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My Day, 9-11-2001, New York City
(addendum, written 9-6-02)
This is the first time I've written down what happened that day, although I remember it like it was yesterday.
My sister had gotten married that weekend, September 8, 2001, on Kauai, and my husband (Merv) and I caught the redeye flight back to New York with a stopover in California, on September 10. My sister and her husband also left for their 3 week honeymoon later that night, and were on their way to Europe via Toronto.
We got off the plane at Newark around 7am, September 11, got our luggage and caught a car service back into Manhattan. It was such a beautiful, clear morning, and when you drive into Manhattan from Newark, NJ, you get a really great view of the Manhattan skyline from the southwest side, all the way up. We live in a typical New York apartment in downtown Manhattan, where you have to pay dearly for direct sunlight (which we don't), so it was highly unusual for me to enjoy a New York sunrise; so even though I was extremely sleepy, I kept my eyes pried open to soak in that beautiful morning. It truly was breathtakingly beautiful that day.
I specifically remember telling my husband how much I loved the Manhattan skyline--it's so different from any other city skyline, in that amongst all the random, tall, undescript-from-a-distance buildings, you know you're in New York because the Empire State and the World Trade Center silhouettes rise above all else.
We got home at around 8am. My friend was watching my two cats for me while we were out of town, and she had to go to work down the street from us by 8:30, so I made some tea and we chatted until about 8:15am.
My husband and I were scheduled to go into work that morning so that we'd force ourselves to stay awake and not give into the jetlag (Hawaii is 6 hours behind EST), but we were both so sleepy, we set the alarm clock for 10am and plopped into bed. Usually, I call my parents to let them know that I got home okay, but seeing as to it was 2am in Honolulu, I decided to wait. I had also asked my assistant to come in that day (she usually doesn't come in on Tuesdays) and her job would be to make sure I didn't fall asleep at work.
I'm not sure exactly what time it was, but Merv was awakened by a phone call at around 9am, from his sister-in-law in Indianapolis. Merv's brother works for a small airlines company, and apparently, they were told to land 60 planes in 60 minutes, so they knew pretty quickly that something was going extremely wrong with American airspace and she wanted to make sure we were okay.
Merv woke me up a little later after he had turned on the tv in another room and said to me, "Janet, you might want to get up. A plane hit the World Trade Center ." He then turned the tv on in the bedroom where I was. They already had live footage of the World Trade Center burning, and all of the sudden, news came in that the Pentagon had been struck as well.
I seriously thought that I was dreaming. I thought it was The War of the Worlds. It took a while to realize where I was, that it was real news, not a bad movie, and that it was happening not too far away from where we were.
My first reaction was to call my parents and let them know that Merv and I were okay, even though it was around 3am Hawaii time. I didn't think our phones would work too much longer. My dad answered the phone. "Dad, if you turn on the tv, New York looks like it's been destroyed, but I just wanted to let you know that Merv and I are okay." I knew he was still sleeping, because he said, "Okay. That's good. Thanks for calling. Bye."
So I called my older brother in Hawaii. I stayed on the phone until he turned on the tv, and he couldn't believe it. I don't remember what was said in that conversation because I started feeling really panicky. I'm usually fiercely indepedent, but there's something about being the youngest sibling that makes you feel dependent in times of need.
I found out later on, that because Japan is 12 hours ahead of EST, the attack on the WTC was being simultaneously broadcast in the evening news on the other side of the world. One of my cousins in Tokyo called my dad to make sure we were okay, and he stayed on the phone until he was sure my dad woke up from his sleep and turned on the tv. My dad realized then that he had only heard the last part of my sentence, tried to call me back, but by then, he couldn't get through.
Merv wanted to go outside and see what was going on, but I couldn't do it in the beginning. I was glued to the news to see if they would post some sort of public announcement as to what we were supposed to do, or where we were supposed to go. My grandma used to tell me about bomb air raids in Japan during the war and how they were always on the run to appointed bomb shelters, and I realized then that I had no idea what we were supposed to do in case of an emergency. As a kid, we used to have earthquake drills in Japan, but I had no idea what to do when your city is burning and you have no idea why. Do you stay indoors? Are we supposed to go somewhere? I thought with modern techonology, this would be the kind of information they would immediately post to the public via the news, but to my dismay, they kept showing only the pictures of the planes crashing into the buildings, over and over again.
