Exile In A Wounded City 10/10/01
The wind shifted again tonight. Even here, in my room on 23rd St. I can smell it - Ground Zero. Everyone in Manhattan recognizes the smell of burnt building materials. I am over 2 miles north but it doesn't matter - this smell prowls the night sky like a ghost, alighting at will to deny this traumatized city rest. It is a new phrase in our vocabulary: the wind shifted. Everyone knows what that means.
Over the last 3 weeks I have written to you of concrete events: being alive, being homeless, fighting the various bureaucracies and, most recently, sort of settling in. Because I write quickly, my emotional state is transparent to you. But this is what I haven't had the time or presence of mind to write, the journal that will bring you ringside to my nightmare, which will tell some of the smaller stories and the thoughts. I am writing this to share my special tale but also in an effort to get these words and thoughts out of my head. I am writing this in an effort to help my friends understand how profoundly everything has changed for those of us who live daily with this horror.
On 911 I found myself in a unique situation: everyone around me was struggling mightily to get home, walking miles to bridges and then hoping to be allowed across them. Walking. Walking. On a brilliantly clear day that first was marred by tragedy and, later, by the unfamiliar shape of F15 fighter-bombers. But where I live death and danger were. No one knew what would happen next. So I knew I could not go home, to a place of succor and safety. Instead I walked through Chelsea for hours, waiting for Gail to get home, doing errands to occupy the hours and to meet my needs: a toothbrush. Tee shirts from the Salvation Army. I had the tiny digital radio I carry in my pack so I could listen to the news. I kept circling the same blocks, eating an untasted lunch at a trendy sidewalk eatery, grateful for the beauty salon who had put a sign in its window "Please feel free to come in to use the bathroom and the telephone." I did, and stole 5 minutes on their sofa, undisturbed.
The next night, I moved to Bruce's, where I stayed for over a week. At first, going home was impossible - I'd have to walk south from 14th St and take my chances on getting in. Then they rolled the barriers back, to Canal Street, which was viable. I simply didn't have the energy to walk over a mile in each direction, into the horror.
Like other Hot Zone refugees, I stayed out late, feeling I was intruding despite Bruce's welcome. This feeling is impossible to explain but was well understood by neighbors sharing my plight. We met for coffee. For dinner. We had no place to go and nothing to do, our lives disrupted, work our only stability. I have since spoken to people who know this feeling of intrusion. I would never have imagined it. There were no shortage of offers of places to stay but they were not what I needed. I needed HOME. Or at least a room with a lock on the door.
So we wandered the city, the street our only private place - to make a cell phone call, to cry silently, unnoticed, in the dark. I knew I as exhausted but I was not tired. I slept sleeping pill sleep: dark and dreamless but not satisfying. I knew my body was weird but there was nothing I could do because I could not go home.
As the days wore on, it became clear that while everyone else was taking baby steps towards healing, we were growing ever more frayed, because the longer we were homeless, the worse it got for us, and the more variant our experience from that of everyone around us. It also became clear that we spoke a different language: checkpoints, escorts, civil actions and FEMA. Our neighborhood had been bombed. We confronted this whenever we attempted to go home, bringing us back constantly to the event as the rest of the city and the country moved away from it. We stood at Broadway and Chambers and looked past the National Guard, past the police, past the metal barricade to our HOME, a place so close from which we were barred. What we wanted was tantalizingly, painfully out of reach. Berlin.
All through this time, a phrase stuck in my head, like the words of a song. "That was then and this is now." I could not imagine a reality more changed than mine. A week before 911 my kid cousin visited with his girlfriend, from a village of 400 in the English countryside. I had showed them my city, a city with which I was infatuated, from Harlem to NY harbor, from Lower East Side streets - to Windows on the World. The weather was perfect and I loved my life. I marveled at my luck in life. I showed my glittering city off, a treasure to be shared. But that was then and this is now.
What Does It Feel Like To Be Home? 12/10/01
Over the past week, people have asked me "what does it feel like to be home?"
My answers have been "When I sit in my chair, it feels like I never left, almost as though the wound in time healed over, without a trace." and "Disorganized - everything is where I left it in September, but a mess because I was pulling things out of closets and shoving stuff back in."
