Allison's Private Journal

Dear Journal,

I have some good news!  I’m back to writing in my journal!

But I also have a whole lot of bad news: almost 3 weeks ago, on 9/11/01, there were 4 aweful terrorist attacks on America, all of which were very close to home.  4 planes were highjacked (2 at Logan Airport) by suicidal terrorists.  At about 9:03 that morning the first plane highjacked from Logal smashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City (Twin Towers).  about 15 minutes later the second plane rammed into the South Tower.  Before this happened people thought it might have been just an accident or that the plane was lost, even though it was a beautiful day out.  After the second place hit, they knew something was wrong.

Just before 10:00 the South Tower collapsed onto itself, creating a massive cloud of dust that spread over half of Southern Manhatten.  It was like the movie Independence Day when the Aliens destroy NYC, LA, and Washington and there’s like a huge fire cloud.  Like that only dust, and the real thing.  Within the next 30 minutes the North Tower went down.  There was total chaos everywhere.

At the time I was in English.  Mrs. Jessop got a call, and I knew something was wrong right by the look on her face.  We didn’t find out even a little bit of it until the end of the day.  Everyone was talking about it, joking.  No one had any idea what this was while we were on the bus though.

I got home and Dad was there watching the news.  he had to come home because there’s an FBI building where he works.  The tapes and pictures people had were unbelievable.

The man behind all this–Osama Bin Laden.  He’s in Afganastan, hiding somewhere.  I hope they catch him soon.  Ben is in Germany right now, working with intelligence.  Oh God, I hope nothing happens.  Well, this is making me tired, goodnight

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Blogging is a special kind of writing.  It’s beautiful but frustrating because it’s all about the moment.  At least on this blog there is no preparation or thought process that comes before my fingers tap these keys–sentence by sentence.  Right now I’m watching The Voice, my new favorite show to hate/love, so for better or for worse I am pretty distracted.  I guess that’s all a part of the big bloggy picture.

I was hesitant to post this entry when I first made my way to it back in December.  That’s how long it’s been since my last post–two and a half MONTHS.  This blog was getting over 50 hits a day when I was posting regularly; for someone with dreams of being a great, highly-circulated writer in the 21st century, that is a big deal in her second full month of blogging.  But I think it is a comment on just how powerful 9/11 is.

I was frozen by this entry.  I was getting great feedback, a lot of it from people I had barely talked to beforehand, about how entertaining they found little Allison’s entries, and the thought of bringing up such a negatively life-altering event to readers was… troubling.  I almost decided to skip it altogether until I read it aloud to my brother and quickly realized my comparisons to Independence Day and naive, 100% news-educated, 7th grade perspective had to be shared.

Anyways, I’m rambling and I’ll stop now.  I’d like to get more of my baby intellectual entries out before bedtime tonight.  In light of this, I have to warn there is more tragedy to come–much, much closer to home.  But just remember, without tragedy there can be no comedy, and the funniest people are usually the most fucked up; just wait until I publish my COLLEGE writings!  Woooweee!  There’s nothing like a long-anticipated, emotion-shattering divorce to bring the funny.  I kid (kind of, not really), but try to sit back and enjoy the show–for better or for worse.