After a month of increasingly bad pain in my left wrist, I went to the doctor today. It is possible that I have a fractured wrist. The only things I can think of that would have caused this are my various hilarious bumps and crashes while enjoying a few hours of cross-country skiing during the past two months.
I kept telling folks that I couldn't try skiing because I was bound to break a bone.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Monday, February 14, 2005
pizza on Valentine's Night
What kind of place is this where a drunken wife cannot get pizza on Valentine's Night? Deep sigh.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Baltimore Skies
The New York Times > National > Baltimore Streets Meaner, but Message Is Mixed
Yes, it is sad that Baltimore's crime rate is rising again. What really caught my eye about this article is the photo showing the orange night. I remember in the early 70s when the sodium lamps were installed, and the end of the old incandescent street lights on their small-scale decorative iron poles. The colored night skies of cities has always bothered me. I feel grateful and appreciative of the black and spangled skies here. The first starry sky I remember noting was my first week at Hampshire College in 1983. Long time ago.
My friend Susie has just pulled in. We're going to have a cocktail. Very young Johnny Cash on the stereo.
Yes, it is sad that Baltimore's crime rate is rising again. What really caught my eye about this article is the photo showing the orange night. I remember in the early 70s when the sodium lamps were installed, and the end of the old incandescent street lights on their small-scale decorative iron poles. The colored night skies of cities has always bothered me. I feel grateful and appreciative of the black and spangled skies here. The first starry sky I remember noting was my first week at Hampshire College in 1983. Long time ago.
My friend Susie has just pulled in. We're going to have a cocktail. Very young Johnny Cash on the stereo.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Saturday, February 05, 2005
John's first fire
Saturday, February 5, 2005
John’s firefighter uniform hangs dripping in the basement near the cat boxes. This morning was his first fire, a “fully-engaged structure fire.” The call came at about 6:45—we were awake instantly because it is unusual for the Upper Jay tones to sound. At first I thought the dispatcher said “awful fire,” but pragmatic John said it was “possible fire” and was probably a false alarm, being near Ward Lumber. But no, in moments a second call came through, the dispatcher seeming excited, saying, “Second call, structure fire confirmed, Upper Jay and Jay firefighters report immediately…” John got dressed and left, taking my cell phone with him because he needed to be in Lake Placid for his under-the-table refereeing job in a few hours, and would need me to come pick him up. I clattered around the house, waking up for real, groggy and excited, talking to myself and the dog, the cats. I wanted to go see the fire, wanted to be there when John needed to be picked up, wanted to go back to sleep, wanted him to be home all at once. I started the car to warm it up and got dressed, brewed coffee. During these twenty minutes the dispatcher called Wilmington, Au Sable Forks and Keene fire departments and the ambulance from Au Sable Forks. Big fire, serious danger. I told Cruiser I would be back, put boots and coat in the now-warm car and took off toward Jay. Cold morning, everything glittery and salt-soaked. Little snow depth but much snow coverage, the river still frozen and white. Clear sky. As I rounded the river bend near the Stones’ house, that halfway point where I have ridden my bike and then soaked my sweating head in the cold river, the sky over Jay began to come into view, with a slow pink-stained handkerchief of cloud or smoke over the hills.
I pressed on, cruising at 80. The fields and houses and river dwindled by and off to the right, far across the river I saw a plume of pale smoke above the trees. It rose in cloudy, tight billows until a certain layer of atmosphere, when it flattened out and streamed northward with the air currents. I knew that pale smoke meant steam—water applied; black smoke would be worse. I felt a pang for the family, hoped no one was hurt, wondered what John was doing. I drove into Jay, braking down to a reasonable 40 as the car rose up the gentle hill, passed familiar summertime landmarks—the Jay Green, the rapids of the Au Sable River underneath the one-lane bridge. I noted that the new covered bridge was completely clad in golden fresh wood. Once they have built their large truck-suitable bridge, nothing will replace the innocence of that covered crossing over the swimming holes. But I digress.
After Ward Lumber on the Glen Road I saw flashing lights, ominous and iconic. I wanted John. A tall, androgynous older woman flagged me to a stop at the corner and I explained I was a firefighter’s wife, he needed to be picked up for work. She told me to park between this and that red truck and not to exit my vehicle, ma’am. So, eager to please and cowed, I pulled in and sat, anxious, sipping my hazelnut decaf. Three men were conferring on the road ahead of me. One of them separated and came toward the car; amiably I rolled down the passenger side window. He leaned his forearms on the edge and we chatted. I assumed he was an official and explained my presence. He didn’t know John. Finally he said he wasn’t a fire department person, was just a neighbor watching. He recommended I go talk to that man in the gray jacket. So I did, once again explaining—wife, pick up, confused, where should I go? The man in gray said I should just walk on up to the fire. So I did, heart pounding, conscious of my posture, not wanting to be ejected nor to get in the way, nor to embarrass my husband.
The day was clear and cold, everything sort of faintly hazed by salt in the air or a thin tinge of smoke. There were no sirens, no noise. I turned off the paved road onto someone’s two-track driveway, longer than I had expected. Fat beige hoses wavered along the ruts, as thick as my thigh. A rivulet of water trickled away from the fire. I avoided both water and hoses, concentrated on keeping my balance on the frozen hump in the middle of the drive, my black Sorel boots a warm cushion.
There were fire trucks, utility vans, the enormous pick-up trucks that men here drive as a badge of membership in the North Country. Dozens of firefighters in their dirty yellowish uniforms, their classic hats and black stripes, somber faces. The smoke climbed like a fierce thing, huge and silent. I heard the crackling of the fire before I saw it. No voices, but the humming of motors left running, the spew of exhaust fumes a distraction in my peripheral vision. The crispy snow was flecked with black ash and tiny holes.
I moved forward cautiously, and was glad to be ignored. The firefighters were moving in teams, some with hoses, some with tools, some taking a rest near trucks, some standing in a distant, alert group like athletes in the box waiting for their turn on the field. My age-old fear of large machines lurched out and then sank again as I walked between rumbling fire trucks. Then voices and shouts and the fire, orange and reaching out from a broken window, reminding me oddly of an air conditioner. I stood for a while, my back against the grill of a fire engine, heart thumping, droplets of liquid tapping my face. Two girls whose faces I know from summertime wandered past me, looking at me as if I were an authority or an interloper, I couldn’t tell which. I didn’t smile—not a smiling occasion.
All I could see of the volunteers was their backs, uniformly drab and strong. I stepped forward to get a closer view and saw the sadness of the house, not a large house, just a home, enormous with flames and leaking wisps of smoke from shingles and siding. Striding from around the side came a set of firemen, with one in a distinctive black top—and the square-jawed face beneath the helmet was my own beloved, grim and serious and heroic.