Until Saturday night.
I came back from dinner with friends, puttered about until midnight, when I decided to go to bed.
My favorite times are weekend mornings at 11 AM, when the apartment is flooded with sunlight, and late at night, when downtown is silent and my apartment is my world.
For the first time since September 11, I had bedecked my bed with all its pillows and textiles, solely to enjoy the glimpses of it when I passed. As I was taking it apart to go to sleep, the only light was the dim, antique patterned peach glass lamp over the bed. My stereo was playing joyous "fusion" Indian music in the darkened apartment. And suddenly, I felt the most intense pleasure as I sat on the bed and listened to the music. I knew that I was home, in my house, in my personal island of beauty and tranquillity.
Why I Created This CD 1/20/02
A birthday celebration at a tiny, perfect Japanese restaurant undiscovered and unexpected on a weary Village street. He lives Uptown and she in the Teens.
I attempt to explain why I’m spending so much time putting together a 9/11 CD – something I myself don’t understand, a fact that doesn’t particularly bother me. He thinks the issues with the air and the government’s response were always so obvious that they are not, at this late date, worth thought. To me, the interesting issue isn’t the air. It is the psychology of my well educated, successful, ostensibly independent minded and well insured neighbors, who moved home as soon as they could, cleaning the dust themselves and worrying more about unexpected checkpoints then the effects of the air. Of the hundreds of thousands of people returned to work in lower Manhattan when told to, discomforted by the attack, not the air. Considering this makes a long career in technology and human services vanish, revealing my inner still-too-young social psychology graduate student, baffled by obedience to authority and the effect of group norms on human behavior.
We part, they walking north into the frigid night, me grateful for the subway.
The re-routed train has the post 9/11 mix of Afro-Caribbean’s heading for Eastern Parkway, downtown Manhattan types, and two Sallies – Salvation Army workers – in their bright red jackets. As we exit at Chambers Street, another woman pulls an OSHA vest over her coat. A guy lights a cigarette and stops at the top of the stairs, motionless, looking at the stadium glare. I, too, glance at the familiar void before heading east, past a helmeted National Guardsman. At Church Street I am forced to look south again, to cross the north-running street – and see the white glow. Hey, let’s take the A train, if you want to go to Ground Zero in TriBeCa.
Maybe this is why I spend hours at my PC mesmerized, searching the Net for material for this CD. My friends have been downtown once since the attack, for a half an hour, or not at all. But it isn’t an event for me, an attack being resolved in distant Afghanistan and reported in the media. In its ever-changing reality, it is my neighborhood, my home these 22 years, the place I yearned for and feared when displaced. It is the weekend river of people streaming towards Ground Zero that I must navigate whenever I leave my door, whose presence still surprises me and destroys the tranquillity I expect in this neighborhood where no one ever came. It is the people on the subway, on the street, for whom this is closure, an adventure, an event, a destination, who pull out maps and who ask where is it, where is it, where is the World Trade Center, where is Ground Zero. Whose legions of SUVs, tour buses and stretch limos jam the weekend streets. Who depart wearing Ground Zero hats, bearing WTC calendars. Foreign tourists and clusters of talkative Americans, blond in their jeans and puffy jackets, so different from my quiet, intense, dark clad sleek South TriBeCa neighbors. I had just begun to accept that Pearl Harbor moved in next door when the viewing platform circus arrived. 9/11 is with you always.
Or maybe it is nothing to do with that at all. Maybe it is an attempt to close the 97 day long hole in time that the attack blew into my life, when days were endless telephone calls, nights meant friend’s sofas, hotels, unfurnished rooms, when I did errands instead of living. Maybe if I go back through those days in the media, in the photos of sights I barely registered, I will somehow close the gap. I now fit imperfectly into familiar surroundings. Imagine clear molded plastic enclosing some widget that hangs from a hook in every American hardware store. But it doesn’t quite fit; something tiny keeps the edges from closing, and me from easing comfortably back into my life.
