We followed its path that morning in our many different stations, the small plane became a jet. The first jet was followed by a second. We stood riveted, what do we do? And in those horrible moments after the explosions we all lost something - the futility of the situation, bigger than life and yet putting so much life at stake. The despair coming from seeing the tragedy and being able to do nothing. And then those gut wrenching moments when one and then the other of the buildings pancaked into the ground leaving a void larger than the space they once filled. We all lost something that day, everyone one of us. Two airplanes taken from their pilots and turned into bombs. Two airplanes flying low across the city; how many New Yorkers gazed up to see one pass that morning or heard the strange buzz of engines too low to the ground and knew that something was amiss somewhere? They froze us in place. Watching. Unbelieving. Being acted upon.
And then, how many New Yorkers stood in place watching again last week as an airplane taken from its pilot, glided silent and low over the streets of New York, and into the Hudson River. As if a coda on the end of a trying and difficult era, in the days before we celebrate Martin Luther King and welcome into office Barack Obama, the most unlikely of Presidential candidates, the water landing of an Airbus in the Hudson River has given us new metaphors and useful tropes. The airplane, taken from the pilot by the random presence of Canadian geese, inexplicably turned into a boat once it touched down in the river. Our metaphors have been so dreary since that September day. Now we have something new, something unmistakably transformative. Experience and training, quick thinking under fire,
And then, how many New Yorkers stood in place watching again last week as an airplane taken from its pilot, glided silent and low over the streets of New York, and into the Hudson River. As if a coda on the end of a trying and difficult era, in the days before we celebrate Martin Luther King and welcome into office Barack Obama, the most unlikely of Presidential candidates, the water landing of an Airbus in the Hudson River has given us new metaphors and useful tropes. The airplane, taken from the pilot by the random presence of Canadian geese, inexplicably turned into a boat once it touched down in the river. Our metaphors have been so dreary since that September day. Now we have something new, something unmistakably transformative. Experience and training, quick thinking under fire,
saving lives. We have photographs of people waiting to climb to safety. Images of tragedy averted, of help arriving. We have learned of the fear when the knowledge of a crash became clear in the airplane, and the panic that arose when the plane came to a stop. We learned that people took care of each other. We have images of perfect strangers holding each other on the slippery edges of wings that are sinking below icy water. We see boats and companies with no fiduciary interest in this aircraft or these people rushing as fast as they can to the problem. Let us help out, they said. It was a moment of great humanity in all senses of the word. It was the second airplane event, the other shoe falling, a tragic set of circumstances accompanied by a different set of human values, a fundamentally alternate outcome, the dawn of a new era. I know those who found themselves weeping as they watched the passengers get ferried safely to shore, as they read the stories of near death, the shouting in the cabin, the visceral fear as water streamed in around windows, I know they felt the same pent up sorrow that I felt; relief. The recent past, these last eight years, were made all the more unnerving in contrast to the genuine compassion expressed that day. Such moments in their authenticity have a strong residue; in its historic and spatial placement, the saga of the water landing in New York last week concluded a drawn-out period of mourning. The thing we had lost has returned. We can move again. And act.
