Tuesday, September 11, 2001; Primary Day

[Written around midnight, after one of the longest days of all our lives, as best I can determine this was about post number 14 or 15 to my Members Group on the Dueling Modems Bulleting Board that day; as well, I was sending versions of these posts to an ever-growing personal Family & Friends list, and to two other professional Lists in which I participate. Fairly soon my posts became more organized, as I learned they were becoming one of the thousands, perhaps millions, of personal journals being kept by those of us who live in Manhattan. Never has an atrocity-catastrophe been so spontaneously documented in every format by so many professionals; partly because the initial Frozen Zone, all of Manhattan below 14th St., is probably the area in the world most densely populated by writers, artists and media professionals of every kind, including those not yet invented. But that realization didn't strike until more time had passed. All of us were still in the first stage of shock when the following was posted.]

We walked with David to his place on Mott. He offered some dinner. We hadn't eaten. Hadn't thought to. And David didn't want to be alone. Phone link to those outside the Frozen Zone wasn't what he needed, though he would not say so. Those further away were not his people right now. We are, for we are all in the Zone together.

David and Ned eat. I take a couple of bites from Ned's fork, but I don't want a plate of my own. I have no appetite.

The horrible dust. The horrible ash. Ash. Growing up on a farm we set fires deliberately. We burned off fields in the fall to consume weed seeds and release nitrogen more quickly into the top soil. We burned last year's left-over hay and straw to keep them from spontaneous combustion disasters. We burned the weed trash in magnificent bonfires in the fall. We burned our flamable trash in a barrel. We even burned coal and wood for heat. We smoked meat. Ashes remained, to be spread and hoed into the garden soil. Ash was a dove grey, edged with white. Tissue thin and fragile as a moth wing, floated by heat currents only -- for you burn only on windless days. Ash was black and called soot.

This stuff. But this stuff. It's colorless. Ugly beyond description, it sucks all color from the world. It's a no-color, the color of death, of sterility, hopelessness of ressurection. It's toxic. It's poison. It's the post-industrial ash made up of elements not found in nature. It is the color of evil. It gathers inches deep along the curbs. It colors the streets. It's covering our windows. It is falling on us.

We are breathing the WTC. We are breathing the dead.

About 10:30 we left David, walking on Spring towards home. How empty, how quiet it is, being Frozen out of the rest of the city, the country, the world is. No honking. No cars. No taxis. No trucks. No tourists. No tourists at all, here in SoHo that has been colonized for so long by people who do not live here to the point that we long-time residents stay off the street, leaving our own neighborhood as fast as possible when going out. Without the tourists, only those who live here, and who are young ­ early 20's to early 30's generally -- are on the streets. What's open? The Spring Street Bar is ass-to-crotch packed with people drinking. There is the indecipherable roar of voices, but uncharacteristically, no laughter. Balthazar is steel-shuttered shut. Most places are. Only a few of the most trendy bar-restaurants are open. The few people in them appear to be perhaps from the four hotels that opened here, after years'-long battles between our community boards and the developers to get the zoning laws changed to build them.

We are in our most intimate home neighborhood, rather less than a mile from Ground Zero. Our vision cannot adjust to seeing this horrible billowing pillar rising rising rising rising, thick thick thick thick, lit from below in the night, in the place of my weather gauge, our geographic anchor, landmark, signpost.

Toxic chemical stench and smoke and particulate haze suspended in the quiet, humid night air. Irritated eyes, breathing and skin. All of this is aggravating Ned's already bad allergies, and the symptoms of my 9 weeks and counting respiratory infection that will not go away no matter what I do.

Nevertheless, stoopidly, compulsion determined, at West Broadway Ned and I turn south, walk across a Canal Street that is shut down, without any traffic for the first time ever, down as close to Ground Zero as allowed before being stopped by police barricades.