I can’t worry about it. I create because I have no choice, using a language not necessarily verbal. Maybe, at some point, I’ll understand why I did what I did, which would be nice but is not really important. This particular project surely springs from the other great non-rational process, emotions, and is being articulated non-linearly, processing the event on multiple levels. There is both intellectual and emotional involvement in the still evolving story. Now missing toxic chemicals at the Con Ed substation at 7WTC are on the news.
The CD is both factual and non-objective, a culling that records 9/11 as it happened to me, a woman who left home on a brilliantly sunny Tuesday morning for a seemly endless visit to the Twilight Zone.
Sunlight & Shadow 5/11/02
Today is one of those transcendent days, when the sun is so bright and the sky so clear that the colors of the everyday world glow with an iridescent light.
I've just returned from a couple of weeks in Istanbul, where, to be accurate, I did nothing, the first week cold and damp, the second as sunny and sharp lighted as today. I had a frequent flyer ticket, so the trip over was free. Americans still haven't returned to Turkey, partly out of post 9/11 fear of flying and partly due to a profound mis-understanding of this most moderate of Islamic lands. I wonder how many Americans know that Turks aren't Arabs... I had an apartment to use, first with friends and then alone, which gave me the opportunity to just live in Istanbul for a while, instead of sightseeing.
To be sure, I did the obligatory sights again, after a gap of almost 30 years, but I did them differently, one a day, with no compulsion to visit other cities to see old quarters and yet another mosque or caravansary. Because I had friends, and thus was a guest to be shown the beauty of their city, I was taken to all the hidden places, the Ottoman era cafes far from SultanAmhet.
If you are a tourist, you spend a few days in the old city, near Topkapi, perhaps venturing once or twice to another shore, to see the modern downtown and its cafes. But, while you know Istanbul is a city on the water, you are no more aware of it than the average Manhattan resident, an intellectual awareness, not a constant physical presence. Here, I was fortunate, because my friend's apartment is on the Asian side, so every day required two ferry rides with little to do but sip tea from tulip shaped glasses and watch the play of light on the sea. During these days of crisp, clear Spring light each too short voyage demanded to be extended at a cafe on the other shore, watching the water, the sun and the light.
Having been shown Istanbul from its special places, on top of its hills, at the convergence of its ancient seas, while cruising its islands and walking its shores, I will tell you that its beauty is that of the San Francisco Bay area, although with 14 million inhabitants, it is far more urban. But while the wooded hills are missed, the predominantly low-rise development does not yet destroy its beauty. Its Ottoman era wooden houses, now being restored in affluent suburbs, will hold their own against any California Victorian.
I spent the days in walking meditation, exploring untouristed areas behind the Grand Bazaar and the shops within, buying inexpensive ceramics and rare Central Asian embroideries. It is hard to find anything old in the bazaar, or in most places these days, tribal crafts long replaced by commercial wares. But, with time and perseverance, things turn up, albeit not necessarily the things you planned on. For all the tourism of the Grand Bazaar, and it is nothing else, who can complain about being led into a dealer's storeroom in an old Han, where goods are piled in neat stacks and thrown in corners, hidden behind chairs, forgotten about even by the dealer searching desperately for something to sell. Endless cups of chai, with conversation and cigarettes. I don't know what to do with dealers who tell me they are giving me the "no bargaining" price - especially when one then reduces his quote by $50 - but I don't really care, because the prices don't seem unreasonable for the things I buy - a 100+ year old woven Caucasian saddle bag and a wonderful Baluch feed bag. Who ever would have thought that you'd weave so finely to feed a donkey? And, besides, I'm using insurance money to pay for them, because some of my things destroyed can only be found here.
While I went to Mexico, at Ed's insistence, in November, this is my first true vacation since 9/11. I don't know why Copper Canyon didn't have the same effect - maybe it was the oddity of spending a vacation on the train but, most likely, it had more to do with the subliminal but ever-present stress of being displaced, knowing I would return to an unfurnished room. I don't fault Ed for insisting on this holiday - if I wouldn't go to Rome, as planned, we had to go somewhere. But, while it was a good holiday, I didn't experience the deep relaxation of these days in Istanbul – and after this trip, I got to go HOME.
