9/18/01
It looks like rain today. Somehow the clouds fit our collective mood -- a sense of threat overhead, the muffled sun, the sky reminiscent of smoke. Now, crossing into Manhattan, I can't tell the remaining smoke, the smoke of the remains, from the clouds. The unthinkable drops into the background.
And I think: when it rains, what will happen to the posters of the missing? Will they wash away? Or will they run, smudge? As if they haven't wept enough already.
I saw dozens of those posters yesterday on Canal Street. It was like the tide had come in, surging downtown, broke against the police barricades, and receded, leaving posters and candles and yellow ribbons and letters from children in Philadelphia. The vendors are selling commemorative t-shirts. On the street you could buy postcards of the towers out of a cardboard box. A buck a piece.
I'd gone down, thinking that if I could only see it with my own eyes I could begin to comprehend it. Of course, they're only letting residents down there, and I couldn't even begin to think of a credible reason why I needed to go below Canal. Nearby, a glass storefront was covered with messages written on square labels. Some were sorrowful, some hopeful for peace -- but most were filled with rage. Kill them all and let God sort them out. I am frightened of such hatred. When does justice end and revenge begin?
The sky that day was so blue -- it was almost criminally beautiful. I was on my way in to work. It was supposed to be my first day back after a month of being home with Ben. On my way in to the station I heard word that the subways were closed, but the token booth clerk assured me that the trains were running OK, and sure enough the 2 train pulled in a minute later. (This was sometime between the 2nd plane and the 1st collapse.) I read the latest McSweeney's, an article by Breyten Breytenbach on stateless citizens, listening to the corresponding TMBG track, until we stopped, somewhere between Clark and Wall, Brooklyn and Manhattan. After a few minutes the PA announced that a building had collapsed. And then the guy next to me, who worked for Amtrak and had a huge suitcase, began telling me what had happened. Two planes. One for each building. Terrorists. I remembered, from reports after the '93 bombing, that the towers were built to withstand a direct impact of a jet airplane. They'll be fine. We kept chatting, the way New Yorkers do when they're thrown together. Hey, at least we have seats, I joked.
Then we started to smell smoke. And people started to get nervous. I'm not sure how long we were stopped. The Amtrak guy, who had seemed pretty together before, was getting panicky. Some woman was sobbing. There were several stampedes toward the front or back of the train. The smell got worse. I sat, with my head down, trying to breathe slowly, my tie wrapped around my face. I felt very calm.
They finally got us into the Wall Street station, which was filled with white smoke. And then we were in the atrium, and I could not believe what I saw outside. It was like a snowstorm had hit -- the streets were covered, the sky was thick with white, people were hurrying down the street. Except they were all hurrying in one direction, and everywhere was ashes.
Somehow, the eeriest sight was the abandoned bagel carts. You never see an abandoned bagel cart.
I followed everyone else -- at NYU hospital they were handing out masks -- and then we were at the Brooklyn Bridge, and then we were across. I walked all the way back to Park Slope with a web designer who was on my subway car. As we walked across the Bridge, we kept looking back. (Orpheus, Lot's Wife, and Me.) Where are the towers? he asked. Must be behind all that smoke. I didn't know until I got home (to a very relieved Debbie) that they were gone.
Later that afternoon, I watched a piece of paper flutter out of a clear blue sky and land right on 7th Avenue. Two girls picked it up -- a page from a budget, charred at the edges.
I'm so glad to have Ben now, to hold him, to focus on him, on life, on the future.
There's a lot here this week on the attack, and what happened to us, and what it means, and what we should do. I'm starting off with a few experiences of Ishbadiddlers. Then Alex has some questions about war -- responses next week. And then a vision of a memorial, and some other readings. I hope you don't mind the extra long edition, but there's a lot on our collective minds. When words fail us, we need more words...
-- ME-L
| New York City | Subway |
