September 21
 

 
 
 
 

I am not supposed to hear my mother cry, and yet I am and I do, constantly sobbing  for the destroyed city and her loneliness and a neighborhood filled with cars that aren't going to be moved because the people aren't anymore.  Hearing my mother cry makes me want to rush there to take her away, to protect her from this horrible thing that has happened.  It makes me want to grab my things and go back to a city I know and love above all others.  It also enrages me and wants to propel me out into the night to take up arms, to make right. To strike back.  The anger is replaced just as suddenly with a soul deadening sorrow that bubbles up from depths I don't think I've ever had to explore.
 

The fireman, the sniffer dogs, the secretaries, the children, your children.  The pilots.  The people on the second plane who saw what the first plane had done.  The skyline.  The bridges. Our naïveté.  Our history.  My history.  The history that is now being written and rewritten, now, right now.  The people who line the streets of the West Side Highway.  The Brooklyn Bridge.

The Germans, the Japanese, the British.  New York.  Washington DC. Pennsylvania.  The world.  The dead.  The trapped.  The eyes of the left behind.  The broken, the brokenhearted.  My childhood.  Yours.  The airlines.  Our skies.  Sunny days in the fall.  Our economy.  The world economy.  The photographs.  The spirit.  The innocence of our nation.  Vietnam.

The soldiers, the military, The Gulf War.  Women in sneakers talking into cellphones.  Men in suits.  Nannies pushing carriages.  Collecting the bodies.  The flag.  Nationalism.  The astonishing beauty of the buildings.  The way they centered you in Lower Manhattan.  Coming out of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.  Brooklyn.  My friends.  Yours.  Your cousins, nephews, aunts, nieces, priests.  Our unshaken believe that we are safe because we are mostly kind.  The new found, reluctant acceptance that there are, indeed evil people.
 

The unspeakable optimism of skyscrapers.  The Kremlin.  The Berlin Wall.  Our open boarders.  Our unspoken faith in the rest of the world to do the right thing, to act the right way.  The freedom to worship who and what and when.  Fanatics.  Jerry Falwell.  The heroes.  The surprising people who've emerged to lead and soothe us.  Rudolph Giuliani.  Colin Powell.  The police.  The rescue workers, the crane operators, the flowers, the tears.

The pregnant, the handicapped.  The people who jumped.  The armed guards at airports.  The unease.  The knowledge that nothing but nothing will ever be able to be the same.  The first and last time you put your hands out to touch a tower.  The first time you saw them in person, the last time you saw them on TV.  The deep, resounding sorrow.  The photographs.  The months, the years of cleanup.  The grief.  The helplessness.  The faceless enemy.  The war to come.  The change of life.   The reporters.

The smoke and the smell and the terror.  Explaining hate to a child.  Giving hate a name.  Accepting that you, yourself hate.  The prayer.  The kindness.  The view from the Promenade.  The Statue of Liberty.  Jersey City.  The PATH trains.  The very last time I was there.  The veterans.  The elderly.  The doctors, the nurses, the construction workers.  The American Express Building.  The morgues.  The body parts.  The funerals after funerals after funerals.  The ever rising numbers.  The numbness, oh dear god.  The numbness.  The people who tried to call home, but got no answer.  The plane hitting the building.  The astonishing, unbelievable incomprehensible wrongness of their absence.  The enormity of what is left.  What is left to do.  What we must do next.

The idea that we are arrogant because we are allowed an opinion.  Because we work hard and play hard and like to spend money.  Because we use oil and send troops.  Because we are unable to compute that someone would lure out a captain by killing the stewardess, that someone exploited our basic American nature.  Because they used our very own planes, ones that we have all flown on and stepped out of and kissed loved ones before.  Because they closed us down, briefly.  Because our knees were kicked out.  Because zealotry is dangerous, no matter who or why or when or where.  Because of my mother and yours.  Because of my grandparents and yours.  Because of your father.  Because of who you are.  Because of who we are.  Because we are American.  Because we have the capability and the resources to help and make a difference and we haven't always.  The priest.  The rabbi.  The Hindu. The Roman Catholic. Ghandi.  Martin Luther King, Jr.  Hitler.  Stalin.

Think carefully about what you believe the right thing is, this  will change everything.
 
 

 if you want to read what i wrote the other day, it's here. if you want turdmonster, he's here.  if you want to see my links, they're here. if you want to mail me, that's here.