On a night when the city of Boston, and the world, mourned en masse, I looked up to find myself sitting in the dark, for what had been hours. When I closed my eyes, United Airlines flight 93 hurtled into the South Tower, over and over again. My brain flipped through all the different angles, interspersing images of the giant flag draped aside the Pentagon, the ash cloud consuming Manhattan streets.

So I went for a run, to try and sweat out the saturation of images and anxiety that I'd been feeling inside and around me for three days. The cool, breezy night was like any of a glorious September, only it was quiet, so unnaturally quiet, right down to the individual conversations that I jogged through along the sidewalks of Somerville, MA. Almost addictively, I brought my Walkman and beamed in NPR, fearful that I might miss something else. It had been two hours after the fact when I'd finally heard about Tuesday's attack, and some sick part of me felt compelled to be there for what might be next, however horrible.

I was teaching first graders when the news spread to my classroom. None of us knew until the first Dorchester mother stormed into the school, panic-stricken, compelled to take her daughter home to safety. After that moment, the only thing that could slow the just-off-the-roller-coaster feeling was to teach the children, to go to recess with them. While we played baseball, I watched the oblivious joy with which our children ran, and wondered if they had just lost their chance to grow up in the innocent world in which I, at 27, had spent my whole life.

In those unbalanced first hours, my fiancée was supposed to be en route from Seattle, on a transcontinental flight loaded with jet fuel. Of course there was no line of communication that could confirm her safety. Finally an e-mail trickled in and told me she was all right. After that, I retired to the faculty lounge to eat and sit, and first view the images.

I feel like I have been seeing them ever since. Finally, on this run through the quiet streets, there was a sense of the natural world, a sense of my sheer luck for having my life, when so many had been lost.

But then I turned the corner onto Summer St., and saw the crowd. I approached warily. The corners of the coming intersection were crowded with people. The porches, so common a feature of Somerville streets, multi-leveled, together their own entity, were practically sagging with leaning inhabitants. Closer now, I could see that there was an accident. A blue SUV had slammed into the traffic light pole, and a brown Jeep Wrangler was about-face in the road.

Now I stopped, turned off my radio, and walked slowly through the intersection, to take a position just up the road from the action, where I could well see the littered glass, the severed headlight, the buckled and collapsed hood of the SUV.

And still there was silence. People streamed from every direction as if commanded by a mass hypnosis, crowding wordlessly together to view the carnage. This was the kind of accident that on any other day of any other week would have drawn frustrated horns, and no more than a sidelong glance. But tonight, September 13, 2001, it was something unspeakable to everyone around.

There was a sense, a tremor in the air, of incredulity. All of us, so numbed by the images, seemed drawn to this accident like moths to the light of tragedy. Had there been one ounce of blood on the scene, one scent of horror, it felt like we all might have finally burst, might have let our tense and confused grief finally pour from us in waves. The entire night felt on the verge of one big wail of agony.

Within a few moments, three police cars and three fire trucks arrived, an intense statement to the public that we were safe. There was nothing for all of them to do other than just be there, to see, to make sure.

As the non-event began to reveal itself, I looked up to the sky. I saw others doing the same. For the first time in days, I could feel the quiet being broken. Somehow the lack of tragedy here was important, it really was just something we might see on any other day, before our innocence was so completely violated. In looking at the orange-lit leaves swaying in the first of the true fall breezes, I finally felt a separation between myself and the images. I imagined all these people on their porches, now beginning to look around as if they had just come out of a trance, realizing that this was the first spontaneous move away from the television and the mesmerizing tragedy that they had made in days—the first time they had returned to their tiny lives within this world. It was a welcome feeling for me, and I ran on, leaving the flashing lights and lack of carnage behind.

When I returned home, I was content not to turn to CNN for the rest of the evening. An effort has to be made to take time away from this, to try and carve out peace-of-mind. Especially so here in Boston, where a train ride over the Charles with its view of the unharmed financial towers brings a horrible sense of impending tragedy. After the run, I was left to wonder if, from now on, no unfortunate event, no matter how small, would come without the echoes of September 11 reverberating through our darkest fears, stirring up the images, and bringing us all back to that moment when our innocence was lost.

Copyright © Kevin C. Emerson 2003