Twenty Years and Two Fragments
On The Beach and the guy that got away.
CAUGHT IN A CRAMPED CABIN on Topsail Island in North Carolina with my boyfriend and his mother and brother and sister-in-law—everyone chain-smoking. This vacation arrangement was already a huge stretch into the surreal for me.
But then the planes happened and like an outtake from the 50s post-apocalyptic film On The Beach, the untenable descended like a bell jar.
And no way out or away. And where to go as the entire country was unrecognizable? I tried to rent a car but there were none. I was going to drive, for some irrational reason, to a friend’s in Boston.
I'm convinced those pressurized seven days commenced the end of my nine-year relationship. Which did die shortly thereafter.
Woke up this morning and reeled right back through the past 20 years.
And every bit of disfunction that’s happening now seems to have its origin back then. Weapons of mass distraction—a stupor that the soul of the country is still sliding around within, like a snake in a kitchen drawer.
But then the guy who consulted me in December of 2001.
He’d arrived in NYC two days prior and was waiting for a big deal gathering to begin in one of the towers when he had the urge to gamble and miss the start of the meeting. He took the lift all the way down to the ground floor for a smoke.
Moments after the elevator doors released him into the lobby the first plane blew through the same floor he’d just exited. He was able to run for (and keep) his life.
He wanted to study his horoscope to understand. As if another human could possibly formulate an ‘answer’ or ‘reason’. Still, we talked for nearly two hours.
At the end of my own road, he’s the one client I will remember the most vividly.
When I’ve shared this story in the past people have asked me to detail what I saw in his chart. What I said to him. But I’ve never responded. That was between him and his maker—who allowed him to miss his taker.
Love,
"Weapons of mass distraction—a stupor that the soul of the country is still sliding around within, like a snake in a kitchen drawer." You always manage to drop a punch I wasn't expecting. Effortless. Brilliant.
What a gripping way of making 9/11 relatable to those of us who weren't there, but have the memory seared into our brains. I'll always remember that day and what we were doing when we first found out.