September 11, 2001
Copyright © April 17, 2018 by John T. Foster.
June 25, 2002
The sun came through the windows and lit up the shadow. I was sitting in the middle room of my apartment, that one that gets no direct sun, just reflections of the light.
I walked down the stairs outside my door, it was dark there too. I opened the door & pulled it shut behind me, pulling very hard to make sure it locked. The air was warm and dry, and as I descended the 8 or 9 concrete steps to the street I felt the air grow warmer and denser, like from a broth to a soup.
I crossed the busy four-lane avenue that separates me from Brooklyn Heights, Atlantic Avenue. There were people on both sides of the street clutching surgical masks to their faces, the kind you buy at the hardware store when you're sanding before you paint. They had to have gotten them from the hardware store for so many people to have them up to their faces like that, every fourth person out of four. It had to be the hardware store.
I had no idea where I was. Later I thought I was in a movie but not then. I knew I was somewhere I'd never been because I recognized everything I saw but it was all fake, seen backwards in a mirror, not possibly real. There were people in suits and people not jogging in sweat suits, they were just standing there idle, plenty of slacker kids delivering groceries or not but I was walking impolitely fast, I had to rush.
I'd turned my head left while crossing Atlantic & seen the pillar of dark gray smoke blowing over, dead center on my own building, much too convenient I thought knowing how I'd write about it later & obviously later when I'd be saying it was centered on my apartment it would be bullshit even though right now there it was, dead center.
Turning left on Montague after 8 blocks I walked toward the Promenade, and its landscaped wrought-iron shrine before the view. Now I was running. There was something I had to get to and see really fast, I was afraid I would miss it, it was like running down the beach in the summer in case the girls farther on you'd been told were sunbathing nude were going to leave & you'd miss it. It's just something you do to deal with your head, it doesn't make sense, you rush knowing you have to but knowing it's some bullshit way of dealing with what's inside you that you shan't be fixing. You know it scares you & thus never finish thinking about it.
Smoke pouring out and over both sides of where they both were, I guess, thick black smoke rolling out and slurried on, liquid skudding down, lighter filth blowing to where I'd been. It looked like a volcano because it was that, inner core burning hotter and vomiting out, it was vile.
I stood & watched for awhile, had my camera around my neck but couldn't manage to lift it past my neck, I tried twice. Looking intently I saw through the clouds once, when the wind tore them up, saw for a second scarred volcanic edges of formerly something. There were many, many Euro-looking guys in shades & shorts, short-sleeved shirts & sunglasses lifting and snapping, looking and lifting and snapping again, just doing what they'd have done anyway I imagine. I tried to get mad at them but wasn't really able to, I let myself down, found no release in it.
I still had no recognizable feeling whatso and it made me mad, made me feel indifferent which I hated. I wanted clear feeling sent somewhere cleanly closing out the matter and had none and laughed at not having it. Laughed at knowing I could not anticipate the least thing inside of me.
Back home I wrote the email to my email list, the whole list, not looking to be careful, just "all" even though it had everyone from women I now despised to people from work I never really liked to people I'd been afraid to tell myself why I hadn't deleted from the list.
Michelle had called me first. I'd slept to some ridiculous hour, like 1:30 PM, started paying bills in my underwear. Had not flipped on News Radio 88 like usual. Someone was burning trash, or something, it smelled like burning plastic with trash mixed in. I'd once passed a cheery crowd of folks from the projects watching a crummy tenement burn in Fort Greene, it smelled like that, the smoke of an unplanned, not-beautiful fire. Woodfires from chimneys, they smell nice; burning buildings smell like poor people and failure.
"I called to see how you're doing."
"How'm I doing?" I smiled. "I gotta go to the ATM, I have to get out about twelve bills, got no job & don't know what the hell I'm going to do, no girlfriend, no wife, I'm lousy!" I'd seen my fancy screen phone light up with "Michelle" on top, her name keyed off the Caller ID the way I'd entered it, of course I answered the phone happy because I love Michelle. I'd wanted to marry her.
"Two jet planes hit the World Trade Center, both buildings are completely destroyed. I called to see if you were all right."
Pause. Pause. Pause. Pause.
"That can't be true."
"It is true, it happened this morning, how can you not know? How late did you sleep?" Michelle knows me for real, she sees inside me.
"I slept too late, I've been doing bills, I really can't absorb this. I can't talk."