In a life of reading and writing, I've encountered so many descriptions of walking in a post-catastrophe deserted major modern city, beginning with Daniel Defoe's JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR, an account of London in the bubonic epidemic in 1665. The post-apocalyptic city is The Trope of the Science Fiction-Fantasy disaster novel. The destroyed city is a literary sub-set all its own, maybe beginning with the New Testament's Book of Revelations? As well, from the beginning of living here my own imagination has often and often turned to a Manhattan catastrophe, and especially destruction devastating the Towers: the latter giving me such heebiejeebies that by the end of the 80's I refused to work for any company that was located in them. Nevertheless, at least once or twice a week, and often every day, I'm in the concourse, in the subway and PATH stations below, in the Plaza between, or in the aerial walkway between the World Financial Center and the WTC 2, or just walking past. I mean I was, not am. Not anymore. Ever.

This landscape is nothing like those scenarios, though this is a catastrophe, it is a major city, and there is no normal activity. But there is a great deal of action and movement.

They've just begun the effort to find survivors in the rubble. (Rubble. It doesn't begin begin to convey the depth, the breadth, the height of the Pile.) We hear that some survivors are calling out via their cell phones. If so, then why is it the cell phones of those who survived above the Pile aren't working? So many questions. How much is fact? 300 plus firefighters were lost when the first tower collapsed.

This dust. This dust is the World Trade Center Towers. It's sticky and oily, like the finest powder of cremains, what the funeral homes call the remains now, after your loved one has been cremated. We are breathing the WTC. We are breathing the dead.

The firemen. Firemen splayed all over the street and sidewalk in the dust. Exhausted. Covered with cremain dust. Staring into nothing. They do not touch each other.

An occasional credentialed vehicle driving up West Broadway, trailed by a broad ribbon of that cremain dust, lit up in the floodlights, blowing off the inches-deep dust-enveloped vehicle, wheels throwing up another horizontal cloud of the cremain dust from the street.

I'm starting to guess that maybe the final figures of those killed will top off at 10,000. But that's only a guess and without any foundation other than so many did manage to get out of the towers between the impact and the collapse.

It's going to take days, if not weeks, to establish the final figures. How can it be otherwise, considering how little, if anything, remains of so many of those who perished. I mean, over a 150 truckloads of debris had to be hauled out, the debris that had to be gotten out of the way BEFORE anyone could begin to search for survivors. Doing this while the fires burn.

No one can say how long we're to be cordened off from the rest of the city. Or the city from the rest of the nation. The nation from the rest of the world. We are within the ring within ring within ring of isolation. The nation shut off from the rest of the world via air and shipping and any other border we can cut it off. The nation from the city. Then within the city, 14th St. cuts you off unless you live here. Below 14th St., Houston is another cut off.

We are below Houston, between that checkpoint and the final one to Ground Zero. It's surprising how isolated it makes you feel, being cut off this way.

Isolation to keep our horrible contagous disease from spreading.

Unlike so many people, we have each other, and we are together, not separated by a continent when the planes were grounded as others we know are; and though we have no phone service and our water is seemingly contaminated, our internet provider's not even hiccupped, and the radio's on 24/7, and still giving real information, mostly, though our usual public stations have gone off the air, due to loss of transmitters when WTC Tower 1 collapsed and evacuation. And I know we're not going to starve, for pete's sake.

Yet I feel we are to be shunned as a community will shun someone who has suffered tragedy or divorce for fear of the rest catching it. Totally stoopid, when all the evidence is that people everywhere care. That people keep asking me to post more, to send more e-mails, prove that we are not being shunned, even on this most private and personal and individual level.

I am so grateful. Your concern and responses are helping me keep it together, to keep me in mind that I have no cause or right to lose it in the first place. I have not lost anything, except making a living. Which was something we realized within the first couple of hours. That this was going to have a major impact on our personal finances, because it's majorly impacting the city, and thus the nation and then the world, in a time when all the global economy is shaky enough to slide into recession.

