email37.xml
Title
email37.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
email
Date Entered
2002-02-28
September 11 Email: Body
Dear friends and family,
I am safe and well, and I hope you are too. After a few days of having trouble getting online and making calls, I thought I'd reconnect en masse by way of writing something of a mood piece from the walk I took today from my apartment on the Upper Westside to as far downtown as I could go and back up again along the water
My neighborhood, snug between Central Park and the Hudson, has resumed to near normalcy - restaurants, businesses, shops all open and people parading with shopping bags, cell phones, the usual accroutrements. Except there is that barely discernable haze in the distance, a slower pace, a New York Times in many hands, snippets of every overheard conversation fixated on the same subject. And kindness. People who inhabit what is usually considered the most anonymous of cities are making eye contact with each other, nodding. A white man places his hand on the forearm of the Arab-looking deli worker, asking, "How are you?"
The closer I get to Times Square, the higher the density of American flags, on woman's tee-shirts and rhinestoned belt buckles, sold from every street vendor, inserted in the backpacks of bicycle messengers. Shoppers snap up any remaining postcards with the former skyline intact. Today the usual anxiety induced by too many billboards and tourists' camera bulbs and neon is heightened by the fact that my friend Dana, who is completing her last week at MTV, interrupted our call to say they were evacuating her building on my right and she had to go. False bomb scares at various landmark locations - Grand Central, the Empire State Building, here - demonstrate the nervousness of a city that may be able to put on a strong face but may not yet be ready to return to work. The sensory stimulation in this flashiest of 'hoods is always overwhelming, but today I pause to read the Wall Street Journal ticker and the latest headlines: how many bodies pulled, how many hijackers.
Further downtown, the Empire State Building is highly policed, a convoy of Army trucks driving through Herald Square like some eerie war movie. I'd rather not be near the new tallest building in the city, so I quickly keep going. And so many shoppers.
At Union Square, last night an NYU student taped blank poster board on the pavement for people to write messages. By Thursday afternoon, the place has become something of a makeshift monument, hundreds of people silenced and reading the endless maze of messages at their feet, art, prayers, quotes from poems, for peace. One woman holds her six-year-old daughter on her lap as she draws an outline of the Twin Towers filled with an elaborate mass of faces. A young woman wears angelic wings strapped to her back, fairy dust glitter on her face as she too peruses the outpouring of expression, on her cell phone. I write: "I am a writer with nothing to write " Many gather around a central area covered with candles and one giant one, missing persons photographs, flowers, more messages. "We used to be strangers." "I love you more than ever New York." At least one man sitting in the midst of it sobs. Reporters quietly interview. It would be nearly silent if it were not for all the sirens.
Below 14th Street, there is no traffic except the steady stream of emergency vehicles, ambulances, Army, dump trucks, police, Con-Ed, and so on and on. Here the streets take on an even eerier quiet, and the air thickens and grays, as if I've stepped through an invisible barricade into the dusty ghost town. Masks become increasingly more common, shirts tied over faces, bandanas colored with the American flag. My teeth ache inside and breathing feels strained. The side streets, locked up businesses with a few people sitting at sidewalk cafes, feel abandoned without the usual car traffic we become so accustomed to until it's gone. One giant church it seems I wander.
At Houston Street, I have reached the civilian limits. I cannot go further without proof that I live there or am part of the rescue operation or press. Two people who apparently do live below, toss a ball back and forth on an empty street, wearing masks. A crowd of sometimes-sneezing or coughing onlookers is positioned at the southernmost outpost of grief: from Sixth Avenue, also aptly called Avenue of the Americas, we can look straight down into the hazy place where our compass used to be. That's what the WTC meant to so many of us with no connection in the financial world - when you get out of the subway disoriented, these twin buildings would always show south. Now we are left with the northern marker of the Empire State Building, which of late is glowing red, white and blue by dark.
There is a lot of red, white and blue going on. I used to be dubious of patriotic types with the flag on their porches. I used to oppose even the idea of a military and our nation's cocky need to police the world. Now I understand how precious our America is, how "I love you more than ever New York." Yet I'm also extremely wary of that line when this sentiment goes too far: the old man, as I work my way back uptown, who is covered literally head to toe in the flag, waving the standard, firing "USA" slogans like artillery makes me nervous. Extreme patriotism leads to the very same blind acts we've just suffered.
And the victims. On the exterior wall of Ray's Pizza at 6th Avenue and 11th Street - near St. Vincent's where the injured, what few there are at this point, are taken - is a mass of Missing Persons posters, handwritten or glossy computer printouts with photos. Personal numbers we should call if we have any information as to the whereabouts of so-and-so in Building 1 or 2, clothing, dental work, tattoo, wedding ring, children. What floor they were on. We've seen too many images of people jumping from the floors here mentioned, 105 and the like, to harbor the same hope as these posters. Over 4,500 unaccounted for at this point, says the radio playing nearby. A joyous rumor overheard that five firefighters walked free from rumble is sadly discounted by the time I get home. For this moment, we search these faces for someone we know, thankful that we don't, still equally stunned.