John and the Upper Jay fire leader (Captain? Chief?) passed me unseeing, intent in discussion, planning their next move, I imagined. I feared I might lose sight of John again, and realized that probably he was too engrossed and this fire too big for him to leave to ref a hockey game. I wondered how I could be helpful. When he and his colleagues stopped walking and stood to watch the action, I crept up behind John and touched his sooty hot palm with my hand. He turned and looked down and was happy to see me. We loped off together toward the utility truck, and he gave me back my cell phone, asking me to find a way to contact his ref boss. I love John in a crisis, always cool-headed and looking ahead a few steps. He wears the black with reflective stripes because he is one of the “inside men,” those who are smaller (John says—in better shape, I say,) and have been trained to go inside the burning building to search for victims and survivors. He said that the family was fine, no one was in the building, but it was a terrible tragedy because they had just lost a child. I later learned that it was an adult child, but still.
This area is so sparsely populated that there is a network closer than six degrees between all of us. I made ten or so unsuccessful calls to directory assistance asking for the phone number for the Olympic Arena, then to Lake Placid friends to ask them to look—no one answered. Then I had the bright idea to call the LP fire house, because John had mentioned that his ref supervisor is also a fire fighter. The friendly man who answered knew what I was talking about and knew the person John needed to reach. He said he would find Butch, the ref boss, and offered to call me back and let me know. I felt infinitely soothed by this fatherliness, neighborliness, masculinity.
(I have learned so much since moving up here about accepting the archetypal masculine and feminine roles that my mother has talked about forever that I have objected to forever. Well, now I am here in a wild and rough place, where there isn’t much wiggle room for liberal ideas in a place where you could die any day from cold or bears or logs crushing you.)
After getting the message to John’s ref boss I knew I had no business at the scene, so I left as slinkily as I came, hoping no one would notice me. I drove home much more slowly, and stopped at the Upper Jay firehouse expecting the Ladies Auxiliary to be there making coffee and sandwiches, but there was no one there at all. I was conscious again of overcoming my objection to the idea of “Ladies Auxiliary,” because in that moment I knew exactly what the term meant and how important the function is for both hard-working fire-fighters and their anxious spouses, and for the traumatized, displaced families. John came home about four hours later, reeking of smoke, arm muscles pumped up, veins bulging. He took a quick shower and I cooked him a hero’s breakfast of five eggs and two diced hot dogs with pepper jack cheese, and then he was off to ref hockey for eight hours. He is a dynamo.
John’s firefighter uniform hangs dripping in the basement near the cat boxes. This morning was his first fire, a “fully-engaged structure fire.” The call came at about 6:45—we were awake instantly because it is unusual for the Upper Jay tones to sound. At first I thought the dispatcher said “awful fire,” but pragmatic John said it was “possible fire” and was probably a false alarm, being near Ward Lumber. But no, in moments a second call came through, the dispatcher seeming excited, saying, “Second call, structure fire confirmed, Upper Jay and Jay firefighters report immediately…” John got dressed and left, taking my cell phone with him because he needed to be in Lake Placid for his under-the-table refereeing job in a few hours, and would need me to come pick him up. I clattered around the house, waking up for real, groggy and excited, talking to myself and the dog, the cats. I wanted to go see the fire, wanted to be there when John needed to be picked up, wanted to go back to sleep, wanted him to be home all at once. I started the car to warm it up and got dressed, brewed coffee. During these twenty minutes the dispatcher called Wilmington, Au Sable Forks and Keene fire departments and the ambulance from Au Sable Forks. Big fire, serious danger. I told Cruiser I would be back, put boots and coat in the now-warm car and took off toward Jay. Cold morning, everything glittery and salt-soaked. Little snow depth but much snow coverage, the river still frozen and white. Clear sky. As I rounded the river bend near the Stones’ house, that halfway point where I have ridden my bike and then soaked my sweating head in the cold river, the sky over Jay began to come into view, with a slow pink-stained handkerchief of cloud or smoke over the hills.
I pressed on, cruising at 80. The fields and houses and river dwindled by and off to the right, far across the river I saw a plume of pale smoke above the trees. It rose in cloudy, tight billows until a certain layer of atmosphere, when it flattened out and streamed northward with the air currents. I knew that pale smoke meant steam—water applied; black smoke would be worse. I felt a pang for the family, hoped no one was hurt, wondered what John was doing. I drove into Jay, braking down to a reasonable 40 as the car rose up the gentle hill, passed familiar summertime landmarks—the Jay Green, the rapids of the Au Sable River underneath the one-lane bridge. I noted that the new covered bridge was completely clad in golden fresh wood. Once they have built their large truck-suitable bridge, nothing will replace the innocence of that covered crossing over the swimming holes. But I digress.
After Ward Lumber on the Glen Road I saw flashing lights, ominous and iconic. I wanted John. A tall, androgynous older woman flagged me to a stop at the corner and I explained I was a firefighter’s wife, he needed to be picked up for work. She told me to park between this and that red truck and not to exit my vehicle, ma’am. So, eager to please and cowed, I pulled in and sat, anxious, sipping my hazelnut decaf. Three men were conferring on the road ahead of me. One of them separated and came toward the car; amiably I rolled down the passenger side window. He leaned his forearms on the edge and we chatted. I assumed he was an official and explained my presence. He didn’t know John. Finally he said he wasn’t a fire department person, was just a neighbor watching. He recommended I go talk to that man in the gray jacket. So I did, once again explaining—wife, pick up, confused, where should I go? The man in gray said I should just walk on up to the fire. So I did, heart pounding, conscious of my posture, not wanting to be ejected nor to get in the way, nor to embarrass my husband.
The day was clear and cold, everything sort of faintly hazed by salt in the air or a thin tinge of smoke. There were no sirens, no noise. I turned off the paved road onto someone’s two-track driveway, longer than I had expected. Fat beige hoses wavered along the ruts, as thick as my thigh. A rivulet of water trickled away from the fire. I avoided both water and hoses, concentrated on keeping my balance on the frozen hump in the middle of the drive, my black Sorel boots a warm cushion.
There were fire trucks, utility vans, the enormous pick-up trucks that men here drive as a badge of membership in the North Country. Dozens of firefighters in their dirty yellowish uniforms, their classic hats and black stripes, somber faces. The smoke climbed like a fierce thing, huge and silent. I heard the crackling of the fire before I saw it. No voices, but the humming of motors left running, the spew of exhaust fumes a distraction in my peripheral vision. The crispy snow was flecked with black ash and tiny holes.
I moved forward cautiously, and was glad to be ignored. The firefighters were moving in teams, some with hoses, some with tools, some taking a rest near trucks, some standing in a distant, alert group like athletes in the box waiting for their turn on the field. My age-old fear of large machines lurched out and then sank again as I walked between rumbling fire trucks. Then voices and shouts and the fire, orange and reaching out from a broken window, reminding me oddly of an air conditioner. I stood for a while, my back against the grill of a fire engine, heart thumping, droplets of liquid tapping my face. Two girls whose faces I know from summertime wandered past me, looking at me as if I were an authority or an interloper, I couldn’t tell which. I didn’t smile—not a smiling occasion.
All I could see of the volunteers was their backs, uniformly drab and strong. I stepped forward to get a closer view and saw the sadness of the house, not a large house, just a home, enormous with flames and leaking wisps of smoke from shingles and siding. Striding from around the side came a set of firemen, with one in a distinctive black top—and the square-jawed face beneath the helmet was my own beloved, grim and serious and heroic.
