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2001-10-22 / 1:05 a.m. ~Finally, I'm Angry~ I love New York City. I've been there a few times - the first was with my father when I was 17. My mother was dying and he'd taken me on a trip to Massachusetts to have a friend of his from college paint my portrait. On the way back we went to New York - or was it on the way there? Either way, I was so caught up in the energy of that place. Manhattan was this living breathing thing, not just an island with lots of buildings, skyscrapers, people, it was life. We drove from one end of that island to the other, in the heat of August, in my father's LTD. I didn't see much besides what lay at eye level. Years later my sister-in-law took a job in New York, got a flat in Brooklyn, near Prospect Park. My brother stayed here to sell their house, hoping to move there, to New York, to be with her, but he never did sell the house, she missed him and she moved back. But she lived there, and in Connecticut too for a while, for maybe two or three years. While she was in Brooklyn I went to visit her a couple times. The first time, I flew to Newark, took the bus to the Port Authority Terminal, and wasn't that at or near the WTC? It was Christmas Eve and Manhattan was dead. We wandered around in the freezing cold, the next day took the elevator up the WTC tower, whichever it was that took you up, Tower 1, Tower 2, I don't remember, but we were adventurous, us three, we loved doing crazy stuff, tops of buildings, roller coasters, anything high or fast. I took pictures from atop that building, the Empire State Building off in the distance decked out in green and red for the holiday. Memorial Day weekend I'd gone back to see her, alone. It was just us two, and I learned a secret she'd kept from me, something really important, and it severed us, irreparably. I'd wandered while she was at work, I took the subway all around town, explored Central Park on my own, saw a photo exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum, found a diner I'd read about in a guidebook. I loved that city, I could wander for hours, never feel afraid, or alone, only the energy of that living breathing place. Alive with culture, with people, with energy, 24 hours a day. So easy to get around, so many things to do. Before our rift we'd gone up to the Empire State Building, I bought a fridge magnet at the gift shop at the top, and I took pictures of us, on one side our hair blowing straight up in the air with the wind, on the other the wind was at our faces. We could see the WTC off in the distance, two pillars, matching, sentinels of sorts, a beacon to the world, towering above everything else. Tonight I watched movies. "Groove" was on, I'd seen it before and wanted to see it again. It's in another great city, San Francisco, possibly my next favorite city. Fun, fun movie, makes me want to dance, to rave, to take fun drugs, makes me wish I'd gotten off my ass and gone to MJQ Friday. Dammit. Then there was this short film on, after, called, "Are You Cinderella?", set to a jazz beat, an urban groove, set in NYC, Manhattan Island, and there, in beautiful cinematography, skylines, the Brooklyn Bridge, the water, the city lights at night, the WTC. Gave me a little chill to see it like that, like it never went away, like it's still there, like it has all been a dream, a bad dream. And this film is a man looking for his lover from the previous night, and he doesn't know her face, he's only got her Manolo Blahnik shoe, just the one. He searches the streets for her, to the jazzy beat, this jazzy visual, no dialogue 'til the end, and it's New York City, it's that city I love, it's that energy, that life, that beauty, and the WTC is there, then. Some light-hearted comedy is on next, something I've never heard of, "If You Only Knew", Jonathon Schaech masquerading as gay so he can be roommates with the lovely Alison Eastwood, and it's light and charming, and fun, and it's in New York City, in Manhattan, and there's the skyline, the pretty lights of the city, from across the river, and it's the Brooklyn Bridge and it's the WTC, and this is too much in a row, for me, and suddenly I am so angry! First, Moby's journal, his eulogy for the WTC, which I recommend to anyone interested, for it's beautiful, and he's beautiful, and I wrote on his message boards that I think I'm in love with him, but that's beside the point. Then these movies tonight, these beautiful images of that perfect city, that ultimate city, the city that welcomes everyone, and anyone, all those huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and these stupid misguided fucks ruined it, they took out these beautiful buildings, not to mention all those innocent people who had no idea. Those dishwashers and cooks in the Windows On the World restaurant, the office workers, janitors, the people in the shops in the basement, the restaurants, those poor rescue workers, firefighters who came on the scene to help get the people out, the cops below, crushed by debris. And people like Moby living in the area, now breathing asbestos filled smoke, daily, taping the space under their doors and windows so they don't have to breathe it when the air shifts. And no one told them there was asbestos in the air, they just knew they had itchy skin and sore throats. It's gone, the whole WTC complex, all of it. And isn't that where I came into town when I got off the bus at the Port Authority? It's gone. That skyline, that cityscape, it's forever changed. I had a mad desire to go there, to take my camera again, to photograph what it looks like now, to see it for myself, to take my vacation next week and fly up there, just walk around, take the subway, take pictures of everything. Gone. And it's not that I didn't feel this before, I did, the first day. I remember walking to the file cabinet at work, the buildings had just collapsed, but I was working, we were working, with our radios on, and I thought, No, this is not happening, this is just a dream. Those buildings are not gone, those people are not dead, none of this is true, how can it possibly be? But something that horrible is too much to comprehend, too much to hold onto unless you're right there. I put it away, I thought of the future, the near future, the declaration of war, the terror that we were going to inflict on others, how wrong it all was, and to have my attention diverted was the best and most sane thing for me, then. Now, I'm angry, I'm sad and I'm angry. How could they? How could they do something so horrible? It doesn't mean I advocate war, it doesn't mean I believe anything we've done since then has been right, in fact we should've seen this coming, we should've stopped it, that day, it never should've been allowed to happen. But to see it as it was, to watch a movie that shows the beauty of that city, that fantastic and best city in the world, and now it's gone, that gaping hole sits there like an open wound, and people still work around the clock to clean it, to close it up, to stitch it shut, yet fires still burn, and yesterday I read a story of a mother cat who'd been found beneath the rubble, with her baby kittens, all will survive, and I think who else is still down there? What is down there? What is it like now? What do they find in that rubble? Two 110-story buildings collapsed and the rubble is beyond belief, and those beautiful buildings......I don't know. It's just hard to see it as it was, that's all. The day it happened I went home at lunch and got my pictures, I brought them back to my cubicle and set them in front of me, remembered how cold it was that day I took them, Here's the view, the view no one can see now. Here's the view from the Empire State Building. See, there are the towers at the end of the island. It won't be the last time I feel all of this. No doubt. And I can't imagine what it's like for Moby and everyone else who actually lives right there, seeing it every day, missing those towers, feeling disoriented. This is one of the few times I'm glad I live where I do. I'm glad my city wasn't a target, and I don't think we ever will be, but one never knows. And here we tear buildings down without a thought every day anyway. In all the time I've lived here I've seen so many changes... I want to go there, to NYC. Cost of the War in Iraq
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