Our mayor is being superb, providing cool, calm and intelligent leadership. As most of you know, I have never been a fan of him during any of his two terms running this city. Today, he's grand. He talks to us all day, giving us FACTS, such few as there are. As well, belligerent and insensitive to ethnic issues as he's been previously, in this he said that Nyers are better people than the people who will target any group in our city as scapegoats to punish for this tragedy. That punishment and vengeance are not our concern. Pulling together as we are doing is our concern, and our job, and that is what we are doing.

Cannot say remotely the same about our assumed POTUS. He goes and hides in SAC's hole, leaving the Girls, Condelezza Rice and his press person ­ what's her name? ­ in the White House.. And he can't even get the facts such as they are right. He announces that NYC will be open for business as usual TOMORROW. As the mayor said, we are not open for business, Stock Exchange style and otherwise, tomorrow. This whole part of the island is locked down. He doesn't even seem to know that. That his advisors won't allow him in D.C. or NYC.

Man, when Oklahoma City was hit, Clinton was there really fast. When he spoke, we felt him feeling us. Joke about the man feeling our pain all you like. He did. Just as you can feel our mayor feeling our pain, while he feels his own. He lost dear and very old friends in this. Bush hasn't a clue as to what any of us feel. He's a deer caught in the headlights of something vaster than he ever even wanted to understand, or could imagine happening.

Still, I can't forget that it was the mayor who moved the city's emergency response team's office in the WTC post the '93 bombing rebuilding.

Who insisted on building an obscenely expensive emergency command center bunker for the mayor and his staff there. Which as it turns out is as irrelevant as was predicted it would be.

So he must have serious guilt and misery going on. A beyond-arrogant man who isn't experience with guilt, for anything, much less experienced at saying, "I was wrong. I am sorry." But bizarrely, his losses, his guilt, allows his direct addresses to every part of the constituancy to be in perfect tune with that constituancy.

Friday, September 13, 2001

National Day of Prayer and Remembrance

[This marks the beginning of what I've come to call the LOOK&LISTEN LOG when I learned that my posts were getting distributed beyond my FAMILY&FRIENDS list by people for whom I was the geographically closest to the site they had access to. By the end of the next week these posts had circled around and become distributed to other Nyers who I did not know, who did not know me, opening another form of 'private' internet and e-mail dialog and discussion of these so-public events differently experienced by people who did not know each other but lived in the same city. I began to understand that like the the perception of the Ground Zero site itself, no one eye or frame could possibly begin to encompass the vastness of this atrocity-catastrophe. This has sent me again to meditating upon the vastness of what actual military assault and defense means in the experience of a people, a nation, a world, and how minute my own experience is in the immediate enormity and the continuity of its effects.]

Hi, guys. This is going to be the last of these long, twice-daily installments. It's time to get back to Real Work, which means working out how to find some Real Work to take the place of the freelance jobs I had down there in the Zone. Work that isn't writing journals and fiction. Got to make a living! Again, please accept my humble thanks for all the support you have provided.

A faint facade of normalcy. The Zone was moved down to Canal St. at midnight. We are part of the city again. I cannot believe how much this has my spirits. Which must mean others too were getting depressed.

Around midnight too, the rain moved in. It allows me to breathe again, but turns up the tensions on the fears of adverse effect upon the rescue efforts. For the victims and for those racing against time to discover survivors.

Cannot sleep. Drinking tea by 7 a.m. Ned, who could not sleep at all last night is now sleeping in. Why not? Nothing doing at his office, not even a telephone line.

Can't stand being still. Don rain gear and grab umbrella, shove camera and notebook into a water resistent bag. Go Out to the streets, called by the faint, yet renewed normalcy of traffic rumble. And once on the street it's like television is for others. Once I hit the streets I can't leave them, but walk and walk and walk, looking and listening, in a hypnotic trance, at how it all has changed, while superficially seeming almost the same as Before.