John and the Upper Jay fire leader (Captain? Chief?) passed me unseeing, intent in discussion, planning their next move, I imagined. I feared I might lose sight of John again, and realized that probably he was too engrossed and this fire too big for him to leave to ref a hockey game. I wondered how I could be helpful. When he and his colleagues stopped walking and stood to watch the action, I crept up behind John and touched his sooty hot palm with my hand. He turned and looked down and was happy to see me. We loped off together toward the utility truck, and he gave me back my cell phone, asking me to find a way to contact his ref boss. I love John in a crisis, always cool-headed and looking ahead a few steps. He wears the black with reflective stripes because he is one of the “inside men,” those who are smaller (John says—in better shape, I say,) and have been trained to go inside the burning building to search for victims and survivors. He said that the family was fine, no one was in the building, but it was a terrible tragedy because they had just lost a child. I later learned that it was an adult child, but still.
This area is so sparsely populated that there is a network closer than six degrees between all of us. I made ten or so unsuccessful calls to directory assistance asking for the phone number for the Olympic Arena, then to Lake Placid friends to ask them to look—no one answered. Then I had the bright idea to call the LP fire house, because John had mentioned that his ref supervisor is also a fire fighter. The friendly man who answered knew what I was talking about and knew the person John needed to reach. He said he would find Butch, the ref boss, and offered to call me back and let me know. I felt infinitely soothed by this fatherliness, neighborliness, masculinity.
(I have learned so much since moving up here about accepting the archetypal masculine and feminine roles that my mother has talked about forever that I have objected to forever. Well, now I am here in a wild and rough place, where there isn’t much wiggle room for liberal ideas in a place where you could die any day from cold or bears or logs crushing you.)
After getting the message to John’s ref boss I knew I had no business at the scene, so I left as slinkily as I came, hoping no one would notice me. I drove home much more slowly, and stopped at the Upper Jay firehouse expecting the Ladies Auxiliary to be there making coffee and sandwiches, but there was no one there at all. I was conscious again of overcoming my objection to the idea of “Ladies Auxiliary,” because in that moment I knew exactly what the term meant and how important the function is for both hard-working fire-fighters and their anxious spouses, and for the traumatized, displaced families. John came home about four hours later, reeking of smoke, arm muscles pumped up, veins bulging. He took a quick shower and I cooked him a hero’s breakfast of five eggs and two diced hot dogs with pepper jack cheese, and then he was off to ref hockey for eight hours. He is a dynamo.
Monday, January 31, 2005
a reason for owning cross country skis
The elder generation of my family can't quite understand why John and I own skis. Mom and Sally are tolerant, but I can detect that they think I have taken up a luxury sport. I have tried to explain how it is living in such a cold climate, where if you don't get outside you will die of depression. If you want to walk, you have to manage walking in snow, which has many characters: snow can be crunchy and deep, squeaky and rigid, light and slippery, melty and weak. It can support you, trip you, drag at you, numb you. The salty roads are fine to walk on but not so beautiful as the woods, and of course not so safe as trails. And why restrict yourself to roads when the land is so gorgeous? You need something other than shoes to get around. Hence skis and snowshoes are common.
Today gives me the perfect reason for owning cross-country skis. I took the day off from work, having spent a long weekend in NYC for meetings (which was splendidly fun and successful.) It was a gorgeous, sunny day. The river is solidly frozen and covered with a sheet of snow. There are pawprints and skis tracks everywhere. I needed to get to the library for a volunteer task, and John has our only working car today, so I skied down the river to the library.
Today gives me the perfect reason for owning cross-country skis. I took the day off from work, having spent a long weekend in NYC for meetings (which was splendidly fun and successful.) It was a gorgeous, sunny day. The river is solidly frozen and covered with a sheet of snow. There are pawprints and skis tracks everywhere. I needed to get to the library for a volunteer task, and John has our only working car today, so I skied down the river to the library.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Holiday Classic
BKHoliday
This might be the most clever holiday email thingie I've ever received. A classic. I hope I offend no one.
This might be the most clever holiday email thingie I've ever received. A classic. I hope I offend no one.
The New York Times > Opinion > Puzzles: Beat the Clock
The New York Times > Opinion > Puzzles: Beat the Clock
Every New Year the NYT puts out the best super-puzzle I have ever seen. This one is no exception. Enjoy!
Every New Year the NYT puts out the best super-puzzle I have ever seen. This one is no exception. Enjoy!
Monday, November 22, 2004
not a luddite
I've bought a Treo 600 and boy, do I like it. Palm, phone and camera all in one. I am just beginning to learn how useful it is. Techie, not I, but fond of handy gadgets, yes.
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Arafat & Othello
The New York Times > AP > International > Arafat's Health Worsens; Doctors Sent to Compound
A not unflattering picture of Yasir Arafat on the front page of the NYT electronic edition. He seems to be contemplating global leadership when in fact he's just been poisoned by an operative in an international conspiracy.
The U.S.A. certainly seems to be fracturing into bits. Even the coasts are no longer dependably Democratic. An explosion of registered Republicans is leaking out on all sides. Who knows where Alaska, Hawaii and the others will land. We have forfeited our post-WWII good position.
So, vote.com. Play the game Othello. Watch as Republican strongholds do the Bush Push from Ohio eastward to the Atlantic, through West Virginia and Virginia.
A not unflattering picture of Yasir Arafat on the front page of the NYT electronic edition. He seems to be contemplating global leadership when in fact he's just been poisoned by an operative in an international conspiracy.
The U.S.A. certainly seems to be fracturing into bits. Even the coasts are no longer dependably Democratic. An explosion of registered Republicans is leaking out on all sides. Who knows where Alaska, Hawaii and the others will land. We have forfeited our post-WWII good position.
So, vote.com. Play the game Othello. Watch as Republican strongholds do the Bush Push from Ohio eastward to the Atlantic, through West Virginia and Virginia.
Friday, October 22, 2004
Declare Yourself - Register to Vote
Declare Yourself - Register to Vote
Lots going on here. I think every day of writing in the ol' blog, but I don't write. This morning, for example as I was driving to work, there was fog all along the valley. The road follows the river west and upstream. Fog in pale pastel colors: lavender, blue, pink, orange--the dog in the back of the car, listening to Talking Heads or some such...
Stay tuned.
Lots going on here. I think every day of writing in the ol' blog, but I don't write. This morning, for example as I was driving to work, there was fog all along the valley. The road follows the river west and upstream. Fog in pale pastel colors: lavender, blue, pink, orange--the dog in the back of the car, listening to Talking Heads or some such...
Stay tuned.
Saturday, September 18, 2004
tomatoes and maples
Picking tomatoes in my garden. Bending, kneeling, reaching between the tangled vines and leaves, plucking, persuading the fruits to pop clear of their hats. Cruiser snuffling along between the rows, gobbling tomatoes that have fallen to the dirt. Toppled tomato cages, overheavy and dragged down by squash vines, yet offering clusters of tomatoes that promise to become red. A balance between autumn temperatures and sun summer warmth. The maples in the distance, reddening in bursts--here is one, there is one. A burgundy-colored maple leaf slips along the grass to my foot.
