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From 2000 to 2003 I sent irregular reports from New York to friends. Here are some of them:
(1) 14 May 2000
After a couple of days of outright surrealism in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, pitching a twelve-minute museum film to the
executives of Bethlehem Steel -- tough room -- I drove back to Newark airport with my colleagues on the project, put them
on a plane back to Los Angeles, and took a cab home.
It was overcast -- the sky seemed to hang down to the tops of the skyscrapers -- but I could see the Empire State Building
clearly, thoughtfully erected by the powers that be to mark my neighborhood and lead me back there.
At the corner of 30th Street and 8th Avenue the cab stopped for two minutes at the light and the energy of the crowded
streets hit me full force. I realized that in those minutes I had seen more people of color, of all colors, than I had seen
in the past two years in Ventura, except at a distance across the fields, bent over crops.
Stepping into my apartment was an awesome thing. My sister had come in and spruced the place up, leaving food in the refrigerator
and flowers on the coffee table, and that was warming, but I was also almost overwhelmed by the loft itself. I kept thinking,
"What kind of a person would live in a place like this -- a labyrinth of bookshelves filled with esoteric tomes, littered
with toys and gadgets?"
I knew the answer, of course, but it was hard to connect myself with the owner of this loft -- though I was very grateful
to him for letting me stay here. I will have to spend a little time getting to know him better.
Later, walking around the streets brought its almost forgotten electric charge. So many beautiful women striding along
purposefully. They stare at you, with an expression that seems to say, "Who are YOU, and what can you do for ME?"
It's exhilarating, in such contrast to the dark defensive look in the eyes of most L. A. women, which seems to say, "Whoever
YOU are, and whatever you want from ME, it's going to cost you."
And it seems that about half the women on the street are smoking cigarettes.
What strange paradise is this?
(2) 30 June 2000
Last Sunday, my nephew Harry and I caught the 12:09 train from Otisville, New York, headed for Hoboken -- a two hour ride
later described by Harry as boring, which it certainly was . . . for me because there is no smoking on the train, for Harry
because I wouldn't let him play his Big Mouth Billy Bass, a rubber fish mounted on a plaque which flaps its tail and sings
along to the snippets of two songs (I feared our fellow passengers would revolt and throw us from the train.)
Everything changed when we pulled into the station at Hoboken. While I smoked, Harry played the fish songs over and over,
and everyone who saw the device, young and old alike, came rushing up to Harry in delight. "It's that thing on television!"
Harry (who is almost seven) was very pleased to be the owner and operator of the popular sensation.
We ran onto the Hoboken Ferry, right next to the train tracks, and were soon speeding across the Hudson River on a stunning
day, the river and harbor below filled with sailboats and motorboats and tugs pushing barges. Harry could just make out the
Statue Of Liberty. "I can see the shape and the color," he said, "but not the face."
We landed and walked through part of Battery Park City, through a tall lobby with gigantic palm trees growing inside it,
across a bridge over a street and into the bottom of the World Trade Center, on our way to the subway.
Harry was fascinated by the descent underground, by the very idea of choo-choos running under the streets. (He did worry
that the conductor didn't know where I lived and might let us off at the wrong place.) The ride was a great success -- Harry
loved the way the train swooped into the darkness of the tunnels and then out again into the light of the stations.
We got out at 28th & 7th and walked to my loft.
Harry was very impressed that no one could go to my loft, at the very top of the building, without an elevator key to
the 16th floor. "It's just for you and your friends," he said. He was not overly shocked by the disarray of the
place. "You should get it organized," he suggested, "then get someone to dust it." Very sound advice.
All I had to eat were a few Krispy Kreme donuts. "Are we going to eat healthy food, too?" Harry asked. I asked
him what he had in mind. "Maybe we could order a pizza," he said, after some reflection. "Sure," I said.
"And could we go to Burger King?" Harry asked. "Let's go right now," I said, happy that Harry's idea of
healthy food is exactly the same as mine.