Finally, Merv convinced me to go to the top of our building to see for ourselves what was going on with our city. My undergraduate degree is in history, and I remember telling Merv to take a camera because our lives would be changed forever from this moment. We live in the back building of a two building complex, and the front one is taller, so we went to the top of that building, which I think is about 24 stories high. Merv took the photos (below) from our rooftop.
By the time we got up to the top, the first tower had already collapsed, but you couldn't really see that it was gone because of all the smoke and debris. The other tower was still visible. The wind was blowing to the east, as was all the smoke. I looked down to the street, and people were walking north in droves. We live on 14th Street at 6th Ave (north of the WTC), so by then, people weren't running, they were definitely walking. Cars were in deadlock. People were coming out of the subway stations, and someone mentioned that the subways had stopped running and that they were closing all the tunnels. We heard other random rumors, too, and it was getting hard to separate what really was happening with what was hearsay.
I have no idea how long we were up there, watching the whole thing in disbelief. We all watched that second tower, hoping and praying that it would stay up, as if we all kept looking at it, our gazes would hold it up. All of the sudden, the tower left standing collapsed. It looked like a gigantic, black, fireworks display had gone off (it was large and round, and spread as it fell) and it all came down in slow motion. There were about 20 or so people at the top of our building, and a woman started screaming and crying. I didn't know how to react. I still felt like I was asleep; it just felt so unreal. I couldn't believe what was happening; why today; why now; why New York? Right after we watched that second tower collapse, I just couldn't watch it anymore and we came down to the apartment.
 
 
I hadn't looked at the above photos until today.
We had left the tv on, and as soon as we came in, they were already confirming and showing the Pentagon footage on tv, and were talking about a fourth plane that, at the time, they said was shot down in Pittsburgh. We had no idea what was going to happen or what we were supposed to do. It then occurred to me that I had no idea where my assistant (Penny) was, either. She lives out in Queens, but often times, she would go in to help out at her parent's Blimpie's store a few blocks south of the World Trade Center before she came to my studio. I tried to call her, but by then, our phones weren't working either. I checked my DSL connection, and it turned out that it was working, so I took off my internet site and replaced it with a note to let people know that Merv and I were okay, that our phones aren't working, but my email account seemed to work at the time. I left a message for Penny to please email me and let me know that she and her family were okay.
After a few hours, Penny was able to call me, and she tells me that she didn't go into work with her parents that day, that she had talked to them at their store right after the planes hit, but that the phones were down now and she had no idea where either of her parents were, and that she didn't know what to do. By then, I knew the tunnels were closed, so I told her when she hears from them, to tell them that they can stay here with us. Her parents have had that Blimpie's store for over 20 years, and had been there when it was bombed the first time in the early 1990s, so when the planes crashed into the towers they didn't evacuate immediately--like most of us, they had no idea that the buildings would come crashing down.
For the rest of the afternoon, we just sat in silence at our apartment, glued to the tv to see if we could find any information about what to do, or what's going on. For some reason, I felt sure that they would make some kind of public service announcement on the news that day (they didn't). Our Manhattan friends, who had been to work that morning, were sent home in the morning. Most our friends don't go into work until around 10am, so most were still at home. Luckily for us, most of friends live and work north of us, so we knew they were okay.
As we were watching the news later that day, we heard more about the plane that went down in Pittsburgh. It left Newark airport about an hour after we arrived there, and it was on its way back to California. When they announced the flight number, Merv tells me that t it was the plane we had just gotten off of that refueled and was going back to California. To think that all those people we saw at the gate, waiting to get on the plane, all perished--and not a quick death either, but after a long period of what I would imagine to be emotional, mental, and physical anguish--it was unbearably sad. It could have been us. It could have been anyone.
I think that when I'm scared, I switch into survival, Spock-logic mode, i.e. it's easier to shut off the emotions all together and think about what needs to get done. I asked Merv to go buy some water, maybe some sandwich meat and bread, and he came home with cookies and potato chips. Apparently, a lot of others were in Spock-logic mode, and a lot of essential foods were already gone. Most of the stores in our neighborhood were shut down.
I don't remember the details of the rest of that day. I do remember that the next day, they barricaded and shut down all the streets south of our street, 14th street, so nothing was being delivered (food, etc) to people below us, so our area was running out of food as well. By then, my parents found my sister and her new husband in Vancouver (they were rerouted there, and grounded with 25,000 other stranded tourists, so Canadians were asked by their government to open up their homes to these travellers--my sister said they stayed with a very nice older couple who showed them around town). Penny also found her parents--when the towers collapsed, they both started running, but in opposite directions. Some of the bridges were opened so that people could walk home, so they both walked home on different bridges, too. Penny said they were covered with the white powder when they got home.