Monday, September 13, 2004
pleasures
Balmy, bright, breezy Sunday afternoon, standing barefoot outside in the grass, hanging damp laundry on the line, gazing across the field at my neighbors. My favorite red wine to follow.
Overcast brisk Monday morning, barefoot in the grass, quickly unclipping cold, dry laundry from the line, folding crisp t-shirts and pants down the front of my body, the wind flicking my nightgown around my calves, trying to avoid being seen by drivers on the road. Coffee waiting inside.
Overcast brisk Monday morning, barefoot in the grass, quickly unclipping cold, dry laundry from the line, folding crisp t-shirts and pants down the front of my body, the wind flicking my nightgown around my calves, trying to avoid being seen by drivers on the road. Coffee waiting inside.
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Today is the third anniversary of September 11, and the first where I feel mostly normal. I ate granola and drank coffee with John this morning, pureed tomatoes and mulched perennials, read a novel and napped. As I ran errands in the car I composed the first lines of sonnets in my head: "The late summer crickets' high-pitched keening," "Rugged field laid flat for winter, coming," "Sweet belly of a mountain, maple red," ...
I have not been wallowing in memories as I did the past two years. I have had no flashbacks. It has receded. I've reread my journal from that time, a scattered and not-quite immediate remembering. I post some of it here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September 11, 2001
Tuesday morning was a gorgeous a late-summer day in New York City. I got up, drank coffee, showered, dressed like the minor executive I am, and went outside to wait for the bus to my new job. The bus stop is in front of our apartment house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We live on Broadway, leading down to the East River.
Very often when I go outside I glance down to my right where the East River separates us in Brooklyn from the island of Manhattan, which is the place most non-New Yorkers think of when they say "New York." Ever since John and I moved here I have enjoyed the site of the twin Towers, so secure and strong, a symbol of being in New York. I have sketched them and remarked upon them in letters to friends and family. Those two Towers and other landmarks like our Williamsburg Bridge and the Empire State Building, and Brooklyn Bridge, even the Statue of Liberty visible ½ block away convince me every time I see them that yes, I do live in New York.
Tuesday morning I didn't take note of the Towers because I was interested in reading something in my New Yorker magazine, and the bus was rounding the corner. Soon I was on the bus and riding the few miles to my office. I missed my last chance to see the twin Towers as they were.
The neighborhood where I work is called Fort Greene. It is a residential neighborhood, brownstones and playgrounds and stores and restaurants. When I got to the office, early as usual, another early arriver said that there was a fire in the World Trade Center. I thought he was joking, and went outside to look. High in the sky there was a noticeable and strange plume of smoke floating past. There was a fast-rising urgency of people and sirens. I went back inside and called my husband John. He works in Manhattan at 6th Avenue and 27th Street, in a midtown neighborhood called Chelsea. He had not heard yet. We spoke briefly and hung up so he could go outside to see.
We had a radio in the our little Fort Greene office and everyone gathered around it to listen. The announcers didn't really know what was going on! A plane had hit the trade center—-unbelievable. I read later in the NYT that a local announcer joked about it being kamikaze pilot. Another plane has hit, oh God, and something has happened at the Pentagon in Washington, too—-it must be terrorists.
Usually outside at this time of day are young African-American youths playing basketball in the two City Park courts across the street. It's a big park, and I don't even know the name of it. Dekalb at Adelphi and Carlton. At my Venetian blind-shaded, sunlit desk I swallowed herb tea and tried to get some news online from CNN or the New York Times, sources I thought I could trust more than a nervous talk radio host. The websites were slow to come up from all the zillions of other people trying to access them, and when they did they showed photos of those two dear Towers smoking and blazing like in a disaster movie. I could hardly believe it. Then I tried to start my workday, but I really couldn't concentrate. A young woman arrived late to work, crying.
I called John again, and he told me what he saw standing at the corner of 6th, the flaming smoking Towers. I kept trying to believe that I could go about my regular day, but when I heard my husband's shocked voice I finally gave up. I told the Executive Director's young assistant I was leaving, left the office and walked down the block to Fort Greene Park, which has a big hill overlooking the city. And there were the enormous top thirds of the Towers, the wrecked and whole upper floors like the tines of a grey comb only three miles away, hazy with smoke on the otherwise gorgeous pristine sunny day, black smoke and orange-red fire, so large and close. Glittering things fell away from the burning, pieces of building or I don't like to think what else. Helicopters circled, a fighter jet zipped by far overhead. At first there were only a few people there on the hillside, but more and more came, and we all watched and crowded around those of us who had radios. Sirens were everywhere, ambulances, fire trucks and police on their way to the scene. I clasped my hands and prayed, but I felt little comfort in that—-how could my weak prayers save those people the pain of fire?
And then the left-hand tower Tower simply collapsed, slowly at first, collapsed, compressed straight downward, as if a giant hand was pressing it down, recycling a can or bottle. The rumbling roar came to us up on that leafy green hill, and everyone moaned and or screamed or was silent.
I can think now about who was there: our Executive Director's Assistant, whom I had told I was stepping out; the receptionist, who would end up getting fired for coming to watch; the girl who had been crying since she got to work; others from another department; the mostly African-American strangers on the hillside. Although there is a large hospital nearby there was no one in scrubs.
The right-hand Tower stayed up, the one with the broadcasting antenna on top, still blazing and smoking. A huge mushroom of dark ash and smoke billowed, sinister black and gray like you see on TV when a volcano erupts. All those people, I thought. It all happened so fast. How could can they be getting out, how many people were on the fire stairs of that building evacuating when their building it collapsed? I felt almost nothing, just stood there praying because there wasn't anything else I wanted to do. Some other people from my office arrived. We stood and watched the remaining Tower burn, listened to the various radios, talked quietly, tried to reach loved ones on cell phones. The minutes dragged by as slowly as minutes sometimes do, when you are in misery.
I left before the second Tower collapsed, not wanting to know any more and feeling an obligation to my job. As I walked back through the park I saw things of normal life, a group of people in matching t-shirts under a tree, getting ready to perhaps play softball,. A woman and a child in the playground. The woman watched me eagerly as I approached down the hill, and I thought she might want me to tell her what I saw.
I said, "Don't you want your daughter to see?"
"We were up there watching," said the woman, gesturing at her little daughter, "but she just wanted to come swing on the swings."
I nodded, and then the woman said, "I am from Israel. We have this all the time. And now I feel for you Americans." She and I stared at each other, a long moment of deep communion, and I put my hands over my heart, and she nodded, and I left.
The vision of the collapsing Tower, and the billowing explosions of smoke replays silently in my mind. Too much to believe, too much to accept. I was willing to think I had hallucinated it, it was only a dream. I wanted it not to be real. Somehow a giant movie screen had been placed across the vision of all of us up on that hill; it was Hollywood, some strange brutal experiment in mass entertainment, not a real thing. New York is larger than life that way; I see things in daily life here that I’ve only ever seen on TV or in movies. I wanted to believe almost anything but that it was real.