We took a cab up to the Burger King at 39th and 8th. Harry seemed comforted by the familiar surroundings and the kid's
toy that came with the meal -- a Rocky figure from "Chicken Run" that can be shot out of a cannon into a chicken
coop with a revolving roof.
But he kept staring out the window at all the people -- all the people on foot. "A lot of people," I said. "That's
because it's New York City," said Harry.
We went to see "Dinosaur" at one of the big, spiffy new multi-plexes on 42nd Street, then walked into Times
Square at dusk and admired the signs, bought some Pokemon coins at the Warner Brothers Store, took a subway to 23rd Street
and went to the grocery store. Trix, waffles, grape juice, yoghurt (very healthy yoghurt.) Then home.
Although I was exhausted, Harry spent several hours watching old Disney cartoons on laserdisc (fortunately my supply of
these is inexhaustible, even by kid standards.) We nodded off after midnight, well satisfied by our first day in the big town.
(3) 21 August 2000
Tonight a half moon edges up beside the spire of the Empire State Building outside my window, passes behind it and moves
higher into the sky.
In this magical city, so kind to dreamers, so vicious to the satisfied, the image resonates spookily, reminds us that
New York, for all its hard edges and phallic towers, is a woman -- mercurial but motherly, a mystery even to herself. She
welcomes generation after generation of children, in their teens or twenties or fifties, and helps them grow up. They leave,
and miss her, but never write.
But the sadness of what happens to children doesn't seem to diminish the energy of motherhood -- the matrix goes on generating
joy. At nightfall, when the lights of the city go on, everything is suddenly possible again, and in quiet moments like this
one, at 2:30 am, with the coffee machine primed for the morning brew, work done, most bills paid, sleep seems exciting, a
prelude to the next night when dreams come true, again and again and again.
I couldn't even say what dreams I'm talking about -- we'll work that out tomorrow.
(4) 4 October 2000 [not sent]
There was lightning tonight behind the Empire State Building, which for some reason is lit up pink and white. Now there
is rain beating against my windows and mist drifting over the grand old spire, obscuring it from time to time.
An Indian summer is upon us. Chill winds came in with the start of Autumn, hung around for a while with a proprietary
air, then left -- but they'll be back soon enough.
We have a moment to pause, take a deep breath, and sort through the sweaters and overcoats we haven't worn in ages.
The Mets are in the play-offs, for a while anyway. The leaves will change soon. It's not really too early to start thinking
about snow.
Autumn in New York -- it's good to live it again.
(5) 27 October 2000
After the last game of the World Series tonight, which ended with Piazza's long fly out almost exactly on the stroke of
midnight, the lights were still illuminating the top of the Empire State Building -- blue and orange, the Mets colors, because
the teams were playing at Shea.
At ten after midnight, the lights went out, and the season was over.
As tight as the games were on paper, it wasn't really a close Series. The Mets never recovered from their initial moral
collapse, spotting the Yanks two games right off the bat by sloppy play, preferring to style rather than risk looking uncool
by hustling too hard. I felt personally betrayed by this, but now I see that they just felt outmatched, in their heart of
hearts, and so they were -- that sort of thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
No miracles would save them, and you couldn't really see their loss in grand, tragic terms. The only magic on the field
was the dogged professionalism of the Yankees, which is a fine thing, but not the stuff of legend. The Yanks were never really
tested in this Series.
After game three, when Rick Reed's improbably good pitching restored the Mets's dignity and inspired their only win, I
felt I owed them a tip of the cap, in atonement for my earlier disgust, but I couldn't find my old Mets cap. So I went up
to Gerry Cosby's sports store in Penn Station to buy one. They were all sold out.
I took a subway up to 42nd Street and walked over to the Mets merchandise shop between 5th and 6th, across from the main
branch of the Public Library. They had one hat in my size left. I bought it and put it on and walked home down Fifth Avenue,
in the lovely late afternoon light of this October's Indian Summer.
