JOURNAL      9 . 21 . 2001

un rêve dans le zoo du parc central


thursday, september 20   

The disaster (someone, please, come up with a decent name for it...) continues to be brought back to mind by smells. It rained all day today. Normally, rain is welcome here after a week of sunshine, because it washes the haze out of the sky and makes the air feel light and clean. Today, it just washed the smoke and the smells of burned wet paper and tires down to nose level, where they're as strong as ever.

I missed the speech, but I read it–probably the best way to take it. It did at least one very important thing: the nameless, faceless enemy who once lived in shadows now has a name, for all to hear. Calling it by name I hope will provide a focused target for the anger of people like my little brother, who last I heard was just bent on killing, didn't matter who. Going after al Qaeda, I hope I hope, will mean we don't have to go after Islam, or the middle east, or even, for the moment, Afghanistan.

  

The horror of the numbers in this poll needs no comment, but a lot of hard thinking and careful action (via a.wholelottanothing.org).

Some friends of Cia have set up a relief and college fund for Gabriel Jacobs, whose father died in the WTC 6 days before Gabriel was born. If you can, please help.

A week ago, the way the government was talking about what to do next was all T.V. Western: we'd smoke them out, hunt them down, and catch Bin Laden dead or alive. Now it appears we've met the Taliban at its own level, even in spite of the White House apology for calling the campaign a "crusade." The campaign--"Infinite Justice"--is still named for one of the attributes of the Christian God. At best, that casts this conflict as one holy war against another: jihad vs. crusade. At worst, it's America's Savior complex reaching new heights of delusion.

On the other hand, I can't tell if I'm just more sensitive to the amazing things going on around me now, or if there are actually more amazing things going on: Blake, Brian, and Rahul all had birthdays this week. So did my brother Richard. Two days ago, my friends Will and Anne told me they were going to have a baby. The next day my friends Matt and Jennifer told me they'd just had theirs. Poetry, which I haven't cared about in 2 years, seems important again, especially when it can seem as germane as this.

tuesday, september 18   

Last evening when we left the office, the air smelled like smoke again. After lunch today, we walked over to the West Side Highway, where people are still cheering on the workers. A Baptist volunteer group from Tennessee has set up camp in a messy fenced-in lot by the highway, and they were busy washing the workers' water coolers and dishes. They also have a trailer set up with showers inside, so that workers without places to stay can clean up.

My friend Brian said he spent last night working at the Red Cross, where, in spite of what you hear, they still need volunteers and donations. It's just that the things they need are mundane, not what you think of as necessary for a heroic effort: they need propane gas to keep the cooking fires going. They need soup ladles. They need candy, but not cookies. Tomorrow, they may have all they need of those things and need shoelaces and 3-in-1 oil instead. Above all, they still need money, which you can give them here and here

2 years ago, I ran away from a PhD program in English, frustrated with what felt like the impotence of language in a world dominated by images, with the passivity of critical thinking in a country obsessed with production and action. But everything I've seen this week has shown me how baseless my frustration was. From the moment the second tower burst into flames--when all we could do was stand there mute, or repeat the same cries over and over--it was obvious that part of the difficulty of getting through this was going to be finding the language to describe it. Since then, not only has the poverty of our vocabulary for discussing what has happened to us been painful, but the lack of imagination so many of us have shown in thinking of ways to respond intellectually seems to me to be politically dangerous. A will to interrogate rhetoric and a suspicion of habits of thought are the only things that can give us some purchase on the situation.

In peacetime, teaching the humanities has often been looked on as the pasttime of the decadent or the hopelessly liberal. Now, that work--raising the level of public discourse by training people to think and speak better, and to stretch their critical and moral imaginations--looks essential, and I miss doing it and having it done to me.