When I got back into the office only a few people were still there. Almost everyone else, but only I among the senior staff had gone to the hill to see for themselves. The radio was still on, describing what I had just seen. I didn't want to hear and went up to my desk outside the executive director’s office. She was on the phone behind her closed, glass door. I tapped on the door to let her know I was back, and then sat down at my desk and put my head in my hands. I would have begun to cry then, except she came out shouting. "This is unbelievable of everybody, how unprofessional, how could you just leave and not tell anyone where you were going, what are you all, some kind of voyeurs? This is none of your business!" She went on and on, spewing at me. I nodded and nodded, said, "Yes, I understand. I understand. I did tell so-and-so that I was going, but then she came herself." I told myself that my boss's her behavior wasn't about me nor really directed at me, it was just her way of coping with the unimaginable. Maybe her sister is in that Tower, I told myself. Maybe she is in shock. Everyone has their own ways of dealing with trauma. Then the executive director went downstairs, still shouting, and had it out with the receptionist, who had also gone up to the hill. To the receptionist's credit, when I saw her on the hill I asked who was covering the front desk and she said So-and-So was. But that wasn't enough for our executive director. I guess the receptionist had been on probation for a while, and this was a last straw.
"Pack your bags!" shouted the executive director.
"Are you firing me?" screamed the receptionist.
"Yes, I guess I am," said the E.D. I just shut my ears and made like a worker bee. I guess our former receptionist will never forget this day for several reasons. The receptionist continued shouting at my boss the E.D., who came quietly back upstairs and went back into her office.
Things all around became very quiet except for the radio and the endless sirens outside. I tried again to work and found myself reading the same sentence over and over again. The other women trickled back in, the crying woman, too. They said they had watched the second Tower collapse. I knew that I and all of us were in shock and dealing with it in our various ways. I felt myself flickering from sensibility to irrationality. I wanted to go to sleep. I wanted to go back to the hill and watch. I wanted to blink and have it be a dream. I wanted to go home and cuddle my cat Naomi. I wanted to hold my husband.
John and I talked briefly--some of his staff was missing, perhaps stuck on the subway, perhaps caught in traffic, perhaps just outside watching. He was responsible for about 30 people, and his coping method was to keep everyone close in the office and let them watch TV. The news was saying you couldn't get out of or into Manhattan, and I was afraid that John couldn't come home that night and I would have to be alone. At the same time I felt so selfish because so many others would never see their dear ones again.
Very quickly I got a bunch of emails from people worried about us in NY, including one from my mom through one of her tenants. Mom was terrified that we were hurt. I replied that we were fine, if shocked and frightened. I got an email from my friend Trish in Maryland near Washington, DC saying what she'd heard about the Pentagon and possibly other places there being bombed. I called my downstairs neighbor who worked at a bookstore in the bottom of the World Trade Center, and he answered the phone, said it was his day off and he was fine, told me that tons of people were standing outside our building our apartment on Broadway watching the scene. I checked my voicemail at home and found a hysterical message from Mom, and I realized belatedly that it wasn't just me who was possibly affected from our family: my brother Tom lives in Virginia and works for the federal government in Washington. I called Mom and we spoke briefly—she was fine by then. I asked for Tom's office number, but I couldn't get through. I began to be afraid for him.
And then, like the Tower collapsing, I lost my ability to remain professional and dispassionate. I felt a black cloud of depression sinking over me, as if my vision was narrowing down to a tunnel and my entire being was drying up and shrinking. I just sat there at my desk, listened as the young women talked about what they had seen, nodded and smiled and tried to be professional, set a good example, but inside I was just dust. All I could think about was my brother Tom and those people in the World Trade Center. I forced myself to be calm and kept telling myself Tom was fine, of course he's fine; he didn't work at the Pentagon. But in those moments we didn't know anything for sure because it was all happening so fast. And Tom can be such a hothead--I wondered if he had perhaps seen the plane crash into the Pentagon as he was driving to work, and had jumped out of his car to go help, or worse.
The hours passed quickly, and soon it was after lunchtime. My boss, the executive director who had screamed reprimanded me and fired the receptionist as her first reaction to the tragedy, calmed down and began to tell people they could go home if they knew someone who might be in the World Trade Center. "I can't go home," said her assistant, "I live in lower Manhattan." Another woman whose cousin worked in the buildings said she didn't want to leave, she just wanted to work, but then she did leave. I tried to stay, but couldn't stop thinking of Tom, and at about one p.m. I told the E.D. I was going to depart leave. "I hope your brother's ok," she said gently.
I went out and waited for the bus under the BQE. Hundreds of people were walking up the normally pedestrian-free roadway. I later learned that people from Manhattan were evacuated and walked away from the disaster across the three bridges right there: the famous Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, and the Williamsburg Bridge, which is right outside John's and my apartment. All those solemn, exhausted-looking people pouring by as I stood waiting for my bus were survivors of the attack. Some of them had breathing masks on, but none were dusty. I thought about biological warfare, and my mind went blank again. The bus didn't come, and someone told me that all buses were being commandeered to take cops and emergency workers into Manhattan. So I walked home, not such a long walk. Everyone I saw was solemn and quiet. We looked in each other's faces, which is something New Yorkers do not usually do. It was surreal, the terrible pouring black smoke across the river and in the sky, and the stubbornly beautiful day so much bigger than even this calamity. Cops were directing traffic; people were scrambling, cars and trucks honking, people saying they had to get here or there. "I have to make a delivery," roared one truck driver to a policeman who wasn't letting him through to downtown Brooklyn. "This is an emergency, you're blocking traffic," replied the cop.
About an hour of fast, sweaty, crowded walking later I was almost home, from African-American Fort Greene to Hassidic/hipster Williamsburg. There were men with guns guarding the Navy yard, a huge complex on the water a few blocks from our house. When I finally got home to our beautiful, sunny loft, a fifth floor walk-up, I threw down my bag and went out onto to the fire escape. "Our bridge," as John and I think of it, was packed with people all walking in the same direction: out of Manhattan. If they were shouting on the bridge I couldn't hear. A very few vehicles roared in, a random-seeming assortment of fire trucks, ambulances, sedans, buses. Normally that bridge is a river of transportation.
I came inside, changed out of my work clothes, opened up a beer and watched TV for hours and hours. John called frequently to tell me he was ok, and I told him people were walking across the bridge so I knew he could get home. He arrived later and we hugged and kissed, grateful beyond belief for our lives. We stared together out the front windows at the great smoking mess of lower Manhattan where those beautiful gleaming Towers had stood until that morning.
Sunday, September 16, 2001
The week has gone by with us trying to adhere to our routines of work and errands and regular life. We watch TV obsessively, read every paper, and chat with friends and family on the phone. Friday President Bush declared a day of mourning, although it was not organized at least in my neighborhood. I went with two other women to the Presbyterian Church at Lafayette and something, which was silently open for prayer. We sat in the ear-ringing intensity among two dozen scattered strangers, all races, lots of whites and blacks together. I looked for a kneeler and braved dusty pants to kneel on the hardwood floor at our pew to pray.
My faith in God that has been rock steady through every tragedy of my life, even Dad's death, has been tested: that moment of the tower collapsing, my whole soul rising slower than the speed of light to will it not to be, through the power God is supposed to have. I have trouble believing that my prayers make any difference, yet some moist-eyed time passed while I kneeled in thought to God. When I was walking from the Presbyterian Church I went for Italian food, pasta puttanesca. For the rest of the day I felt so much lightened and refreshed. The good feeling lasted into the next day.