Everyone else wearing Mets insignia of any kind hailed me cheerfully -- "Tie it up tonight!" they'd cry . .
. or we'd just raise fists at each other and laugh, enjoying the silliness and happiness of the moment.
There were many more people wearing Yankees insignia. Our eyes would invariably meet and instantly look away, with that
instinctive courtesy of New Yorkers, so often mistaken for coldness.
The stone lions in front of the Public Library were wearing baseball caps in honor of the Subway Series. I climbed up
the pedestal to rub the paws of the lion wearing the Mets cap. There were some guys sitting at the base of the pedestal. One
of them said, "Are you rubbing the lion for luck?" I allowed as how I was. He turned to his friend. "He's rubbing
the lion for luck!" They seemed profoundly amused by this, but indulgently, as you'd indulge an idiot child trying to
grab the reflection of the moon out of a mud puddle.
Well, I'll try to hold onto this cap, hope the Mets pick up Rodriguez in the off season and get another shot at the moon
. . .
(7) 22 December 2000
It's a blessing to be home at Christmas, even if your home is a strange junkpile of books and papers and toys. It's a
blessing to be in New York at Christmas under any conditions.
It snowed today and I went out in the snow to get my Christmas tree, which I bought from a French Canadian guy and his
wife who drive a truckload of trees down from Nova Scotia every year, set up a little lot on a streetcorner and live in their
van parked next to it. I bought my last tree from them three years ago, and it's great that they're still around.
They say it's been a slow season for them this year, and they seemed pleased that I bought the biggest tree they had --
a ten-footer. If they'd had a bigger tree, I would have bought that. High ceilings here.
The guy rolled the tree back to my apartment tied up in a laundry cart, and I decorated it tonight (the tree, not the
laundry cart.) Am watching its lights blink now, listening to "A Crescent City Christmas" by Winton Marsalis and
feeling unspeakably happy, as I usually do this time of year. Thinking of Scrooge in his later years: " . . . it was
said of him that he kept Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of
us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!"
(8) 30 December 2000
I knew it was coming and I was so excited I couldn't sleep last night. I kept waking up every hour or so and looking out
the window to see what was happening. Finally, about a quarter to five, I noticed a light dusting of snow on my grill cover
out on the terrace. I got up and looked out my front windows and saw that the streets were dusted too.
It was so dark and the snow was so fine that I couldn't see it falling -- I had to open the window onto my terrace and
stick my head out to feel the flakes on my face. Then I could sleep.
I woke up after noon and felt the hush immediately -- the sounds of the city dampened. There was snow on the parapets
of my terrace in preposterous piles -- the terrace itself was almost filled. The snow was coming down with an odd relentlessness,
still fine, and the city was a new place -- frosted like a cake.
I wanted to get out in the snow immediately but I knew that foreplay was in order -- some time to enjoy the coziness of
the loft today, with the steam pipes banging and the radiators hissing, such cheerful sounds.
I drank coffee in bed, under my flannel sheets and down comforter, listened to news reports of the storm on the radio
and watched its progress through my windows. The Sanitation Department was vowing to "fight the storm with everything
we have". The city had set up "Warming Centers" for people living out on the streets, or in buildings whose
heat failed. Everything seemed to be under control.
I got up and did some work on the computer, in my corner office, looking north and east now. The Empire State Building
was obliterated. The snow was falling hurriedly down, but there were streams of flakes blowing sideways in the canyons between
buildings, and gusts of wind occasionally blew giant screens of snow off the roof opposite my windows, straight at me. The
snow was making a complex analysis of the space of the city.
Then it was time to go out in the storm. I pulled out wondrous old boots -- WWII RAF flight boots, lined with sheepskin,
modern reproductions with hardy Vibram soles -- a down jacket bought in Toronto once, leather gloves lined with cashmere wool,
an extravagance from the last century sometime. Stuck a California baseball cap on my head and headed down in the elevator.
