For most Americans, today has to feel uncomfortable. At least I know I feel out of sorts. Five years ago when a co-worker informed our design group that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, the first words out of my mouth were that we were under attack. There was no question in my mind that there was more to come, and sadly I was correct.
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A couple months prior I purchased a sketch pad. Nothing special. I usually only sketched in the office or in private; never in public. That day and the two that followed would be different. After purchasing the pad I went to a small used book store where I usually only stopped in to get some chai. This time I decided to stay and sketch on that new pad.
Usually when I sketch, I sketch product. And the first two pages are sculptural pieces based on product influence (I was taking a metal sculpture class at the time). And then I started drawing the image below.
I did the same thing the next day. I returned to the bookstore and sketched. Only I tried to return to something more like what I normally draw. The first attempt is more like the very first page from the previous day. And then I started exploding the forms. Literally. The image below is the third and final sketch that day.
The third day I once again tried to turn those previous sketches into something controlled. Something more deliberate. And the pattern repeated. With one big difference. I was thinking about aircraft wreckage. Two pages of shattered wing sections and what afterward looked more like stacked coffins than anything else.
I don’t know if there’s such a thing as telephone telepathy or precognition or any of that. I generally don’t believe in that stuff. All I know is that these sketches bother me.
After that last one, I took a break and the compulsion to draw these broken forms went away. In the privacy of my home, the collapsing towers and broken airplane wings became something else; they returned to the clean, controlled, product-style forms I usually sketch.
When I look at these today, it’s not hard for me to see from where superstitious beliefs come.
This is genuinely fortean stuff.
Although I’m a scientist by trade, I don’t sneer at this stuff. Exactly once in my life I’ve seen something that could only be construed as a ghost. I know that’s impossible. But it also happened.
I can’t dismiss your experience or your creepy awe out of hand.
My childhood memories go way back. I can remember things from when I was just a few months of age. One of the most vivid memories I have was when I was perhaps 4 or 5. We were visiting my grandparents in northern Germany and I had this amazing sense of deja vu. I remember telling my family I’d been there before. I knew I had been. Of course they didn’t believe me and there was no logical reason for them to believe me.
But what strikes me now isn’t the deja vu, it’s that I recall saying to myself then: “Don’t forget this. Don’t ever forget this. You’ve been here before.” I repeated that over and over to myself.
What’s a four-year old kid doing thinking like that?