John and I and everyone we know are depressed. The city is not the same, although as I write this on Sunday, September 16, 2001, the third monthiversary of our marriage, there are children playing and shrieking outside, the train whooshes by on the bridge, and there are normal signs of life: traffic, the regular amount of sirens. Certain things have been notably different, like the stench of burning that wafted over us several times this week as the wind changed. I knew I was breathing people's dust and ashes. Today is the first clear day since it happened, the smoke finally under control. The skyline is different.
Wednesday, September 19, 2001
I am consumed with thoughts of death. I partly think I am or we are dying. We're both abusing and indulging ourselves. Anyone could have been in the WTC at those moments. Everybody knows of someone who is affected, who was there. There are layers of people's experience: mine is having seen in person from a distance both towers burning and one collapse. John saw both burning but neither collapse. Another person maybe first saw it in person after it fell down, a different trauma yet. Layers of witness to Armageddon. We're all depressed and sad.
Joe calls, drops off xtine & Don's long-promised hand-me-down microwave. I whine and ask him to carry it up, he snarks back, "What, can't you even walk down the stairs?" I quickly do, braless, distracted, but at least clean.
Today I closed a cookbook I opened on Monday, collected the candles I burned in the windows Tuesday night. Women shout outside. Could be more than 5,000 lives lost, more than 5,000 injured, tens of thousands of direct family & loved ones. I am living in a geography of grief. African-American funerals dot the mornings of my walk down Dekalb to work. Breathing my chain-smoking and the breath of death, ashes and chemicals and rotting human flesh, some burned. What is that shouting outside? I don't want to know. Every siren is heightened; every bang and screech makes my heart flutter and brings quick sweats. Every traffic-induced ripple of the floor and building has an added ominous-ness. I twitch with nervous energy.
This weekend is the first day of autumn. Next Tuesday is supposed to be Election Day in New York State. The mayoral race--who will back out between now and then? All campaigning has stopped. Margarita Lopez sent JLS a dear friend letter saying "...in light of recent tragic events..." The shouting people outside cheer and clap, must be playful noise, nothing to be anxious about.
I yearn for more great change. I've destroyed our two big comfy black cotton sheets in the process [and shrouded our fire escape in black]. Next could be packing up all the tchotchkes, letting the plants die. Seems like my beloved old cat Naomi's eating less; even she is reacting to the tragedy. A hysterical siren flails by, up Bedford toward the north side. Is it going onto the bridge? Several blocks of the neighborhood will know soon enough. I ache from smoking and not eating. There's incense to soothe and please my aural passages, fresh cool water. Another cigarette.
I have not been wallowing in memories as I did the past two years. I have had no flashbacks. It has receded. I've reread my journal from that time, a scattered and not-quite immediate remembering. I post some of it here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September 11, 2001
Tuesday morning was a gorgeous a late-summer day in New York City. I got up, drank coffee, showered, dressed like the minor executive I am, and went outside to wait for the bus to my new job. The bus stop is in front of our apartment house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We live on Broadway, leading down to the East River.
Very often when I go outside I glance down to my right where the East River separates us in Brooklyn from the island of Manhattan, which is the place most non-New Yorkers think of when they say "New York." Ever since John and I moved here I have enjoyed the site of the twin Towers, so secure and strong, a symbol of being in New York. I have sketched them and remarked upon them in letters to friends and family. Those two Towers and other landmarks like our Williamsburg Bridge and the Empire State Building, and Brooklyn Bridge, even the Statue of Liberty visible ½ block away convince me every time I see them that yes, I do live in New York.
Tuesday morning I didn't take note of the Towers because I was interested in reading something in my New Yorker magazine, and the bus was rounding the corner. Soon I was on the bus and riding the few miles to my office. I missed my last chance to see the twin Towers as they were.
The neighborhood where I work is called Fort Greene. It is a residential neighborhood, brownstones and playgrounds and stores and restaurants. When I got to the office, early as usual, another early arriver said that there was a fire in the World Trade Center. I thought he was joking, and went outside to look. High in the sky there was a noticeable and strange plume of smoke floating past. There was a fast-rising urgency of people and sirens. I went back inside and called my husband John. He works in Manhattan at 6th Avenue and 27th Street, in a midtown neighborhood called Chelsea. He had not heard yet. We spoke briefly and hung up so he could go outside to see.
We had a radio in the our little Fort Greene office and everyone gathered around it to listen. The announcers didn't really know what was going on! A plane had hit the trade center—-unbelievable. I read later in the NYT that a local announcer joked about it being kamikaze pilot. Another plane has hit, oh God, and something has happened at the Pentagon in Washington, too—-it must be terrorists.
Usually outside at this time of day are young African-American youths playing basketball in the two City Park courts across the street. It's a big park, and I don't even know the name of it. Dekalb at Adelphi and Carlton. At my Venetian blind-shaded, sunlit desk I swallowed herb tea and tried to get some news online from CNN or the New York Times, sources I thought I could trust more than a nervous talk radio host. The websites were slow to come up from all the zillions of other people trying to access them, and when they did they showed photos of those two dear Towers smoking and blazing like in a disaster movie. I could hardly believe it. Then I tried to start my workday, but I really couldn't concentrate. A young woman arrived late to work, crying.
I called John again, and he told me what he saw standing at the corner of 6th, the flaming smoking Towers. I kept trying to believe that I could go about my regular day, but when I heard my husband's shocked voice I finally gave up. I told the Executive Director's young assistant I was leaving, left the office and walked down the block to Fort Greene Park, which has a big hill overlooking the city. And there were the enormous top thirds of the Towers, the wrecked and whole upper floors like the tines of a grey comb only three miles away, hazy with smoke on the otherwise gorgeous pristine sunny day, black smoke and orange-red fire, so large and close. Glittering things fell away from the burning, pieces of building or I don't like to think what else. Helicopters circled, a fighter jet zipped by far overhead. At first there were only a few people there on the hillside, but more and more came, and we all watched and crowded around those of us who had radios. Sirens were everywhere, ambulances, fire trucks and police on their way to the scene. I clasped my hands and prayed, but I felt little comfort in that—-how could my weak prayers save those people the pain of fire?
And then the left-hand tower Tower simply collapsed, slowly at first, collapsed, compressed straight downward, as if a giant hand was pressing it down, recycling a can or bottle. The rumbling roar came to us up on that leafy green hill, and everyone moaned and or screamed or was silent.
I can think now about who was there: our Executive Director's Assistant, whom I had told I was stepping out; the receptionist, who would end up getting fired for coming to watch; the girl who had been crying since she got to work; others from another department; the mostly African-American strangers on the hillside. Although there is a large hospital nearby there was no one in scrubs.
The right-hand Tower stayed up, the one with the broadcasting antenna on top, still blazing and smoking. A huge mushroom of dark ash and smoke billowed, sinister black and gray like you see on TV when a volcano erupts. All those people, I thought. It all happened so fast. How could can they be getting out, how many people were on the fire stairs of that building evacuating when their building it collapsed? I felt almost nothing, just stood there praying because there wasn't anything else I wanted to do. Some other people from my office arrived. We stood and watched the remaining Tower burn, listened to the various radios, talked quietly, tried to reach loved ones on cell phones. The minutes dragged by as slowly as minutes sometimes do, when you are in misery.