The sidewalks were already slushy from much pedestrian traffic. Cars moved at a bovine pace along the streets -- and there
were the garbage trucks, with snow plows fitted in front, fighting gallantly.
I walked up to Macy's to get some caviar for New Year's. (For what is New Year's without caviar? Just another muddy mile
marker on the highway of regret.) The sidewalks were actually crowded at 34th & 7th -- bargain hunters, I guess -- and
so was Macy's . . . but there was no line at the caviar counter in the basement, even though the caviar was going at bargain
rates.
Out to Herald Square and then down Sixth, across to the front of the Pennsylvania Station and thus home, in a big, chilly
circle.
I'd left my coffee pot on, and there was still coffee in it, so I had some with ginger snaps, and ran a hot bath -- taking
full advantage of my own personal Warming Center.
The snow is still falling, lighter now, trailing off -- more magical, tangible Grace. We'll get a little more than a foot
by the time it's done -- as much as New York City got in total last year. I'm sure they were saving this one for me.
23 February 2001 (9)
Snow again -- gracious, unexpected . . . the sky knitting up all day yesterday and then exploding in big light flakes
in mid-afternoon, dusting the streets in a matter of hours, starting to pile up on my terrace, on the cover of the gas grill
and the round table recently donated by my friend John.
A woman from New Orleans comes by for drinks with some other friends and says she's never made snowballs before. She goes
out on the terrace and has a snowball fight with her boyfriend. Then we all walk over to the Half-King for a late-night dinner.
The snow still falling, lightly now, the streets hushed, the lovely drifts piled up, pristine and preposterous on the sidewalk
-- when you kick them they vanish, though your boots seem to pass through nothing. The woman from New Orleans is wearing red
boots.
At the bar, another woman, from California, says she's never been in New York when it was snowing. Her eyes light up at
the thought of it. But I feel the same -- it's like it's the first time I've ever seen snow here. My mind knows differently,
but the whole idea seems so strange, the whole city looks so weird, and I know that tomorrow, when the snow starts to melt,
and is turned to black sludge by the foot and automobile traffic, it won't be possible to remember precisely what this evening
felt like, when five and a half inches of snow fell on New York in late February, 2001 -- the perfect storm.
7 March 2001 (10)
This time the snow began early Sunday afternoon, more or less on schedule. For a few days the forecasts had wavered between
dire predictions of a blizzard and suggestions of a light snowfall of merely inches. By Saturday, the general consensus favored
a big storm -- one to two feet. There was only one course of action to follow -- head down to the supermarket for supplies
and then begin work on a fiery lamb curry, for nourishment and warmth during the blizzard to come.
My curry is improvised from an old "Joy of Cooking" rule for stew and various hints thrown out by my brother-in-law
Simon, who makes a fine curry, refined during his years in Kenya. (His goat curry, served at a picnic by a river on the edge
of the Nairobi Game Park, was my first meal in East Africa, sometime in the last century.)
The only real secret to simple, reliable curry, however, is Patak's Curry Paste, available at many local supermarkets,
worth tracking down at a specialty store if not. You need a jar of mild and a jar of hot, so you can mix to taste.
Start with some vegetable stock. This used to be collected from the run-off of boiled vegetables of every kind, but since
we now steam our vegetables, the liquor from soaked and boiled dried beans is a good substitute, especially for curry. Pour
enough of it into a stew pot to comfortably cover the meat and vegetables you will be adding -- lean chunks of lamb, or goat
(I like to use chunks cut off of thick lamb chops, with all the fat removed, but there are cheaper ways to go), an equal volume
of pearl onions, an equal volume of carrots, cut into pieces about the size of pearl onions, an equal volume of potatoes,
cut into chunks of a similar size, and three or four tablespoons of peeled and chopped ginger root.
