Everything stays in place in memory. August 30, 2001, I awoke from a dream of walking out of a desert cantina to find myself facing an amazing sight: two slender straight columns of clouds, one black, one white, standing tall against a blazing sunset. I turned on the television to see the beginning of an old Lionel Barrymore movie I had not seen since I was a child, about an old man capturing death in a tree. I turned it off quickly. It scared me. Later on that day I heard of the death of a friend's husband, and thought - that must have been what I was picking up on. I played the harp at his funeral a few days later. He had died too young.
He had been born on September 11.
I felt edgy for the next week. In the morning hours of September 10, I dreamed I was on an elevated train, sitting in the front car that was white and shaped like the cockpit of a plane. You could see a long distance from that car, until billowing trees in a park surrounded the tracks and you couldn't see anymore. The track ended. An African American woman sitting in the car with me looked at me in horror. I rose from my seat, but couldn't find my shoes. That concerned me. Being barefoot, for me, is a personal symbol that a dream has a message about death. I woke up in my dream, and went looking for answers. I found a solemn faced conductor and asked him what was going on.
"It's the end of the line." I tried to see why, but I couldn't, because of the thick billows of the leafy trees.
I woke up from the dream but, disturbed, I sent myself back into dreaming for more answers. This time I was at a Halloween festival (an even bigger symbol of death for me) and walked away from it into a part of the park that led into a field. The middle of the field had a huge ravine in it, as if something gigantic had plowed into it. This shocked me, and I couldn't stand to dream anymore.
That day I was too antsy. I came home from work and started painting to channel the energy. But what I painted - I hardly ever have a plan when I paint - horrified me -
The morning of September 11 was beautiful in Atlanta. We walked through the doors of Athe diamond wholesale business I worked for, at 8:50 am. Within minutes my boss, the wife of the diamond dealer there, called from home. The first plane. Another call after we tried to get the news on the radio. Another call. The second plane. What? A third call: The Pentagon. The diamond dealer shouted, frightened, "we're at war!"
The next half hour was a scene of panic. The diamond dealer hid in his office. We couldn't get enough news, so I went downstairs where I knew a television would be. I arrived just as the first tower collapsed, on air. A good man named Joe Earnest stood behind me and held me by the shoulders as we watched the tower become a column of ash. A straight white cloud...
I ran back upstairs. The panicked diamond dealer had spent a half hour grabbing all the hidden cash and diamonds and jewels he could, stuffed them in bags, and was locking the door. He hated me for needing to get my purse out of the store. He hated me for what happened. As usual, I was handy to hate. Any respect I had ever had for him ended that day. He ran to the elevator like a waddling child under the weight of his jewels and money, and disappeared.
The transit trains were closed - no one knew where another attack might happen. I got on a bus full of people who had not yet heard, an hour and a half after it happened. I stepped on, and found myself facing the first boy I loved, someone I hadn't seen in 30 years. I was the one who told him what had happened. I was the one who spread the shock to the bus. And when I stepped off the bus again, the world changed forever.
