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this is strange...a collection of flashbulb moments.
i remember hearing about the first attack on npr as i walked into the penn book center.
i remember standing by the front desk, listening.
i remember that there was alot of shouting coming across the broadcast which contrasted oddly with the complete silence of the other people who were also in the store, who were standing quite still.
i remember that we were looking at the radio.
i remember thinking: "the chickens have come home to roost"
i remember feeling nothing.
a few hours later, i was walking about the student union, through a maze of large-screen television screens surrounded by large groups of students and others who were staring saucer-eyed at the loop of the second trade center collapsing as it began to play over and over as it continued to play over and over. i remember looking at peoples' eyes.
i remember thinking that the people who are working at the networks are traumatized and the repetition is a way of trying to get control over the trauma. i remember thinking that i had never seen television traumatized before.
i remember sitting in a tavern at about 5 that afternoon and watching a tv set mounted on the wall over the bar, watching the loop still repeating. i remember thinking about j.g. ballard.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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