Begin to warm the vegetable stock and stir in table-spoonfuls of curry paste. I like a 2 to 1 hot to mild ratio, for a
very -- very -- spicy but not searing flavor, but do it to taste. About six table-spoonfuls at least will be required. You
can tell by tasting when you've got enough.
Bring this mixture to a boil, then throw in the ginger and the carrots, cover tightly and reduce heat to produce a steady
but not furious bubbling. After ten minutes, put in the lamb. After another ten minutes, put in the onions and the potatoes.
After another twenty minutes, cut off the heat, let the pot cool, and then put it in the refrigerator overnight. (This must
be made the day before it is eaten.)
This is a dish to fiddle with -- placing the lamb in later if you like it rarer, the carrots in later if you like them
crisper, the onions and potatoes in earlier if you like them mushier, more or less ginger and curry paste.
The next day, put what you want to eat into a smaller pot (you can freeze what's left, if any) and heat it up, thickening
it with some dollops of sour cream if you like. Serve it over basmati rice, and no other kind, with, on the side, some mango
chutney and raita -- plain yoghurt and peeled, thinly sliced cucumbers, chilled -- and some kind of plain bread (real Indian
bread, like poori, is best but too hard to make.) Drink beer with it.
That's what I did as the snow was falling in New York Sunday evening. It came in fits and starts, switching between sleet
and rain and light wet flakes -- hardly any accumulation. The storm ramped up a bit Monday evening, then it snowed steadily
but lightly for a night and a day and into Tuesday evening, when I had another meal of curry. A few inches of snow piled up
on my terrace -- the streets stayed mostly clear. No blizzard, in the end, but a pleasant enough snowfall. I weathered it
comfortably, warmed and stimulated by tastes from the sweltering plains of India.
19 March 2001 (11)
The last night of Winter -- a mystical time, day and night drawing even and trending towards sunshine. I unthaw a stew
I made and froze in the heart of winter, heat it up, light the oil lamp my sister gave me for Christmas and listen to recordings
of the Carter Family from 1929 and 1930 -- their mournful voices sounding always like ghosts singing out on the porch. "Don't
you want to go to heaven when the world's on fire?" they sing. Something to think about.
It was a sharp, bright day today, even though it's still cold, bitter when the wind blows -- Winter's way of saying, stay
under the comforter a little longer this morning, think about things, get ready. Remember Winter, the heat pipes banging,
the generous snows this year, the pleasures of good boots and a good coat, a place you feel at home in when the wind howls
around the 16th floor.
Having collected all one's winter's tales, then think about Spring. The Carter Family sings: "Waltz, Kitty, waltz
-- let everybody waltz . . ."
4 June 2001 (11)
Finally, after eighteen years, I got some decent furniture for my terrace. It's wonderful to have a terrace in New York,
where space of any kind is at such a premium, even if you have to climb out a window to get to it, and even if it's not large.
Mine is about seven feet deep and fourteen feet long, but in Manhattan terms that's like having a respectable back yard in
the suburbs.
But I've spent most of my years here pretending it didn't exist.
I've always had a gas grill on the terrace, and from time to time in the warm months I would drag some furniture from
the living room out there for a cook-out -- then haul it all back in again. Utterly preposterous, really.
My sister Libba initiated the change. She gave me a splendid table designed by my nephew Jason -- a heavy stone slab on
a base of weathered logs, recalling the atmosphere of an Adirondack camp. My friend John Sosnovsky had also given me a small
round cafe table that he used to use on his own terrace, and later gave me two folding cafe chairs to go with it. Inspired,
I went out and bought two director's chairs made of teak, with allegedly indestructible awning-canvas seats and backs.
None of this stuff ever has to be brought inside.
Suddenly, the terrace was a place, not an idea. I walked over to the flower shops on 28th Street and bought a hanging
geranium plant and hung it from a bracket on the side of one of the windows facing onto the terrace. The place then seemed
like part of my home.