I think at that time, my priorities completely changed. Here we lived in Manhattan, completely self-absorbed withour careers, who "pencil in" time together, who live far away from our families. Where does my time go? Is my work my life? We've been putting off having kids for a while, and all of the sudden, we were thinking about it (we decided to postpone once again, but I've noticed a huge post 9-11 baby-boom).
The next few days were so extremely sad and somber in New York. It's usually bustling with noise, but all was quiet. People didn't honk; they didn't yell at each other. I felt weird wearing anything but black. Was it okay to smile? The air was so tense. We live a block from St. Vincent's Hospital, which is the nearest big hospital from the WTC, and it was packed out with people looking for their loved ones. There were huge lines of people donating blood. People posted signs with photos of their loved ones, where they were last seen, and if anyone saw them.
The wind had changed directions on the second and third day; it started blowing north. There was a strange odor in the air, which smelled a lot to me like burned plastic or rubber. Even after a week, you could still smell the burning.
By the second and third day, I couldn't watch the news anymore, but there was nothing else to see on tv and I didn't have the focus to read or do much else, so I ran down to my work studio and grabbed some supplies so that I could do some bead work at home. I didn't want to be at work; I just wanted to be at home with my two cats. I pretty much made beaded jewelry for the next few days--it was mindless counting, twisting of wire, and something semi-productive to keep me occupied.
At the same time, I really began to question my work: of what importance was art, especially jewelry-making? It seemed so frivolous, unimportant, and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I seriously thought about going back into the teaching field--it was something I enjoyed as well, and I thought I would be more useful, especially since New York does have a shortage of teachers.
Merv had to go into work on Wednesday and Thursday (his office is right next to Bryant Park) so I was at home by myself. There were three Art Directors at Stuff Magazine, and he was the only one who lived in Manhattan. The magazine was due to go into print that week, and all references to "fire" or "explosions" had to be Photoshopped out of the magazine. For example, they had a shoot with Snoop Dog with buildings exploding in the background, and Merv had to change it so that the explosions looked like starbursts/sunlight in the background instead, so it that gave the impression of being more "happy pop" than "destruction." But two days in a row, he got sent home early because his building had to be evacuated--a lot of buildings midtown had bomb threats serious enough to call for a building evacuation.
By Friday, we really didn't know what to do. I didn't want to go to work, Merv kept getting sent home, we had no idea what was going on, our street was barricaded and watched by armed guards; it was really scary, unlike anything I could have ever imagined. We're close enough downtown that the World Trade Center was something we saw everyday as we crossed the street, that it was unbelieveable to not see it. I still feel that way every time I cross the street. I get this feeling every day that if i look hard enough, it would appear again, and yet there's always just a huge gap where they once stood.
Merv and I finally decided that Friday to go Boston to stay with Merv's brother and his family for a few days. My family was too far, and Merv really wanted to spend some time with his family. I was relieved, too; I really felt like I needed to get away from it all, at least for a few days.
I packed a small suitcase, put my two cats in their travel cases, and we bought tickets to Boston on Amtrack. I had asked Merv to make sure we could take our cats, and he told me it wasn't a problem, but when we actually got on the train, they told me that I couldn't take them! By then, I was so stressed out, I started crying uncontrollably. We went to the Greyhound station, and they told us the same thing. I wasn't going anywhere without my cats!
We came back to our apartment, and I was really, extremely pissed at Merv. It really wasn't his fault, but it felt good at the time to just be upset at someone tangible. The poor guy then started calling all the car rental places, and miraculously, he found an economy rental car available at Enterprise not too far away.
As we drove out of Manhattan (with our two cats!), I felt a huge sense of temporary relief. I didn't realize until then how stressed out and depressed I was feeling, that it was not just a mental, emotional strain, but literally, a physical, heavy feeling that blanketed me all over. My whole body was like a stiff board. I found it easier to talk about how I was feeling about New York once I left it; I felt like my brain could start functioning again, and talking about it really helped to release a lot of that tension I was holding inside. It was on the drive over to Boston that I came up with the design of the "American" Spirit Necklace, although at the time, I was thinking about the design just as a piece that I would like to wear myself.
