Month: September 2001
I cry at the drop of a hat. I don’t feel particularly attractive or sexual
“The closer we got to the West Side Highway, the more people there were. The highway was lined with people some with flags, some just watching. But the minute a fleet of rescue workers came rolling by everyone on the sidelines errupted into applause and cheers. Some rushed out to the cars with bottles of…
Ashamed to watch their grief, to see their trembling hands and smell their fear
“At that point in time both Towers were still standing. And so we stood. All strangers gathered on an outcropping of rock, watching a scene that did not make sense. And then a woman ran up and began to climb those rocks. She was crying and her movements were frantic. She could not get close…
The inevitable change was almost complete
“New Yorks come and go so quickly that literature has trouble keeping up with them. From Washington Irving to Poe to Melville to Whitman to Edith Wharton, somebody’s ‘old New York’ has always been turning into a new city. Joseph Mitchell became its chronicler as F. Scott Fitzgerald was leaving the scene, and Mitchell’s city…
I have never before felt so patriotic
“I encountered several people along the way to my destination and it seemed that we were all somehow united as one by the earlier sequence of events. Everyone I passed met my gaze and said hello or nodded at me. This doesn’t usually happen. I myself felt like I needed to acknowledge everyone as a…
They are turning away volunteers, blood donors, because there are so many
“They were ugly buildings, totally out of keeping with the rest of Manhattan’s architecture, but they were also compass, an anchor, and when you were lost you could find your way back by following them, triangulating between the Empire State Building and the two towers. I was lost in Red Hook and Williamsburg and they…
On behalf of the Tibetan people I would like to convey our deepest condolences
“It may seem presumptuous on my part, but I personally believe we need to think seriously whether a violent action is the right thing to do and in the greater interest of the nation and people in the long run. I believe violence will only increase the cycle of violence. But how do we deal…
It was kind of weird at first to see from above a major airliner in flight below
“Last night, I spoke to a friend who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She noted how when she looks around her neighborhood, there were so many apartments with no lights on. She wondered if the people who lived there would ever come home. It is a very sad observation.”
I felt so small and I now feel so unsafe and uncomfortable
“I was doing better today, until a short while ago when I was at a cafe for breakfast. As I stood in line, someone (very loudly and in a very accusing tone) asked: ‘Are you from Afghanistan?’ All eyes turned upon me, burning, each one accompanied with accusatory frowns. Needless to say, I very sheepishly…
We find heroism in many places
“Jeremy called my niece who in-turn conferenced him to 911. Jeremy relayed to the police what was happening as the hijacking unfolded. As our niece Liz listened, Jeremy told the police there were three Arab terrorists with knives and a large red box that they claimed contained a bomb. Jeremy tracked the second by second…
The collapse was inevitable
“The fireball that shot from the second WTC tower hit, opposite where the jetliner penetrated, blew out windows and perhaps part of the latticework exterior structure. Flaming fuel probably cascaded down the shafts of elevators and ductwork and stairwells whose fire-protection enclosures would have been destroyed by the explosive crash and ballistic heavy plane parts.…