My building, erected in the Twenties, has ornamentation of a Gothic nature. The balustrade of my terrace on the 16th floor
is crenellated like the battlements of a castle. Looking west through a narrow slit I can see a section of the Hudson River.
Looking south over the balustrade I can see great expanses of lower Manhattan -- the World Trade towers, the Woolworth Building
(the first skyscraper,) and on a clear day the Statue Of Liberty, tiny against the low hills of Staten Island. I can see part
of the London Terrace apartment building, five blocks south and one west, where I lived for a couple of years during my first
decade in New York. I can see a lot of other roofs and terraces and, because my floor at the top of the building is set back
slightly, the terraces of several of my neighbors below. They have a lot more plants and their teak furniture is much greyer.
All day I can watch river craft plying up and down the Hudson, ferries crossing back and forth to New Jersey, helicopters
rising from the riverside helipads below 34th Street. In the evening, the sun going down behind the New Jersey bluffs, on
its way to the beach at Ventura, occasionally sets the Hudson on fire -- the little piece of it I can see glows like polished
brass.
Sometimes in dreams I go back to houses or apartments I've lived in and discover new rooms I hadn't known were there --
whole new floors, even new wings opening off the familiar precincts. I guess this reflects an urge to bust loose from the
oppressive precedents of the past, to imagine possibilities different from the ones we chose. The sensation of discovery in
those dreams is always exhilarating.
In waking life now I experience the same sense of liberation, of delightful surprise, every time I go out the window onto
my terrace.
22 June 2001 (14)
Yesterday my sister came to visit from her home upstate and brought me another hanging geranium plant for my terrace.
After we'd repotted it and hung on a bracket out on the terrace, in tandem with the other hanging geranium I'd bought, my
sister looked around and said, "You need more plants." I hated to admit it, but it was true. The single geranium
plant had seemed like a preposterous miracle -- the two plants together seemed like just a beginning.
My friend John grows bamboo on his terrace -- it has a lot of advantages for a New York apartment dweller. It grows exceedingly
fast and can weather winter temperatures as low as 10 degrees, so you never have to take it inside. I'd also been thinking
about a rose bush, which takes a lot more care. My sister dragged me off to the plant markets on 28th Street to have a look
at all the possibilities.
The flower district, spread along 6th Avenue and side streets in the 20's, a couple of blocks from my home, is an amazing
place. There are stores selling bonsai plants, orchids, cacti, palm trees, cut flowers and silk flowers and plastic flowers.
There is one corner lot with a fence around it, filled with green and flowering things, but most of the stores haul plants
onto the sidewalks in the morning and haul them back inside at night. The whole enterprise seems vaguely impromptu and illicit,
like the blocks where hookers line up at night.
Right away we spotted some bamboo plants about twenty feet high -- way out of proportion for anything but a high atrium.
Then, halfway along 28th, between 7th & 6th, we saw some wondrously luxuriant and green bamboo plants about seven feet
high. My sister immediately began bargaining with the seller, got him down five or ten bucks, and then said we'd look around
and be back.
The only rose bushes we saw were small and frail looking, with less than exuberant roses peeping out of them. There were
lots of simple small potted trees that might have done. All the other bamboo we saw was yellowed and scraggly. Our course
was clear. We went back and bought the seven foot bamboo, hauled it to a nearby garden supply store, bought a terra cotta
planter and a bag of potting soil and somehow sweated it all home in the muggy heat of the afternoon.
After much struggling out on the terrace, in the heat and intermittent rain, we managed to loosen the heavily rooted plant
from it's plastic container, placed it into the terra cotta pot and packed in some soil. It felt very odd to do this in the
middle of Manhattan, sixteen stories up -- gardening with dirt bought in a bag at a store. But then -- there was the bamboo
. . . looking as though it had always been there, turning the terrace into a new place once again.