As far west as you can go on 14th Street, before hitting the Hudson, a new slew of onlookers - there are pockets of them at every turn it seems, not voyeurs but people who need to experience this event in person - gather on the sidelines, with posters and flags, waving and cheering each and every emergency vehicle leaving the scene perhaps to return again. In each vehicle so many heroes. Tears come to my eyes as I join the applauders, horns honks in reply, a truck of tired firemen smiles and waves. In this hardest of times, to also find such joy.
I wander the waterfront homeward, collecting these thoughts, jotting some of them down on an envelope, feeling the need to return and write for the first time since this happened. At Chelsea Piers, home of the ice rink that has been converted to a chilly morgue, volunteers transport the mountainous bags of donated clothing and food in shopping carts borrowed from grocery stores. Signs apologetically turn any new volunteers away. They divert any arriving bags to other locations, which I suspect will be overstocked also. To my right, lining 12th Avenue, the endless ambulances from New York and beyond, parked and waiting with engines running, probably, tragically to never find a use. The support, just for the sake of it, staggers the mind.
I am rerouted around 50th to 57th Street, the walkway along the water blocked off by the familiar yellow police tape and officials at every intersection. This, says the officer at one corner, is the new Command Center now that the other one is rubble. An extremely high density of officers here apparently has to do with President George Bush's anticipated arrival in the city tomorrow. The officer says, "You plan for the worst and hope for the best."
Having come full circle - a similar route to the one I took a week ago with my brother when I took a photo of him in front of the Twin Towers - I end my walk on the end of a pier, reaching out into the Hudson, just a swim away from Jersey. The sun shines obliviously on us, as we search the view of our own island below for the spot where those symbols of our city used to stand. We look at nothing, consider everything. A guy about my age cries into his girlfriend's embrace. Yes, this city, the world, will never be the same, but in many ways it has gotten better, was the overriding sense I got today. "We used to be strangers," that note says. We are no more. Many share - in addition to our grief, pride and bewilderment - a sense of almost unspeakable inadequacy because we can't volunteer and be such heroes. But we need not be firefighters to make our contribution. What becomes essential in life, I realize, is doing something true, making it count, communicating, making a connection. I used to want to just be a writer. Now I want to write something meaningful.
Thank you for reading and love to you all,
I am safe and well, and I hope you are too. After a few days of having trouble getting online and making calls, I thought I'd reconnect en masse by way of writing something of a mood piece from the walk I took today from my apartment on the Upper Westside to as far downtown as I could go and back up again along the water
My neighborhood, snug between Central Park and the Hudson, has resumed to near normalcy - restaurants, businesses, shops all open and people parading with shopping bags, cell phones, the usual accroutrements. Except there is that barely discernable haze in the distance, a slower pace, a New York Times in many hands, snippets of every overheard conversation fixated on the same subject. And kindness. People who inhabit what is usually considered the most anonymous of cities are making eye contact with each other, nodding. A white man places his hand on the forearm of the Arab-looking deli worker, asking, "How are you?"
The closer I get to Times Square, the higher the density of American flags, on woman's tee-shirts and rhinestoned belt buckles, sold from every street vendor, inserted in the backpacks of bicycle messengers. Shoppers snap up any remaining postcards with the former skyline intact. Today the usual anxiety induced by too many billboards and tourists' camera bulbs and neon is heightened by the fact that my friend Dana, who is completing her last week at MTV, interrupted our call to say they were evacuating her building on my right and she had to go. False bomb scares at various landmark locations - Grand Central, the Empire State Building, here - demonstrate the nervousness of a city that may be able to put on a strong face but may not yet be ready to return to work. The sensory stimulation in this flashiest of 'hoods is always overwhelming, but today I pause to read the Wall Street Journal ticker and the latest headlines: how many bodies pulled, how many hijackers.
Further downtown, the Empire State Building is highly policed, a convoy of Army trucks driving through Herald Square like some eerie war movie. I'd rather not be near the new tallest building in the city, so I quickly keep going. And so many shoppers.
At Union Square, last night an NYU student taped blank poster board on the pavement for people to write messages. By Thursday afternoon, the place has become something of a makeshift monument, hundreds of people silenced and reading the endless maze of messages at their feet, art, prayers, quotes from poems, for peace. One woman holds her six-year-old daughter on her lap as she draws an outline of the Twin Towers filled with an elaborate mass of faces. A young woman wears angelic wings strapped to her back, fairy dust glitter on her face as she too peruses the outpouring of expression, on her cell phone. I write: "I am a writer with nothing to write " Many gather around a central area covered with candles and one giant one, missing persons photographs, flowers, more messages. "We used to be strangers." "I love you more than ever New York." At least one man sitting in the midst of it sobs. Reporters quietly interview. It would be nearly silent if it were not for all the sirens.