It was really nice to be able to spend time with Merv's family for a few days; we usually spend every Thanksgiving there. Besides Merv's brother (the best man at our wedding) and his wife, Merv also has a young niece (who was my flower girl) and nephew, both of whom we love to spend time with, and I also got to see one of my best friends from New York, who had just moved to Boston to teach at Massachusettes Art College. She lived in New York for years, a few years at Columbia for her undergraduate, and then at NYU for her MA, which is where I had met her. She really identified with being a New Yorker and I think she really wanted to come back at that time. The strange part is, we met her halfway at a really pretty lakeside park in the suburbs north of Boston, and the prettiness of it all was seriously creeping me out. It's hard to explain, but Boston, as much as I like to vacation there a few days at a time, is a little too pretty and clean for me, kind of in a David Lynch-y sort of way. It's like going to The Gap. Next to what I was feeling about New York at the time, the prettiness and serene-ness of Boston started to really irritate me. There were people riding their bikes leisurely through the park, people sunbathing, and I started to feel angry at these people. Theoretically, I knew that they might also feel scared, confused, upset over what had happened, too, especially since both planes which hit the WTC originated at Logan Airport in Boston, but I still felt anger towards these people enjoying themselves at the park, 211 miles away from New York City.
We drove straight back to New York that afternoon. It was the strangest thing--I felt a huge sense of relief to be back in the city, three days later. I realized then in hindsight, that my anger towards those people in the park was probably due to my own feelings of betrayal at leaving the city that I really, truly loved, at a time when the city was suffering. I admit--it was a little frightening to come back--we didn't know what to expect, and a lot of the roads were still blocked off, but at least the barricade at 14th street was moved down to Canal Street by then.
I called most of our close friends in NYC to make sure everyone was okay, and that's when I found out that one of our friends was missing his oldest brother and had been looking for him at all the hospitals. I felt so badly that I didn't know that before we left for Boston, and that we didn't do anything to help him. I started feeling guilty about feeling so depressed and angry myself, when others were suffering so much more. It was less than a week after the attack, and people still had hope that their loved ones could still be found, that they were unconscious somewhere at a hospital as a Jane or John Doe. Loved ones posted posters everywhere--on shop windows, lamp posts, mail boxes, sidewalks--with photos, detailed descriptions, where these people worked, which floor they were last seen on, and that if you had any information, to call a certain number. After about a week and a half, the posters seeking information had been replaced with posters of eulogies, and you couldn't walk down the street without reading them and crying. I personally didn't know anyone close to me in those buildings, but had friends with friends or family who were missing--it's like, if they had hope, I had hope, but once their hopes turned to grief, I couldn't hold onto my hopes anymore either.
On a totally different note, one thing that I remember being really impressed with at the time, was how fast the MTA rerouted the subway trains. I don't remember exactly what day I first rode the subway (my quotidian transportation of choice), but it was just a few days after the attack. I needed to ride either the 1/9 or 2/3, whatever was running, and I wasn't expecting much. But they had the trains running regularly, and a LOT of extra MTA workers with neon orange vests letting people know which trains were running and which platform to stand at, since they changed a few of the routes. To this day, the 2/3 doesn't run south of the 14th Street Station anymore. I also catch the E train sometimes, and that's the train I used to catch to go to the WTC. It burns a hole in my heart every time I'm uptown and I have to catch the E train home because all the southbound E train stops still have signs that say, "World Trade Center." All the southbound E trains still are labelled "to the World Trade Center." I wonder sometimes how long it'll say that.
I still don't know how I feel about those signs (or what should be done to them) or how I feel about Hollywood erasing all traces of the WTC. A part of me wants to see it as a reminder so that no one will ever forget what happened. Often times, those signs, to me, have the same effect that a cemetery tombstone or marker would have, in that it gives me a chance for a personal moment of silence to think about and pay my respects to those who died. At the same time, it conjures up uneasy feelings of how any one of us can become victims of massive destruction and violence, and that's not an easy feeling to shrug off sometimes, especially when you live in the middle of New York City.
Right after we got back from Boston, I didn't really know what to do with myself. I couldn't focus on anything. To make matters worse, right after 9-11, I cancelled my therapy session that week to go to Boston (yes, everyone in NYC has a therapist), and my therapist charged me anyway for not giving her a week's notice for the cancellation! Hello! National Tragedy! I was seriously pissed at her.