I left before the second Tower collapsed, not wanting to know any more and feeling an obligation to my job. As I walked back through the park I saw things of normal life, a group of people in matching t-shirts under a tree, getting ready to perhaps play softball,. A woman and a child in the playground. The woman watched me eagerly as I approached down the hill, and I thought she might want me to tell her what I saw.
I said, "Don't you want your daughter to see?"
"We were up there watching," said the woman, gesturing at her little daughter, "but she just wanted to come swing on the swings."
I nodded, and then the woman said, "I am from Israel. We have this all the time. And now I feel for you Americans." She and I stared at each other, a long moment of deep communion, and I put my hands over my heart, and she nodded, and I left.
The vision of the collapsing Tower, and the billowing explosions of smoke replays silently in my mind. Too much to believe, too much to accept. I was willing to think I had hallucinated it, it was only a dream. I wanted it not to be real. Somehow a giant movie screen had been placed across the vision of all of us up on that hill; it was Hollywood, some strange brutal experiment in mass entertainment, not a real thing. New York is larger than life that way; I see things in daily life here that I’ve only ever seen on TV or in movies. I wanted to believe almost anything but that it was real.
When I got back into the office only a few people were still there. Almost everyone else, but only I among the senior staff had gone to the hill to see for themselves. The radio was still on, describing what I had just seen. I didn't want to hear and went up to my desk outside the executive director’s office. She was on the phone behind her closed, glass door. I tapped on the door to let her know I was back, and then sat down at my desk and put my head in my hands. I would have begun to cry then, except she came out shouting. "This is unbelievable of everybody, how unprofessional, how could you just leave and not tell anyone where you were going, what are you all, some kind of voyeurs? This is none of your business!" She went on and on, spewing at me. I nodded and nodded, said, "Yes, I understand. I understand. I did tell so-and-so that I was going, but then she came herself." I told myself that my boss's her behavior wasn't about me nor really directed at me, it was just her way of coping with the unimaginable. Maybe her sister is in that Tower, I told myself. Maybe she is in shock. Everyone has their own ways of dealing with trauma. Then the executive director went downstairs, still shouting, and had it out with the receptionist, who had also gone up to the hill. To the receptionist's credit, when I saw her on the hill I asked who was covering the front desk and she said So-and-So was. But that wasn't enough for our executive director. I guess the receptionist had been on probation for a while, and this was a last straw.
"Pack your bags!" shouted the executive director.
"Are you firing me?" screamed the receptionist.
"Yes, I guess I am," said the E.D. I just shut my ears and made like a worker bee. I guess our former receptionist will never forget this day for several reasons. The receptionist continued shouting at my boss the E.D., who came quietly back upstairs and went back into her office.
Things all around became very quiet except for the radio and the endless sirens outside. I tried again to work and found myself reading the same sentence over and over again. The other women trickled back in, the crying woman, too. They said they had watched the second Tower collapse. I knew that I and all of us were in shock and dealing with it in our various ways. I felt myself flickering from sensibility to irrationality. I wanted to go to sleep. I wanted to go back to the hill and watch. I wanted to blink and have it be a dream. I wanted to go home and cuddle my cat Naomi. I wanted to hold my husband.
John and I talked briefly--some of his staff was missing, perhaps stuck on the subway, perhaps caught in traffic, perhaps just outside watching. He was responsible for about 30 people, and his coping method was to keep everyone close in the office and let them watch TV. The news was saying you couldn't get out of or into Manhattan, and I was afraid that John couldn't come home that night and I would have to be alone. At the same time I felt so selfish because so many others would never see their dear ones again.
Very quickly I got a bunch of emails from people worried about us in NY, including one from my mom through one of her tenants. Mom was terrified that we were hurt. I replied that we were fine, if shocked and frightened. I got an email from my friend Trish in Maryland near Washington, DC saying what she'd heard about the Pentagon and possibly other places there being bombed. I called my downstairs neighbor who worked at a bookstore in the bottom of the World Trade Center, and he answered the phone, said it was his day off and he was fine, told me that tons of people were standing outside our building our apartment on Broadway watching the scene. I checked my voicemail at home and found a hysterical message from Mom, and I realized belatedly that it wasn't just me who was possibly affected from our family: my brother Tom lives in Virginia and works for the federal government in Washington. I called Mom and we spoke briefly—she was fine by then. I asked for Tom's office number, but I couldn't get through. I began to be afraid for him.
And then, like the Tower collapsing, I lost my ability to remain professional and dispassionate. I felt a black cloud of depression sinking over me, as if my vision was narrowing down to a tunnel and my entire being was drying up and shrinking. I just sat there at my desk, listened as the young women talked about what they had seen, nodded and smiled and tried to be professional, set a good example, but inside I was just dust. All I could think about was my brother Tom and those people in the World Trade Center. I forced myself to be calm and kept telling myself Tom was fine, of course he's fine; he didn't work at the Pentagon. But in those moments we didn't know anything for sure because it was all happening so fast. And Tom can be such a hothead--I wondered if he had perhaps seen the plane crash into the Pentagon as he was driving to work, and had jumped out of his car to go help, or worse.
The hours passed quickly, and soon it was after lunchtime. My boss, the executive director who had screamed reprimanded me and fired the receptionist as her first reaction to the tragedy, calmed down and began to tell people they could go home if they knew someone who might be in the World Trade Center. "I can't go home," said her assistant, "I live in lower Manhattan." Another woman whose cousin worked in the buildings said she didn't want to leave, she just wanted to work, but then she did leave. I tried to stay, but couldn't stop thinking of Tom, and at about one p.m. I told the E.D. I was going to depart leave. "I hope your brother's ok," she said gently.
I went out and waited for the bus under the BQE. Hundreds of people were walking up the normally pedestrian-free roadway. I later learned that people from Manhattan were evacuated and walked away from the disaster across the three bridges right there: the famous Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, and the Williamsburg Bridge, which is right outside John's and my apartment. All those solemn, exhausted-looking people pouring by as I stood waiting for my bus were survivors of the attack. Some of them had breathing masks on, but none were dusty. I thought about biological warfare, and my mind went blank again. The bus didn't come, and someone told me that all buses were being commandeered to take cops and emergency workers into Manhattan. So I walked home, not such a long walk. Everyone I saw was solemn and quiet. We looked in each other's faces, which is something New Yorkers do not usually do. It was surreal, the terrible pouring black smoke across the river and in the sky, and the stubbornly beautiful day so much bigger than even this calamity. Cops were directing traffic; people were scrambling, cars and trucks honking, people saying they had to get here or there. "I have to make a delivery," roared one truck driver to a policeman who wasn't letting him through to downtown Brooklyn. "This is an emergency, you're blocking traffic," replied the cop.
