One of the guys in the egroups was saying that such scenes were only imaginable in comic books and Hollywood movies. Which is probably why it all seems so unbelievable. Because we usually associate such scenes to fantastic stories.

When I got to the office, I quickly checked email, and my cousin in New York said she was okay. Got a text message from a friend who’s studying in New York, and he’s okay too. Still waiting for word from other guys who we think are in the city.

It was sad to see a mother retell her conversation with her son who was in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

It was interesting to see teachers try and answer the questions of children on “Why did this happen? How could it happen? Will it happen again?” The Boogey Man is out there and the children of America, as well as the whole world, are afraid of what will happen next.

God help us all.

AMERICA'S DARKEST DAY

Yvette was the first one to text me that a plane crashed in to the World Trade Center.
I shurgged it off.
Through it was a some small prop plane that made the wrong turn.
The texts came in that a second plane crash and that another one crash into the Pentagon.

The whole team scrambled out of the office to go to the nearest place with CNN.
We couldn't log-on to the web site.
We still can't log-on to CNN.com.

We ended up in McCann where the rest of the creatives who were doing O.T. were gathered around the TV set.
We watched in awe and disbelief as the second tower of the World Trade Center collapsed into itself.
After watch for a couple of more minutes, hunger set in, we hadn't had dinner, so we went to Chili's and got the table with the best view of the TV sets.

Been trying to text/call Quark. No word.
I just emailed my relatives/classmates in the States, just to check if they're ok.
Roach's sister is okay. She sister started to walk home after the first plan crashed. Walked all the way home to Brooklyn. She found pieces of paper, office documents, blown from the World Trade Center on her front porch.

I'm going home now.

Will probably be stuck in front of the TV till I fall asleep.

Hopefully, things will be better in the morning.



God bless those who died in that terrible attack.

God bless those who survived.

God bless us all and what will happened afterwards.

We pray for peace.