I was in Washington DC.  The night before I’d done the last shoot of a documentary I was making so we were scheduled to get up and drive back that morning.  We were sleeping in a bit, not rushing into the 10 hour drive back to Atlanta.

Rich, Amanda, Dee, and myself were sleeping in a hotel room on Pennsylvania Ave.  I woke up first and opened the curtains.  The bright, blue-skied day shocked the room with light and everyone groaned.  I noticed a plume of black smoke – sort of over the highway – in the not-too-far distance and figured a car was on fire or something.  I didn’t think much of it.

Rich, who lived in the area, got up next and got ready for work.  It was probably around 9am.  He showered and dressed; we took our time coming to life.  No one could even be bothered to turn on the TV… the heavenly beds were much to heavenly.  Soon, Rich said his goodbye and was off.

About 20 minutes later there was a knock at the door.  It was Rich again.  He had this anxious, confused look about him and said we needed to turn on the TV.  ”Something was up.”  Streets were blocked and someone had told him the Twin Towers in NYC had been blown up.  Now there was a plane headed towards DC with a bomb on it.  ”What?”  Certainly that wasn’t right.  So we turn on the TV.

We soon learned.  Even watching the whole thing go down didn’t make much sense at first.  I remember the ticker on the bottom of CNN saying “both World Trade Center towers have collapsed” and thinking “that crazy CNN… always exaggerating!”  And then, the video.

I turned to look out the window about the same time Judy Woodruff went to a live shot of the Pentagon.  I remember Wesley Clark was speaking and he said the Pentagon had also been hit.  By a commercial airliner was it?  What the hell was going on?  And another one down that was headed for DC?  I go to the window and look down in the street. It was full of National Guard vehicles.  How did I miss this earlier?

It didn’t take too long before the enormity of the whole thing really sank in.  We were scheduled to leave, to check out, to drive away… but there was no way we could.  ”Everyone leave” turned into “everyone’s stuck.”

We waited out the day in the hotel room and at the restaurant/bar next door.  Everyone who was seated around us or had been seen walking outside looked like they’d been punched.  They stared, sort of bewildered, as if they couldn’t get their bearings.

At about 8pm we were finally able to leave.  It was dusk and DC was a ghost town by then.  The cool, white lights of its monuments played against the purple and blue of the sky as we drove down Constitution Avenue.  The District is stolid and stoic on a normal day but now, leaving bruised and wanting clarity, she was especially cold… like a distant mother you fear, yet somehow know still loves you.

We drive past the Pentagon.  Another monument of cold, hard light against the darkness.   Just this one with a charred, gaping wound being tended by miniature people in firemen suits.

Needless to say, it was a long 10 hours.  Staying awake wasn’t a problem.  I remember driving back into Atlanta as the new day broke and listening to the morning talk shows… everyone still in shock.  I sensed a loss of words even with so much to talk about.  What do you say on the dawn of a changed world?  They were certainly doing a better job than I could.

Still, I arrived home and carried on like the rest of the world.  Nothing would quite be the same for awhile and I think everyone got that.  Seven years later, we still live in quite a different place.