A few days after, Penny called me with an update on her parent's Blimpie's shop: they were able to clean it all out, there was minimal damage considering that they were only a few blocks away (only one glass shattered), but that they couldn't open it any time soon because they had no electricity to keep the food fresh and deliveries weren't being made to that area anyway. I told her to take whatever time she wanted to help her parents, and to call me when she felt like coming back to my studio.
The truth was, I really didn't have any work to do, nor did I have any capacity to focus on it. Art had lost its meaning for me, and in the grand scheme of things, I couldn't find any reason to continue making jewelry. I mean, why would anyone want jewelry at a time like this, and wouldn't my time be better spent as a productive member of society if I went back into teaching? Maybe I should quit working all together, have kids and be a stay-at-home-mom?
Luckily for me, Penny called me a few days later, about aweek and a half after 9-11. She said they had nothing more they could do with their Blimpie's shop until the roads were open to the public (security was pretty tight in the beginning, and you had to show proof of where you worked to be let onto certain streets), and that she really couldn't stand staying at home anymore and asked me when I was going back to work. I finally told her then that I wasn't sure what I would be doing in the next couple of months but that if she wanted to come in, I'm sure we could find something to do. Both of us were just happy to be out of our apartments and I was grateful to have her company. We got absolutely nothing done. We could barely focus on a single topic of conversation, let alone a simple task. We ended up just going out for coffee and a brownie.
When I told my husband about the "American" Spirit Necklace design that came into my head while we were driving to Boston, he said that he wanted one and that other people might really like it, too. It kind of distressed me at the time, that as much as I felt the desire to show my patriotism, I didn't like all the cheesy, tacky, misuse of the American flag, either. I mean, flag pants and underwear? What does that mean? Like other Americans, I wanted to do my part to help out, but I didn't have much money to give away (I was planning on opening the store in October and used what I saved up to buy all the displays, furniture, etc., before going to Hawaii for my sister's wedding), and I couldn't even donate blood (I didn't meet their 110 lbs requirement). So I decided to make the necklace a fund raiser, and calculated that if I could sell 200 necklaces at $50 a piece and donated half of each necklace sale, I could raise $5000. I was confident that I could do it, and do it within 2 weeks. I told my dad that, and he said if I could do that, he'd match each donation so that I could generate $10,000 with that design.
It was the best thing to have the fund raiser help me find a focus and get back to work. Earlier, I felt like art had no meaning, that it was a frivolous, self-indulgent hobby, and now it had a purpose and I had a focus. It felt very "American" to be able to go back to work, to go back to my ordinary way of life; going back to work in downtown Manhattan felt like a sense of defiance against the organizations/people responsible for all the destruction in our city. I felt that if I changed my life because I was "terrified," then the terrorists have succeeded in their intent. I wanted to maintain my previous plans and try to make the jewelry thing work. I had everything in motion and it was ready to go, and as usual, I emailed my email list to let them know about the fund raiser. Boy, was I in for a surprise!
That night, the first email I got in response to the design and fund raiser was my first (and since then, only, knock on wood) hate mail ever! I was devastated; here I was, thinking that this was the best way I could think of to use my art to help out as best as I thought I could, when someone sends me an email about how sick I must be to be to take advantage of people in a time of national tragedy! I almost took the fund raiser off the site at that moment. I was so confused as to what to do. I mean, I'd never done a fund raiser before, I thought, "Who do I think I am? What am I doing? What do I know about doing a fund raiser?" I didn't mean to upset people. I decided to sleep on it that night and make the final decision the next morning after I cooled off a bit.
I was so extremely scared to open my emails the next day, but a long story a little shorter, emails poured in from people all over the USA, from those who felt similarly about their desire to show their patriotism in a subtle, meaningful, everyday way. So many people emailed me about how it helped them in their own healing process, in that not only did they know that half of it was being donated and that each donation was being matched (a lot of people wanted to donate money but didn't know where to send it or what to do about it), but also because others asked them what the necklace meant, which lead to talking about what had happened and how they felt about it. Since then, the fund raiser has still been going on, but after the lesson I learned from that one (and only) hate mail, I don't want to push the necklace on anyone--I just let the necklace sell itself in its own way. It definitely has been a huge part in my own healing process.