Jennifer took pictures, better than mine, of the memorials in Tompkins Square and Union Square. See them here.

monday, september 17   

My pictures from 9.11.01 are still here; pictures from the 12th and 13th are here. Blake's account is still here

Yesterday Jennifer and I got on our bikes with the idea that we'd go try to see all the memorials that have sprung up around the city: we stopped in Tompkins Square park, the park closest to our apartment, and there were melted candles and their perfume, chalk sidewalk murals and flyers taped to trees, just scattered all around the park. There were also a jazz duo playing and lots of people lying in the grass, giving at least the appearance of normalcy. Then we rode up to Union Square, which we'd only seen up to then the way most people have seen it: on the news. In real life, it looks like the perfect inversion of footage we've seen of 'ground zero': an utter chaos of colors and people; scraps of paper advertising the missing, taking a stand against violence, and announcing memorial services; candles melted everywhere so that the cement is slick from wax. It was enough to make us retreat to Tompkins Square, lie in the grass, and attempt the appearance of normalcy ourselves. The individual memorials are touching, but in truth, this whole city has become a memorial. I took some half-hearted pictures.

In normal news, the new edition of generationrice launched yesterday, in spite of everything, with an excellent new splash by Ari and Thalia. You can't keep some people down.

Later:
I would like to propose a one-week ban on sirens in New York City. They only bring back memories of Tuesday or exacerbate the depression caused by the fact that no one pulled from the rubble has needed an ambulance since Wednesday.

saturday, september 15   

Last night we sat around at Antarctica listening to one of the rescue workers, a 'mole,' who climbs down into holes in the World Trade Center rubble to find bodies, talk about his job. He said, "there I am, worst disaster in the world, and I have my choice of 7 kinds of potato. I can have my potatoes baked, fried, au gratin, roasted; I can have my hot dogs grilled or fried and with or without cheese; I can get rehydrated, dehydrated, have my eyes washed out and get a massage from a nurse all at the same time. I feel almost guilty down there." He also confirmed what everyone has said–that you can't imagine how monumental the debris piles down there are; and that he'd had it with the journalists trying to get in down there: "They ask me if I've found any bodies, and what do they want me to say? I'm not going to talk about that. I tell them about the potatoes. If you see me on t.v., talking to a reporter, you can be sure I'm making everything up."

But the mole also told us that he'd never seen a better or more inspiring display of work, that you couldn't imagine how efficient and skilled the effort was. It's like an ant colony, people shoulder-to-shoulder working bucket lines, hanging from cranes with blow torches to cut up girders, the mayor–who, he said, had actually been buried in the rubble himself and had to be rescued right after the buildings collapsed–climbing around in the debris, shaking the hand of every worker.

People keep asking me if I want to get out of the city now. I don't want to get out at all: I feel I've been nailed to this city forever, tattooed as its own. My friend Blake moved up here just after we did, and he feels the same way. Here's his story of the day of the attack, which he saw from the mouth of the subway station, and a few more pictures, nothing much. Fray has collected–rather, is collecting–accounts of the day and the aftermath, too.

friday, september 14   

The more we try to return to normal, the more awful and strange everything seems to me. We came in to the office yesterday wearing masks to protect us from the dust in the air. Everyone was wearing them. Today we rode our bikes through the cold, driving rain that must be filling the rescue workers with a deeper dread than they already feel. The office is about half-full, but I don't think anyone is really able to focus.

The Muslim-run deli where we buy our cat food and beer was shut down and surrounded by 15 police cars on Wednesday night, evidently the target of threats: I'm as scared of that kind of thing, about the blindness of our anger and our righteousness, as I am of another building falling.

Thank you, Blogger, for keeping us all in touch.

thursday, september 13   

Updated pictures from the day of the attack, with captions that actually reflect what was going on.

Some pictures showing the towers from before

Some pictures I took yesterday, riding around on my bike and taking in the unreal city.

Because we didn't have internet access at home, I kept notes to add to this when I could get back to work. Here's a fuller account of our experience of the attack, and what I was thinking Tuesday night and Wednesday, if you care.