The leaves of bamboo, common grass as it may be, have their echoes . . . of Chinese and Japanese ink paintings, of distant
hillsides hidden in mist, of Pandas feeding in slow motion joy on the edge of extinction. The explosion of green on my terrace
radiated cheer and strangeness. I sat and looked at it for a long time before we went off to dinner.
Later, before going to bed, I went out again in the dark and sat with the bamboo again, watching and listening to its
leaves rustle in the wind. There's a mystery here which will take a long time to unravel.
22 September 2001 (15)
Eleven days ago I stood out on my terrace and watched the towers of the World Trade Center crumble into dust. I still
can't believe I saw what I saw -- despite the smoke still rising from the place they used to be.
Someone I know was working on the 37th floor of the South Tower when the first plane hit the North Tower. She and her
co-workers felt a shaking, as though an earthquake was in progress, and out the windows saw a cloud of 8 x 10 sheets of paper
floating in the air. They started evacuating immediately. As they were heading down the stairs, a voice announced over a PA
that the situation was under control and they could return to their offices. They looked at each other, shook their heads
and continued down. She escaped alive.
Almost everyone in New York has a gut-wrenching personal connection like this -- some we probably don't even know about
yet.
My friend John went up to his roof when he heard the news and saw the big black holes in the towers. He went down to the
street in front of his building, where a crowd was staring at the smoking towers. There, at the corner of 14th Street and
Sixth Avenue, he caught the eye of a young black police officer in her patrol car, on her way to the scene. Later, on TV,
he saw her photograph -- she was one of the first of the dead recovered from the rubble.
Another friend who watched the towers come down with a crowd that had gathered on a street in Soho said someone started
yelling, "We have to evacuate the city!" Everybody looked at him as though he'd gone crazy. "And go where?"
someone asked sarcastically. "New Jersey?"
New York really doesn't belong to New Yorkers, or even to America -- its diversity makes it always and forever a world
city, a symbol of the way people can transcend, however imperfectly, the tribal, ethnic & racial intolerance that creates
monstrous entities like the Taliban. Like many New Yorkers, I felt the need to be out on the streets Tuesday night. It was
quiet, almost no traffic -- people seemed to be wandering around for no specific reason, with no specific destination. There
were faces of every color, you could hear every kind of accent. In every face and voice I could see and hear my own bewilderment
and sadness. I went into my local deli, run by Arab Americans, to buy something I didn't need, just so I could smile at my
pals behind the counter and say "hi". Nothing more needed to be said or done -- we knew we were all in this together.
What touched me most were the gay couples, with stricken faces, holding hands. I was so proud to live in a city where this
is possible and usually unremarkable. In Afghanistan, those hands would be chopped off for such behavior.
New York is the future of the human spirit, the Taliban its dark and shameful past. I know I share the guilt of that past,
just as tribal cultures will one day share our common future. The children and grandchildren of those cultures will be welcome
here, too -- just like everybody else.
I still had only an intellectual grasp of what had happened, what it meant in terms of pure carnage -- it wasn't something
my psyche could process on any other level. I knew that the attack was meant to strike terror in my heart, and it did -- and
for that reason I wanted to go on about my life, or some semblance of it. I was furious, for example, that I couldn't go to
a record store on Tuesday and buy the new Dylan album on its release date -- because hearing it would be an act of continuity
with the recent past, with what I'd planned to do that day.
On Wednesday morning, the mayor urged New Yorkers to get out of their apartments, even if they weren't going to work,
to walk around, go shopping, go to restaurants -- not to be intimidated. So I went out -- headed for the Tower Records on
66th Street, the closest record store that was answering its phones that day. It was an adventure getting there, since the
subways were running erratically still, but I made it.
New York was inexpressibly strange -- because of the silence. The city never sounds that quiet except when it snows. On
Broadway near Lincoln Center you didn't have to wait for traffic lights to cross the street. People had blank, or sad, or
tender expressions on their faces -- everyone seemed a little distracted. Tower was virtually deserted. There was only one
woman working the check-out counter, only one guy in line ahead of me. I noticed he was buying "Love & Theft",
too. Then I noticed it was a guy who posts a lot to the Dylan newsgroup, whom I'd run into at several shows in the city by
the singer-songwriter Peter Stone Brown, also a regular poster to the group.
