email39.xml

email39.xml

born-digital

email

unknown

yes

2002-03-05

hi gran

it's been a crazy couple of days. we watched most of what happened from our roof, and it was so strange, so horrible and so real. but it didn't feel like it could possibly be real. i felt sick all day, plenty of crying jags and the like. my eyes were aching by 9:00 last night from twelve straight hours of tv watching - i couldn't seem to do anything else, it seemed wrong. i shot about 7 rolls of film throughout the day, at various stages of burning, smoking, falling and smoking more. can you believe this? our phone lines are mostly jammed. and everyone is in shock. we went out to get groceries and water around noon, and you could see the enormous columns of smoke rising even from the street level. it really was like a preview of the apocalypse. when we walked past the italian grandmothers in their housecoats, they were all speaking in italian until they said hellos to us, at which point they just looked at us, shook their heads and said "i know," in english. and there's really nothing to say about something of this magnitude but that it happened, and that it was horrible. but almost as upset as i am about the human tragedy, i feel completely robbed at an architectural level, and in a particularly personal way. those towers were part of my world every day. i loved them. we could see them from our roof, from our street, from school. on a practical level, i don't know how i'll remember how to get to that part of town without them. which way is south on un-numbered streets. they simply aren't there anymore, and they were so exceedingly lovely. watching them fall was bad enough. like most wounds to the stomach, this one produced a lot of blood. the building looked almost as if it was bending over its busted, fiery gut, it was so human. but when they fell, they did it without the drama of most movie deaths; instead, straight down, like real death. but beyond those two casualties, i've cried every time i've seen any footage of pedestrians fleeing debris and smoke, people throwing themselves out of windows, or when i've heard calls on the local news, like this morning, of people phoning in trying to broadcast that they're looking for their girlfriend from the 108th floor who was wearing a white skirt. it's too horrible, granny.

but i'm doing better today. i really don't think this would have happened if g.w. wasn't our president. thanks a lot, florida! and granny, i'm afraid of what he'll do. he's too belligerent. terrorism only escalates ever, there is no resolution to such violence insofar as it only begets more and more, and i fear his stupid, pugnacious instincts to bomb kabul (even if he denies it, who else would it be in such circumstances?), i fear the nuclear power that part of the world has and might use if he starts trying to bomb places that don't exist (except ideologically) by bombing countries that do exist, and that are full of innocent civilians. he's just dumb enough to get new york attacked again, perhaps more severely.

but this is all too grave. i missed a day at the gym and saw something horrible - that's about the extent of the damage for us. brian even got to go running outside, but i felt too sick. as soon as we can get to manhattan, we're going to give blood. and the city really has been amazing - throughout the day i have gained as much faith in humanity
as i lost at the start of it. there is an energy in the city that is indeed mournful, but that feels something like unity, almost like nation perhaps, a feeling i haven't honestly ever felt, having been born when i was, after the valour of world war 2 and the infamy of
korea and vietnam. but it really isn't patriotism so much as comfort that i live among people who are so uniformly brave, calm and good when they have been tested so cruelly. i know it sounds overwrought, but it's simply true - fortitude and compassion are in the air with the smoke.

i feel a little ridiculous saying all of this, but i just wanted to let you know what i was thinking, how it feels here. apparently martin sheen is too much to hope for, but for the next three years, we can at least have faith in the people around us, if not the man who (theoretically) leads us. i'm so glad you're both safe and that we are, too. i love you so much, m

September 12, 2001