Below 14th Street, there is no traffic except the steady stream of emergency vehicles, ambulances, Army, dump trucks, police, Con-Ed, and so on and on. Here the streets take on an even eerier quiet, and the air thickens and grays, as if I've stepped through an invisible barricade into the dusty ghost town. Masks become increasingly more common, shirts tied over faces, bandanas colored with the American flag. My teeth ache inside and breathing feels strained. The side streets, locked up businesses with a few people sitting at sidewalk cafes, feel abandoned without the usual car traffic we become so accustomed to until it's gone. One giant church it seems I wander.
At Houston Street, I have reached the civilian limits. I cannot go further without proof that I live there or am part of the rescue operation or press. Two people who apparently do live below, toss a ball back and forth on an empty street, wearing masks. A crowd of sometimes-sneezing or coughing onlookers is positioned at the southernmost outpost of grief: from Sixth Avenue, also aptly called Avenue of the Americas, we can look straight down into the hazy place where our compass used to be. That's what the WTC meant to so many of us with no connection in the financial world - when you get out of the subway disoriented, these twin buildings would always show south. Now we are left with the northern marker of the Empire State Building, which of late is glowing red, white and blue by dark.
There is a lot of red, white and blue going on. I used to be dubious of patriotic types with the flag on their porches. I used to oppose even the idea of a military and our nation's cocky need to police the world. Now I understand how precious our America is, how "I love you more than ever New York." Yet I'm also extremely wary of that line when this sentiment goes too far: the old man, as I work my way back uptown, who is covered literally head to toe in the flag, waving the standard, firing "USA" slogans like artillery makes me nervous. Extreme patriotism leads to the very same blind acts we've just suffered.
And the victims. On the exterior wall of Ray's Pizza at 6th Avenue and 11th Street - near St. Vincent's where the injured, what few there are at this point, are taken - is a mass of Missing Persons posters, handwritten or glossy computer printouts with photos. Personal numbers we should call if we have any information as to the whereabouts of so-and-so in Building 1 or 2, clothing, dental work, tattoo, wedding ring, children. What floor they were on. We've seen too many images of people jumping from the floors here mentioned, 105 and the like, to harbor the same hope as these posters. Over 4,500 unaccounted for at this point, says the radio playing nearby. A joyous rumor overheard that five firefighters walked free from rumble is sadly discounted by the time I get home. For this moment, we search these faces for someone we know, thankful that we don't, still equally stunned.
As far west as you can go on 14th Street, before hitting the Hudson, a new slew of onlookers - there are pockets of them at every turn it seems, not voyeurs but people who need to experience this event in person - gather on the sidelines, with posters and flags, waving and cheering each and every emergency vehicle leaving the scene perhaps to return again. In each vehicle so many heroes. Tears come to my eyes as I join the applauders, horns honks in reply, a truck of tired firemen smiles and waves. In this hardest of times, to also find such joy.
I wander the waterfront homeward, collecting these thoughts, jotting some of them down on an envelope, feeling the need to return and write for the first time since this happened. At Chelsea Piers, home of the ice rink that has been converted to a chilly morgue, volunteers transport the mountainous bags of donated clothing and food in shopping carts borrowed from grocery stores. Signs apologetically turn any new volunteers away. They divert any arriving bags to other locations, which I suspect will be overstocked also. To my right, lining 12th Avenue, the endless ambulances from New York and beyond, parked and waiting with engines running, probably, tragically to never find a use. The support, just for the sake of it, staggers the mind.
I am rerouted around 50th to 57th Street, the walkway along the water blocked off by the familiar yellow police tape and officials at every intersection. This, says the officer at one corner, is the new Command Center now that the other one is rubble. An extremely high density of officers here apparently has to do with President George Bush's anticipated arrival in the city tomorrow. The officer says, "You plan for the worst and hope for the best."
Having come full circle - a similar route to the one I took a week ago with my brother when I took a photo of him in front of the Twin Towers - I end my walk on the end of a pier, reaching out into the Hudson, just a swim away from Jersey. The sun shines obliviously on us, as we search the view of our own island below for the spot where those symbols of our city used to stand. We look at nothing, consider everything. A guy about my age cries into his girlfriend's embrace. Yes, this city, the world, will never be the same, but in many ways it has gotten better, was the overriding sense I got today. "We used to be strangers," that note says. We are no more. Many share - in addition to our grief, pride and bewilderment - a sense of almost unspeakable inadequacy because we can't volunteer and be such heroes. But we need not be firefighters to make our contribution. What becomes essential in life, I realize, is doing something true, making it count, communicating, making a connection. I used to want to just be a writer. Now I want to write something meaningful.
Thank you for reading and love to you all,
September 11 Email: Date
Sept. 15, 2001
September 11 Email: Subject
Sept. 15, 2001
Collection
Citation
“email37.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed November 30, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/38029.