Fleets of trucks and heavy earth moving equipment are still lined up on West Houston and Ave. of the Americas. Police barricade saw horses, dismantled now the Houston check point is down, splay unordered in puddles, the rain beating on their blue and white paint. Sagging yellow plastic tapes, "Police Action Do Not Enter," fluttering in the wind.

On Bleecker and Sullivan and McDougal, the small businesses owned by Muslims from India, Pakistan, various countries in the Middle East, Muslim refugees from the ethnic cleansing set off by the fall of the former Yugoslavia ­ were shuttered on the 11th and never re-opened. I do not know if it is because the owners live outside of Manhattan and thus couldn't get down here, or because they are feeling endangered. But all the Italian restaurants and French coffee shops and so on are open, though empty.

The fire station at Ave. of the Americas is bustling. But the men themselves do not look at anyone or anything except each other.

Flowers and ribbons are wrapped in the mesh fences of every pocket park and playground, with posters of the missing, messages to the missing, the rescue workers and the world. Altars have bloomed everywhere even as the Stars & Stripes. My personal favorite Stars & Stripes is in a tiny shop on my street that features custom-made, 'colonial-retro' sort of clothes. A rear-viewed ankle length denim skirt in the window, its kick pleat a froth of red, white and blue ruffles. I imagine the owner-seamstress fretting in the empty crisis days of this week, filling her anxious hours with her own creative gift, envisioning and sewing this skirt. (Betsy Ross!) I think of all the clothing and other objects in the Fraunces Tavern Museum collections that incorporate the flag of the nascent nation. The younger a nation we are, the more anxious we are, the more familiar and comfortable a thing becomes the flag. I am feeling very close to the city I lived in during the months I worked at the museum, of how I imagined NYC under the long dark, destructive years of British occupation during the Revolution, which culminated with the Brits setting fire to what was left over when they finally evacuated, weeks and weeks after Cornwallis's official surrender at Yorktown.

I wonder at the marvelous generosity and goods and aid that have been outpoured for the victims and the city everywhere. Is that the contemporary way now, to provide sacrifices and gratitude to the gods, that, "It's not Me/Us, this time ...." Whatever the impulse(s), it is wonderful. Not to mention really practical and useful.

After seeing the images on the Broome St. Bar television last night for the first time ­ how often has the rest of the nation that unlike us, all owns at least one television set seen them? ­ I want to see the faces of the major players who are determining our fate. They will be at the D.C. Prayer service. I look for a television and find it appropriately in a coffee house named "the esperanto cafe," [stet], the set tuned to CNN. Just in time to catch the live press conference with Schumer, Clinton and Pataki. I wonder where Congressman Rangel ­ and any other black face ­ might be. Surely Rangel has been working for the federal relief and aid package to NYC as much as Schumer and Clinton.

Is Bush here? No. Of course he'd be at the National Cathedral.

But. Isn't it bizarre that he's not yet come here? Nope. OKC didn't particularly vote for Clinton, but he went there as fast as possible.

Oh my goodness. TV tells me. Bush got hold of Gore in Vienna. Gore flew to the U.S., as did Clinton from Australia. (Last night I saw Chelsea on the Broome St. Bar tv with her dad and mom here on the streets.) The two, Clinton and Gore, stayed up all night talking and went on to D.C. and the National Cathedral together. Omighod. That's the first time they've been together since Bush's inaugeration?

Later in the day, after the sun comes out again:

It is bizarre, isn't it, how normal the other parts of city have become already again, and then down here, below Houston, it's not, even though we aren't even in the Zone anymore.

This immediate neighborhood remains eerily empty despite no longer being in the Zone. The trendy SoHo bars on West Broadway are open, with no one in them. Signs are up that say "Cash Only," which isn't the case in the East or West Village.