About an hour of fast, sweaty, crowded walking later I was almost home, from African-American Fort Greene to Hassidic/hipster Williamsburg. There were men with guns guarding the Navy yard, a huge complex on the water a few blocks from our house. When I finally got home to our beautiful, sunny loft, a fifth floor walk-up, I threw down my bag and went out onto to the fire escape. "Our bridge," as John and I think of it, was packed with people all walking in the same direction: out of Manhattan. If they were shouting on the bridge I couldn't hear. A very few vehicles roared in, a random-seeming assortment of fire trucks, ambulances, sedans, buses. Normally that bridge is a river of transportation.
I came inside, changed out of my work clothes, opened up a beer and watched TV for hours and hours. John called frequently to tell me he was ok, and I told him people were walking across the bridge so I knew he could get home. He arrived later and we hugged and kissed, grateful beyond belief for our lives. We stared together out the front windows at the great smoking mess of lower Manhattan where those beautiful gleaming Towers had stood until that morning.
Sunday, September 16, 2001
The week has gone by with us trying to adhere to our routines of work and errands and regular life. We watch TV obsessively, read every paper, and chat with friends and family on the phone. Friday President Bush declared a day of mourning, although it was not organized at least in my neighborhood. I went with two other women to the Presbyterian Church at Lafayette and something, which was silently open for prayer. We sat in the ear-ringing intensity among two dozen scattered strangers, all races, lots of whites and blacks together. I looked for a kneeler and braved dusty pants to kneel on the hardwood floor at our pew to pray.
My faith in God that has been rock steady through every tragedy of my life, even Dad's death, has been tested: that moment of the tower collapsing, my whole soul rising slower than the speed of light to will it not to be, through the power God is supposed to have. I have trouble believing that my prayers make any difference, yet some moist-eyed time passed while I kneeled in thought to God. When I was walking from the Presbyterian Church I went for Italian food, pasta puttanesca. For the rest of the day I felt so much lightened and refreshed. The good feeling lasted into the next day.
John and I and everyone we know are depressed. The city is not the same, although as I write this on Sunday, September 16, 2001, the third monthiversary of our marriage, there are children playing and shrieking outside, the train whooshes by on the bridge, and there are normal signs of life: traffic, the regular amount of sirens. Certain things have been notably different, like the stench of burning that wafted over us several times this week as the wind changed. I knew I was breathing people's dust and ashes. Today is the first clear day since it happened, the smoke finally under control. The skyline is different.
Wednesday, September 19, 2001
I am consumed with thoughts of death. I partly think I am or we are dying. We're both abusing and indulging ourselves. Anyone could have been in the WTC at those moments. Everybody knows of someone who is affected, who was there. There are layers of people's experience: mine is having seen in person from a distance both towers burning and one collapse. John saw both burning but neither collapse. Another person maybe first saw it in person after it fell down, a different trauma yet. Layers of witness to Armageddon. We're all depressed and sad.
Joe calls, drops off xtine & Don's long-promised hand-me-down microwave. I whine and ask him to carry it up, he snarks back, "What, can't you even walk down the stairs?" I quickly do, braless, distracted, but at least clean.
Today I closed a cookbook I opened on Monday, collected the candles I burned in the windows Tuesday night. Women shout outside. Could be more than 5,000 lives lost, more than 5,000 injured, tens of thousands of direct family & loved ones. I am living in a geography of grief. African-American funerals dot the mornings of my walk down Dekalb to work. Breathing my chain-smoking and the breath of death, ashes and chemicals and rotting human flesh, some burned. What is that shouting outside? I don't want to know. Every siren is heightened; every bang and screech makes my heart flutter and brings quick sweats. Every traffic-induced ripple of the floor and building has an added ominous-ness. I twitch with nervous energy.
This weekend is the first day of autumn. Next Tuesday is supposed to be Election Day in New York State. The mayoral race--who will back out between now and then? All campaigning has stopped. Margarita Lopez sent JLS a dear friend letter saying "...in light of recent tragic events..." The shouting people outside cheer and clap, must be playful noise, nothing to be anxious about.
I yearn for more great change. I've destroyed our two big comfy black cotton sheets in the process [and shrouded our fire escape in black]. Next could be packing up all the tchotchkes, letting the plants die. Seems like my beloved old cat Naomi's eating less; even she is reacting to the tragedy. A hysterical siren flails by, up Bedford toward the north side. Is it going onto the bridge? Several blocks of the neighborhood will know soon enough. I ache from smoking and not eating. There's incense to soothe and please my aural passages, fresh cool water. Another cigarette.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
This week I thoroughly groomed a horse, including hoof-picking, for the first time in my life. It was intimate and sensual. The horse, Dandi, munched at her grain and let me stroke her all over with the two brushes. Her belly was particularly delightful, a warm furry gray globe I could have curled up in.
I've also set up my studio. THIS is a huge excitement for me. My own room just for "pwah-jex". Dozens of little cubicles labeled intriguingly: "things to fix," "papier-mâché," "wood," "decoupage," "IJ." IJ stands for Interesting Junque. Sally brought that word into my life when I was a wee girl and Sally would show up with grocery bags full of mathems--gifts of items that are new to you--and IJ.
It is good to settle in. My dreams have been about finding just the right light for the vast collection of houseplants I don't have. Winter approaches, and I have a nest, a den.
I've also set up my studio. THIS is a huge excitement for me. My own room just for "pwah-jex". Dozens of little cubicles labeled intriguingly: "things to fix," "papier-mâché," "wood," "decoupage," "IJ." IJ stands for Interesting Junque. Sally brought that word into my life when I was a wee girl and Sally would show up with grocery bags full of mathems--gifts of items that are new to you--and IJ.
It is good to settle in. My dreams have been about finding just the right light for the vast collection of houseplants I don't have. Winter approaches, and I have a nest, a den.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Burke's Backyard Archives 2002 - Dairy GoatsFirst Barn Chores All Summer
Wearing last year's gloves, and the stench of last year's rutting billy goat is now soaked into my hands. Heady stuff, dizzying odor. I mucked the donkeys' stall this morning. I'm out of shape in regard to mucking. By the first two shovelsful of poo and wet hay I was dripping sweat. It doesn't help that it's humid and warm. Donkey poo has less of a pleasant odor than some other barnyard poo, or maybe it's just that I'm out of practice. I did enjoy our first minutes together when Rachel and I were the only ones there and I was dispensing carrot bits. The goats liked me but not the carrots, except one doe who ate them happily. Maybe it is fresh billy goat kid musk I have on my hands. The babies have horns like the first joints of little thumbs, and I scratched behind those wee horns.
Wearing last year's gloves, and the stench of last year's rutting billy goat is now soaked into my hands. Heady stuff, dizzying odor. I mucked the donkeys' stall this morning. I'm out of shape in regard to mucking. By the first two shovelsful of poo and wet hay I was dripping sweat. It doesn't help that it's humid and warm. Donkey poo has less of a pleasant odor than some other barnyard poo, or maybe it's just that I'm out of practice. I did enjoy our first minutes together when Rachel and I were the only ones there and I was dispensing carrot bits. The goats liked me but not the carrots, except one doe who ate them happily. Maybe it is fresh billy goat kid musk I have on my hands. The babies have horns like the first joints of little thumbs, and I scratched behind those wee horns.
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