Tues. night

I don't think this will ever sink in. We rode our bikes to work today, and only Jennifer heard the first explosion, which she figured was just construction noise. As we crossed Broadway, we heard a bunch of sirens--more than usual, even for New York. As we hit Mercer, the next street over, we could see smoke above the buildings, and heard people talking about a plane hitting the building. Then as we turned the corner of Greene Street, there it was: a gaping hole in the West tower.

What was strange about seeing it was that then it felt like it was (surely!) all over: that I was witnessing the aftermath of the historic day that some misguided pilot crashed his Cessna into the WTC. I rode my bike downtown, south of Canal, to get better pictures, and was speculating about the cause of the crash with a postal worker as the second tower exploded. We couldn't see the plane hit the building, but even so we began to suspect it was a terrorist attack, because there was no other way to make sense of it--even though everyone tried, as though no one wanted to accept that terrorism had hit, finally.

THEN it felt over, and I actually worried about being late for work. It was while we were inside the office (from which we had a clear view of the towers) that they began collapsing. People kept coming into the office--a former employee who worked in the WTC, family members of employees, friends bawling from watching people leaping from the windows....

Now everyone realizes that it's still not over. I can't match my memory of the building exploding with the news footage of the plane flying into it. We all jump whenever we hear a loud noise, and regard the water and strangers with suspicion. We can't make phone calls. When we look down the street of our apartment, where we once saw the towers, we now see a plume of orange smoke:


Weds. a.m.
When we woke up this morning, the smoke we could see from our bedroom window last night was gone, and the sun was out, and even though it wasn't possible to imagine that everything was back to normal, it did seem like the fires had all been put out, as though the disaster hadn't been quite as enormous as it had appeared at first. Then, of course, the news showed that the smoke was as bad as ever, just blowing in a different direction.

I hate to say this, but I can't stop thinking about it. I've never had a whit of respect for President Bush, and I didn't expect that he'd handle this situation particularly well, but I've been appalled by just how badly he's handled it. It hit me most clearly when I saw Giuliani on television, making his 4th or 5th public statement, handling reporters' questions, providing information to television viewers. I've never really liked Giuliani, either, but I was filled with admiration for him as he stood up there, going beyond even what his press secretary wanted him to do to answer questions and provide comfort and information. Bush, by contrast, looks like a cornered rabbit, and his unwillingness to take questions from reporters or to say anything that indicates that he even know what's going on is worse, now, than uninspiring: it's terrifying. I don't want that man leading the country into war.

wednesday, september 12   

We can't get online at home--earthlink has lost power, apparently--so these are all the pictures I have up, still. We walked over to work just now to get our bikes and check our email--the only reliable form of communication, realy. We're about the only people who can get here, because the police aren't allowing pedestrians who don't live south of Houston to cross Houston. The streets down here are totally empty, and a little eerie. There are people walking around, and the fishmarkets in Chinatown are open. But we saw a father teaching his son to ride a tricycle in the middle of Grand Street, which is usually bumper-to-bumper traffic, and we could have sat down in the middle of Broadway for an hour and not risked being run over.

It's an awful sight, the skyline without the towers. The smoke from the fires is filtering the sunlight, making everything look a little jaundiced.

tuesday, september 11   

WTC explosion. Everyone looks and feels sick.
Also photos at cia's, in her journal: http://www.ext212.com/

sunday, september 9   

I spent all day today inside working on a file upload tool for my father so that he didn't have to email me repeatedly every time he wanted to add a new photograph to his site. I felt fairly happy with myself for getting it to work, but then....

We went over to D.U.M.B.O. this evening for the finale of the Digital Dumbo festival to see a film by our friend Gary's wife Hila: a stop-action animation fantasia about a superstar ladybug soccer player killed by an angry jealous bee. It was astonishing: intense, beautiful color, a great obliquely-told story, perfect music. It should have made every other filmmaker showing work tonight feel minuscule, as it did me and my puffed-up geek pride. The only thing I could compare the film to is what I've seen by the Brothers Quay. I guess that's a pretty obvious connection, but it's a flattering one, too, I hope. Congratulations, you guys. That was one of the most inspiring things I've seen in a long, long time.

thank you, blogger