Lower Broadway, unlike lower Ave. of the Americas which is filled with heavy equipment, feels almost normal, especially once above Bleecker St. Again I notice as I have all week the people I see in the streets here in the majority by far are in their 20's, 30's and early 40's. I'd guess the bulge in the late 20's - early 30's. Young, sleek, lookin' good, prosperous and professional, no matter what ethnic origin. Very few h.s. age kids; college kids yes, around NYU and Cooper Union. Little kids no, at least not until this evening, and that's in the West Village. However, oddly, all week, I have seen many young moms and dads out with their infants in snugglies and strollers, even along West Highway when the wind is blowing the toxic smoke up our way.

The East Village is densely packed with international and U.S. youth, multi-culti-ethnic-sexual-gender-orientation the default setting, all Out, all smoking, talking, even laughing a bit, but not with any sick jokes that I can distinguish -- eating, drinking, and looking to get laid. Or as ever, as consolation prize, to at least dance again, and get drunk.

Amazing, how much the guys are 'looking' today, which wasn't so the last three days, except among the Con-Ed guys. For three days the sexuality of one of the five sexiest, most pheromone-sensitive antennaed cities in the world had flat-lined. Until it began reviving, I hadn't noticed it was gone. Our household had flat-lined too. (The other four sexiest cities are Havana, Rio de Janeiro, Santo Domingo and Lisbon -- at least among the cities I've experienced -- all walking cities too, like NYC.)

Eavesdropping on two guys walking together behind me, one talking on a cell phone while carrying on a conversation with his companion. Cell phone just stops and goes -- "Hey! Check the bod on the chick over there! Oh, man! Awesone! Let me have some!"

NYC's life force is resurrected and risen.

On a feminist list we were speaking of Oshún, the orisha of sex, romance, creativity, prosperity, glamour, etc. in connection with the god of war, Ogún. (I hope your readers allow for el español's diacriticals.)

There are many Yoruba tales of the other orishas sending Oshún to 'bring down' Ogún with her seductive fascinations from his war/battle fury when those are no longer needed, or are anti-social. She dances seductively, weaving a spell of glamour with her fan. She coats his lips with honey (one of her "things") -- and even his machete. Within the Religion there are many rituals to 'cool' Ogún after wars and battles. But you have to divert his berserker focus first, so they send in Oshún, doing her bit for the war effort.

What I'm seeing on the streets is Oshún coming out to distract, I hope. Hopefully, she could distract the saber-rattlers and blood callers and those who want to carpet bomb a bunch of sand dunes and civilians to convince themselves their machetes are bigger than the terrorists'. Distract and cool them long enough for Obatala's cool wisdom to penetrate their heads. Oshún has managed to soothe Ogún on an occasion or so when his pathological camino committed rape -- which he did on his own mother.

Reflecting on Oshún brings me to my local topless dancer bar, the Baby Doll Lounge. The Baby Doll is still in the Zone, being below Canal Street. I had wondered earlier, even, if the Baby Doll will survive this, since so many of the customers come from the financial district. (At least none of the girls would have been caught in the subways or anything since the Baby Doll doesn't open until the afternoon.) These last ten years it's become primarily a black joint; most of the girls are black (with a sprinkling of all others, including one astounding Israeli, with the whitest skin I've ever seen, and a new tatoo every month). The clientele, especially after work, are the young 'urban' professional from the financial district. Thus, since the girls pick their own music, unlike most (franchise) titty bars, the music's great -- R&B and Rap and HipHop, and the girls are independent operators and the place is often a lot of fun. I go there (now Gone There) quite a bit, and have learned how and when to present the dancer with dollar bills, and gotten to be friendly enough with some of them to be invited to birthday parties off-site. Maybe, if they've lost their clientele, other customers will take the place of those who not longer have a place of business to go to, when their part of the Zone opens?

But then, Giuliani and Bush swear that the Stock Exchange =will= reopen Monday, no matter what. Bush is providing every assistence at his disposal to see that Wall St. does reopen, even to navy vessels bringing in equipment and men and tech from the water down by Pearl Street -- where I worked at the Fraunces Tavern Museum.

