FREEDOM

It was probably hot. It was very hot. Maybe skin had already begun to melt off some of the people arms and faces, leaving the muscle mucus exposed and shivering in the glints of the heats wavy optics. It was not hot enough to melt the steel base and have the towers collapse on top of themselves at near free-fall speeds, but it was hot. The lights had gone out, maybe the sprinklers where showering everything, or maybe they weren’t working; a few things didn’t work that morning – the radios, the air force interceptors, the security cameras, a few things, but it was a busy morning and even if the sprinklers had come on they wouldn’t have done much against the flames or the heat. The summer spent quietly, trading treasury bonds, or brokering CO2 emission credits, and then there was nothing but this heat. The intensity and singularity of the thought, the singularity and intensity of the most basic need to catch a breath – to let the lungs fill with sweet oxygen; this is all that is there. But there is more. Because they took each other by the hand before they leapt out windows that had to have been smashed with dull and plastic and, at this point because of the oncoming weakness due to smoke inhalation, heavy office chairs; because they exited into those crystalline blue skies hand-in-hand, there must have been some clarity of thought. Could it have been scary? Could the thought of leaping out the 101^st  floor possibly terrorized anyone who was already trapped inside of an insidious sort of art project that were it in a movie would have been classified as obvious. This was not a movie though, besides everyone lining the Hudson by the afternoon who said that it looked like one, or felt like one (what do movies feel like?), this was undeniably the pinnacle of life. This is the moment when New York harbor stretches out occasionally clouded by the black plumes that shift with the slight sway of the winds, this is where the statue of liberty is standing down there looking back up: Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …

 

  This is after those messages have been left from the phones who somehow had managed to keep their connections connected. This is the proclamations of love to partners who had been out that morning, or the lines had been busy, or they had run to the television and had it turned up too loud and they had missed the ringing phones. The lost lovers on that top floor who were trying to say a few last words. These are those last words, the declarations of love that are filled with guilt, that somehow are tinged with the idea there is no other choice, there is only this, only those windows and what lies beyond them, every tangential option has become focused on that. It is a life to its own. It is not a choice because there is no other option. The phone would ring and ring and ring on the other end, and maybe it was for the best; messages are easier sometimes. And what could the voice on the other side be like? And what could be said, and what pleas could be made? This was best a one sided conversation, and the messages are left and the urge to call someone else, someone who might be home – but there is some else behind the caller, and they want to make a call to, and there is the understanding between everyone that these are those last reaches of contact. The self is lost in the greater good, and once that receiver is placed back in the black cradle there is nothing except acceptance. And maybe the man behind that man has gotten someone on the other line. He is crying, or he is strong, but either way he is talking, and he does not want to hang up. It had been better to leave a message; say your peace and let it be done. There are no protestations, no admittance that we are about to take our own lives, that we are free and this is clear, like those skies right there behind the slight shade of the tinted windows that have yet to be smashed open.

 

The fire continues to gobble up reality and a few have already found solace on the ledge, perfectly conscious in the way that the creep of certain death drives electricity through the entire body, climaxing in the purity and silence of singular action. Though we are not there yet, this choice (that is not a choice) has not been there, and this is still the office; with the drabness of the gray cubicles and the nylon clothe that wraps the chairs begging to melt. This is still the thick black smoke choking and filled with the chemicals of the rubber wheels on the bottom of the chairs; this is the wheezing. The message has been left, the machine somewhere back uptown or across the river would have a little red light, and it would take whoever took the message a long time to know what to do with it: keep it, erase it? Keep it? Erase it? Until in their own indecision the message had lost its’ meaning, and came to mean nothing at all, abstracted from those final moments of definition and clarity. The message inside the message is gone, or there never was one. There is nothing more inside this office. They had been good employers here. Nice medical benefits, a killer Christmas party last year, good views, always good views. On sunny days like this one, but more so when the clouds had rolled in and there was nothing but the chunky grays outside, teaming with what everyone knew only 1,355 feet below; the millions of yellow taxi’s that looked like ants, the people who could not even be discerned, all of that hidden behind those clouds. But today is, was, and will be clear, and they can see everything before them. This is perfect knowledge of the marketplace. This is the maturation of their bond. And they are on the ledge.

 

Some of the others had leaped holding hands, because there was hope in it. Because the fright was manageable this way — because they had been friends and talked about Friends at the watercooler. She had like Monica’s wedding, and was Ross really the father of Rachel’s coming baby? They had talked about other stuff too, like deals, and the market, and that new chick who worked on the floor below. Where was she? And now they took each other by the hand and let themselves go. But we are not there yet.

 

We are with he who is alone. Who has left the message, and who begins to choke with his own coughs. Who crawls on his knees to a window that has already been used as the fastest exit to freedom by thirty, forty, fifty people. He has watched them line up. He has watched the calmness in which fate is determined. The calmness in which free will becomes obsolete; the understanding of humans who stand on the ledge of a towering building blossoming beautiful buds of smoke, and the wind isn’t there, even at this altitude; and the thick blackness flowers and hangs there. He crawls because he remembers his school fire drills, and there is no one in front of him, or no one behind him, or no one that he sees, or registers. And then it is only him, the ledge; and the sweet taste of the perfect autumn morning. How clear is that first breath. The brain electrocutes. Firing new track ways for neural transmissions. He is free and he is alive.

 

And with out much thought, there is the flailing limbs. The whiteout. The blackout. A life flashing before his eyes. The brain floods the senses and all that is left are these iconic ten seconds.

We must look to our man, the one who stands at the ledge with the clarity of a life before him, and the life behind him. We must honor the definition of his soul through his actions and come to understand that all of our buildings our on fire.