He's a union gaffer, and he'd gotten caught in New Jersey the night before, where he was working a commercial shoot. He
was terrified of having to spend the night alone in a motel room, but his boss asked him to stay with him. "It was a
real normal family," he said. "Like, they said grace before dinner. It was a good place to be last night."
Somehow it didn't seem odd to encounter him this way -- except later, as I thought about it. Here's a guy I know mainly
from communication over the Internet, suddenly there in the flesh, in what otherwise felt like a ghost town, a virtual city.
We walked around a while afterwards, grabbed some pizza -- talked about the tragedy . . . and Dylan. It was good to talk about
Dylan, fun -- a distraction and an affirmation.
Two nights ago I had weird dream. I was watching a report on TV that said the price of bamboo leaves had skyrocketed --
that they were now beyond the reach of ordinary Americans. I looked out the window that opens onto my terrace to check on
my own bamboo plant out there, and I saw that its leaves were brown, fading. I realized I needed to go water it right away.
I filled up a watering can in the kitchen and by the time I carried it back the window onto the terrace was gone. Someone
had boarded it up and plastered over it. I could see the outline of the window under the fresh plaster. I just couldn't imagine
how they did it so fast . . .
6 October 2001 (16)
Last night a friend was in town from Nashville. He wanted to go down to the site of the World Trade Center disaster and
he didn't want to go alone, so I went with him. It's something I've sort of wanted to do for the past three weeks, but couldn't
bring myself to.
Around Canal Street you start to smell the smoke -- you know there is burning flesh mixed up in it, but it has mostly
an acrid, non-biological quality. It smells dirty and malignant, and it lingered on me long after I came back uptown, making
me feel dirty and malignant.
As you walk south you can see the huge lights illuminating the cloud of smoke, many stories high, from fires still smoldering
after all this time. Broadway is open now to down past the site, and Broadway around Trinity Church comes within about a block
of the rubble. A block south of Trinity you can look right into it. There aren't a lot of people there looking at 2 in the
morning, but more than you'd imagine -- many couples, the women often crying as their men hold them and try to appear brave.
An emotional exercise for both, I imagine. Pairs of young women walking with their arms around each other.
There are National Guardsmen and women on patrol around the site. They are somehow comforting in their camouflage fatigues
and military bearing. We talked to one of them who was standing there looking tired and bored -- he seemed grateful for the
conversation. He didn't seem like a soldier when he spoke, though -- just a kid. When my friend said, "I hope you guys
get that bin Laden fellow," he looked embarrassed. "I guess everybody wants that," he replied -- without a
trace of bitterness or warlike gusto . . . just somebody contemplating a very unpleasant job. But his eyes lit up when he
talked about the firemen, about the stories he'd heard from some of the ones who survived. "What those guys did . . ."
he said quietly, shaking his head in awe.
Afterwards my friend said, "He's still trying to process it all, too." He had no reassurances for us, beyond
his mere patient presence at the scene, for which we thanked him.
At my first sight of the wreckage I started crying, but couldn't connect this up with any recognizable emotion -- not
sadness, or fear . . . more like a complete breakdown of psychic cohesion in the face of something ominous and unknowable.
I felt like a kid crying just because it was dark. My friend had a more extreme reaction -- something you read about in books
but it happened to him . . . his bowels turned to water. He had to beg a police officer to escort him to a portable john within
the barrier, which the cop did graciously, seeing the genuine distress in my friend's face.
We looked into the heart of absolute darkness -- something I've never done before, never had to do in my whole life. The
vastness of it was overwhelming. I can understand why people want to think about it as anything else but what it really is.
There aren't even any words for what it really is -- for what evil really is.
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