I put all my energy into the fund raiser then, that I don't remember much else those first few weeks after the attack. Every night, the WTC area was lit up like daylight as the 24-7 search mission turned to an eventual cleanup mission. It was a time of strange, uncomfortable mix of emotions, of not knowing how to feel or how to process what I was feeling, as well as feeling a lot of guilt about feeling depressed. It felt selfish for me to feel depressed. Every day when I crossed the street and I couldn't see the WTC, I felt so sad, and simultaneously, I thought about the people who lost people really close to them, and how much harder it must be for them to see that same gap in the Manhattan skyline--their sadness, in comparison, must be so much greater than what I felt. Who am I to feel sad and depressed? A few months after 9-11, two towers of light lit the sky for a few weeks, in memory of those who were lost. It was a haunting, yet beautiful, symbolic tribute, I thought.
It's been almost a year since the 9-11 attack destroyed the WTC, and yet it feels like it happened just yesterday. A day doesn't go by when I don't think about the towers. It was a part of my everday life. When I first visited my sister in Manhattan, she taught me that if I ever came out of a subway station and I had lost my sense of direction, to look for the WTC and that would be south. Once I moved here, I literally saw that building every day, since I lived downtown.
We didn't go there often, but Merv and I went to the Greatest Bar On Earth, at the very top of the WTC, to see bands here and there, and it's all the little details that I remember all the time. The details are so vivid in my memory, it seems real sometimes, that it's hard to think that it's completely gone. I remember how they always made you check in your bags downstairs, how they always checked for IDs just to get into the elevator, and while I was waiting in line for the elevators, how I thought the white lines that stemmed from the bottom of the buildings looked to me like some kind of electronic communications device as it spread upwards to the very top; how I always felt badly about not having any tip money for the lady who handed me paper towels in the bathroom because Merv always carried my wallet; how excited I was to see my favorite comedian, Eddie Izzard, in the elevator; how I always made it a point to go to a window and absorb the view. Sometimes you could see the clouds rolling in below you, and it was such a strange visual to be on top of it all. One of the last times we were there, we went to see Mixmaster Mike, and I remember Merv being on stage behind him with Money Mark because he had just interviewed Money Mark a few months earlier. I met Kid Koala that night, too. It all seems so surreal now, and I still can't believe it's all gone.
I actually used to make it a point to look at and appreciate the WTC every day. It wasn't the best architectural design in New York, but it had a different affect on me--I saw it as a symbol of what one could accomplish if only we could stretch our imaginations. I mean, from the 108th floor of the WTC, you could see the top of the Woolworth Building far below, and I used to always marvel, "Wow, when that building was built, it was the tallest building in the world back then!"
My dad doesn't come to NYC very often to visit, but he did come for my graduation when I finished my MA at NYU. That last time he was here (1997), we were doing the tourist thing, and when we were looking at the WTC, he asked me if I knew who designed the WTC, which I didn't. He told me that the lead architect was a Japanese-American, a good friend of his cousin's, who also designed my cousin's building in Honolulu. My dad had been interned at Manzanar during WWII because he was of Japanese descent, and because of that, he's always been fiercely patriotic, I think mainly because he grew up feeling that he wanted to prove how "American" he really was. Being American, a Japanese-American, was something that was extremely important to him, and knowing that, I felt that it must make him proud, too, that a fellow Japanese-American of his own generation was able to overcome socio-economic boundaries to design something that became an American landmark. I don't think either of us ever imagined at that time that it would ever become the tragic symbol it has become today.
When I watched the towers collapse that day, I thought about this architect, and a part of me was glad that he had passed away a few years earlier--I imagined how awful it must be not only to see your design destroyed (as a designer myself, I think about creating things, not about destroying things), but the fact that so many people perished--even though it's not his fault that terrorists slammed airplanes full of jet fuel into the buildings--I think most designers feel a sense of attachment and responsibility to their creations. I don't have any kids, but I would imagine that it's like giving birth--you have a sense of responsibility and pride in this offspring, you invest a lot of time, energy, money, and love into bringing it to fruition, but after a while, it takes on a life of its own that you can't control, you did your best in the beginning, and hope that it can take care of itself and do well in the long run.
In my own designs, I can always find faults or find ways to make my designs better, and it's easy for me to make changes because my jewelry/website is so small. But if you think about how massive those building were, how it's not just one designer, but a team of architects and engineers, hundreds of steelworkers, carpenters, and other builders, the investers and banks, who needed that building to be built in a certain amount of time, how it was designed almost 40 years ago, how extremely massive those structures were, and so on down the line, there are so many "what ifs" in hindsight, it's endless. It goes on and on for me, and at the end, I just can't even imagine having so much hate that I could devote my life to so much violence, destruction, and death--and I hope I never do.
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