Oliver Stone's movie "World Trade Center" will be opening next week. I won't be in the ticket line.
Do I have a personal connection with the 9/11 attack? Not really... But although I did not lose anyone in the tragedy, like most in NJ, I was touched by it. My friend's father (who was the WTC manager when it first opened) made it down 60-odd flights of stairs passing Port Authority cops on their way up, cops he knew since he also worked for the PANYNJ; two friends missed being in the WTC running late or having meetings cancelled.
I still remember going to the Food Bank two days later unpacking trailers from Tennessee... pillows and generators. Smaller trucks from NJ filled with black plastic bags of clothing and old ratty slippers still wet from the rain. Making sandwiches for the rescue workers who knew that they would find noone but still had to breath in the death; listening to the stories of my friends who walked past barriers and through the ash to deliver the food to the Red Cross station.
Two months later, driving through TriBeCa, there still was a weird dusty quality to the air, the smell of something missing entwined in the wind that ruffled the faces on the flyers loved ones had posted on any flat surface they could find. The smoke that still floated upwards across from the Liberty State Park.
Two years later, seeing a 9/11 widow with a 2 and a half year old baby girl getting on with her life and dating my friend.
I know it's important to capture history as soon as possible. And many people in the Midwest who I spoke with days after the attack, really didn't understand the scope of the destruction. So for them, it is a good thing to see. But for me, 9/11 may not have hit close, but hit close enough and I will wait until I'm ready.
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