On this, my first weekend back in NY, I planned to resume my weekly bike ride up the Hudson, with the only disruption being the closed portion of the path where the barge is parked, still hauling debris from Ground Zero. Rebuilding is starting, not on the site itself but next door, at 7 WTC, which was also destroyed. It will be a narrower building - the community insistent upon the return of the street grid disrupted by the Towers 30 years ago. I wonder what the address will be - wouldn't 7 WTC be chilling without its siblings 1 thru 6?
The site itself has been cleared for months so on these sunny days the experience, for those of us who know downtown, is of far too much light. Lower Manhattan streets carved hundreds of years ago are narrow valleys darkened by mountainous tall buildings. The tallest, the Twins, cast shadows into City Hall Park and beyond. But now that they are gone, there is glowing afternoon light, brightening a neighborhood, 16 acres of disturbing light surrounded still by orange netting clad buildings displaying huge flags.
The rebirth symphony plays under our windows each night, as Verizon, Con Ed and the myriad of others who repair and rebuild cables and pipes and conduits drill and pound. Murray Street has been unimaginably torn up for months. They are trying not just to replace what was destroyed but also to build infrastructure for the future. Meanwhile, telephone lines and electrical cable still runs above ground in much of the neighborhood.
There are many things the careful eye can detect which belie the area’s apparent return to normalcy. Barricades. Police vans. No mailboxes - removed in December never to re-appear. In Turkey mailboxes were removed there in the 1970s, the time of terrorism and never replaced. As one man in the bazaar said, now America will understand what terrorism does to a country.
The other differences are more subtle - an endless, and probably eternal, stream of tourists down Broadway, past my house, going to Ground Zero. My only hope is that I am far enough away that businesses catering to them will not invade my streets. Streets still being wet down by trucks to ensure that the Ground Zero dust stays down.
The EPA has finally caved to months of pressure and will clean apartments - although not the offices - of anyone downtown who requests it. This is widely considered to be a rather late response but a victory over a surprisingly callous and uncaring government none-the-less. Since I had asbestos testing done before my cleaning, I won't have another cleaning done - I can't abide the disruption - but I probably will have another asbestos test done by the EPA, just to be sure. Whoever would have thought, when I sat next to a wild-haired advocate waving a huge pile of Freedom of Information Act results at a post-9/11 environmental meeting, that we would all succeed in forcing the government to do what is right.
But back to today, which really does relate to 9/11, because, as I headed towards the new place to get on the bike path I encountered brilliantly colored banners lit by the sun - the first Tribeca Family Festival, part of the Tribeca Film Festival which Robert DeNiro, long-time, deeply rooted, resident, dreamed up last Fall to help downtown recover, to bring people back. For there are still those afraid to come downtown, people making their first trip here since 9/11. Local people, Manhattan residents who used to sprawl on the lawns of Battery Park and play along the water.
A glorious day, streets filled with children with painted faces being charmed - or frightened - by clowns and mascots, as was their wont. Food to eat, Tribeca tee shirts to buy and music in the air - truly in the air, when a costumed band on stilts performs Dixieland.
As I threaded my bike amongst the crowds, there was a happy ache in my heart for these streets I love were, once again, filled with joy. It is only a 8 months since I stood on Greenwich St, the site of this fair, on a similarly brilliant day, at a barricade, waiting for hours to be let into my home and later, walking the length of this fair to my insurance company’s catastrophe van. But now the cameramen in the crowd are photographing the resurrection and the light, not the darkness of destruction. How could one not be glad?
Birthdays Sure Ain't What They Used To Be 5/21/02
Today is my birthday. I received two "presents"
State of the art asbestos tests I just had done show that the perimeter areas of my apartment are "moderately" contaminated - and no, the free EPA/FEMA clean-up isn't abatement so it would be useless. My apartment itself seems fine. I've spoken to the co-op Board who I think will take action promptly and am considering writing to my elected officials, etc. because I'm so pissed off at the EPA et. al. Meanwhile, I hope it stays cold because opening my windows isn't a good idea right now.
Then, after coming back from dinner, I am left to contemplate terror threats against the Brooklyn Bridge, which is basically across the street.
I joked for years that sleeping in my bed was more dangerous than holidaying in Iran and Syria. Who knew?
Birthdays sure ain’t what they used to be…