West Houston and West Broadway, the major gateway into neighborhood (which view, btw, Science Fiction Writers of America's current president once described as the Cunt of the Universe, and the character musing on this is frustrated as hell that he's not rich and successful, not Big Enough, to fuck it) still seems to be the point where things drop into the Zone. Well, really, where things =begin= to change. The real change is further south, of course. Where the fires still burn under the mountain of rubble, despite the thunderstorms and rain, sending the cloud of smoke up into the now beautiful blue heaven at 7 p.m.

I roast chicken with shallots, lime and garlic. Bake potatoes. A meal for what seems to be the first day of autumn. 55 degrees. Windy. The smell of spicy autumn leaves in the air once you get up around 8th Street, instead of the acrid acid stench from downtown -- which you begin to notice overtly again at the gateway to our neighborhood. But it's not inside our building tonight, though my eyes burn from the walk, reminding me to wash my face and eyes yet again today.

I'm playing the new Bob Dylan album, which is much cheerier than the last one released four years ago. Too bad it's mixed roots rock style because I suspect his lyrics may be some of the best he's ever done, but the damned snare is mixed above his voice! What was the producer thinking?????

It's the first time a CD has been put on in this house since It Changed. This, in the household of a music professional, who is writing a book about music, and writes journalism about music, and writes music and plays music and sings, and runs a band and record label. No music playing 24/24/24/almost another 24 from CD, radio or guitar has never happened here in all these years, except three times. Once when my baby sister died. Once when my dad died. And one other time last year.

Ned got himself a haircut. Hey, times are hard, thus it's even more important to present oneself well, right? That's my theory, anyway, ordering him to go get a haircut.

Ned tells me about being in Two Boots pizza over in the East Village before getting the haircut. "This gorgeous black woman is at the counter while I'm snarfing the pizza. She's about 19, I'd guess. And just perfect. Dressed just right, a personality that is really attractive and easy-going as she's talking with the guy behind the counter. I find I'm staring at her ass and can't stop. Then I notice every guy in the place is just staring at her, can't take their eyes off her. I realized until then I hadn't had a sexual thought in three days."
(This weekend's assignment Constance -- figure out how you're going to handle all this in terms of IWHIIC, the novel that was tracking 2001 in contempo sexy NYC. You can't end the book, now, like you planned. It's all got to be revised some how and re-drafted.)

Why I'm seeing only men doing the Ground Zero work, I do not know. I do not even know if that reflects the reality of who is doing this work. It's the bucket brigades I see on the television screens that stab me to the heart. A sequence where a part of a desk is sent down the line .... Sometimes I see groups of these men walking to Ground Zero, and groups walking up from Ground Zero. They often march as they did in the military, chanting their sound offs. Their spirit and ability awes me.

Constance, this weekend get hold of t-shirts, sox, underwear and non-drowsy allergy over-the-counter medications to donate to the rescue workers next week.

It's soon going to stop being All Ground Zero All The Time in the mass media, and we NYers got to hang in there, take care of our own. I'm awed and humble and so grateful to the rest of the country, and will continue to be, because I know it's going to remain there for us. But we NYers especially must show the the Rescue and Recovery teams how much we care about them and what they are doing for us.

I don't suppose offering my body to every guy wearing a utility and/or tool belt would answer so well as shirts, sox, underwear and non-drowsy allergy medications? But, you know, it's war time and sex gets fast, loose and lax ....

I tell ya, those Con-Ed guys, so many of 'em AfAm, stay so jaunty (unlike the firefighters who all have the 1000 yard stare -- oh man, what they are going through) -- and all these guys: cops, firefighters, rescue workers, sanitation workers, steel workers, construction workers, telephone workers, etc. are all in their prime and in really good shape. Just FYI, ladies, just in case you are thinking of later in the year visiting NYC and want to contribute something then .... They are going to be working here a long time.

Constance Ash, who is most grateful for your patience and support

September 15, 2001, Saturday

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