"Turn on the TV, don't be so disconnected, OK? You have to try to stay more connected with the world, all right?"
"I love you."
"All right, bye."
I called my dad. He had tears in his voice.
"Hi Dad, Michelle just called, I didn't know. Sorry for not calling you earlier. Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I've been watching the TV. Watching the people . . . "
In my life my dad had cried once that I knew of, that I'd been there. It was at his father's funeral. It pissed me off how much sense his feelings made.
I was still sitting at the computer after I wrote to my world & I found that my eyes really, really stung. The smoke in my apartment was so bad I knew I had to leave. Forgot until later that Ace was getting hit too, forgot all about him. Never gave it a thought.
The Yale Club felt like a safe place. It's always been solid, and self-affirming, and old for me. It's where I stood when Bush annouced the start of the Gulf War, it's one of the places where I step outside of time, like McSorley's that way. The FM radio mentioned a whole bunch of trains NOT running Brooklyn to Manhattan, didn't mention the F, I knew the F ran in a whole other tunnel from all that IRT/IND usual-Manhattan-via-WTC shit.
The F train was there! Sitting with doors open at Jay Street - Borough Hall. As I sat the conductor opened up. "Folks, you know what happened today, we are going to try and go to Manhattan. I don't know how far we'll get, you are welcome to come along, I may have to throw you all off anywhere we stop, I don't know. It's up to you." He sounded extremely human and it scared me so much. Train guys do not talk like that, train guys follow procedures driving or speaking, get their ass in trouble when they don't. I started realizing things without finishing it, new to me thoughts like that, humble not as a choice, but as a moment. So fucking scary.
After a few stops the usual blend of Lower East Side/Chinatown folks got on. Some of them turned out to be Chinese tourists -- not Japanese, or Korean. New York had left me confident in stuff like that. A man pulled out pictures and showed them around to his fellow travelers; they smiled. It was a satisfaction I knew, it was the feeling of catching a moment, not missing a train, he was saying to them "how lucky!" and they were saying "oh yeah!" The pictures were of the Twin Towers burning before they fell, fire coming out just a ways below the top, so disaster movie. Before I'd finished again trying to get mad, not that I'd thought about it I just knew I'd tried, I heard sniffling coming from my left. Someone was crying. I didn't look, looked down at the floor. Then I heard sniffling to my right. The tourist put his pictures away and everyone fell silent, I had no distraction keeping me from knowing I'd been #3, almost. I got past that thinking about a humanity so beyond understanding that it trounced my entire life. To save myself embarrassment let me say I refuse to know what that moment was in that subway car, I know not to speak, it's not some thing for one.
Got out at Grand Central, walked up Vanderbilt to eat. Huge clouds of smoke got bashed around 25 stories above my head, by the exhaust fans, they filled the view. Inside I met Robinson, who said he'd expected to see me there based on history and how he'd seen me deal with it. He told me his wife had told him to invite me to stay with them. I declined.
I ate dinner, drank beer and went home. Stopped by the Brazen Head on the way, filled to capacity at midnight, guys in suits and ties. Everyone had a story to tell. Felt cozy. Sucked.
Slept with Ace. Used to that. Still am.
END
June 25, 2002
The sun came through the windows and lit up the shadow. I was sitting in the middle room of my apartment, that one that gets no direct sun, just reflections of the light.
I walked down the stairs outside my door, it was dark there too. I opened the door & pulled it shut behind me, pulling very hard to make sure it locked. The air was warm and dry, and as I descended the 8 or 9 concrete steps to the street I felt the air grow warmer and denser, like from a broth to a soup.
I crossed the busy four-lane avenue that separates me from Brooklyn Heights, Atlantic Avenue. There were people on both sides of the street clutching surgical masks to their faces, the kind you buy at the hardware store when you're sanding before you paint. They had to have gotten them from the hardware store for so many people to have them up to their faces like that, every fourth person out of four. It had to be the hardware store.
I had no idea where I was. Later I thought I was in a movie but not then. I knew I was somewhere I'd never been because I recognized everything I saw but it was all fake, seen backwards in a mirror, not possibly real. There were people in suits and people not jogging in sweat suits, they were just standing there idle, plenty of slacker kids delivering groceries or not but I was walking impolitely fast, I had to rush.
I'd turned my head left while crossing Atlantic & seen the pillar of dark gray smoke blowing over, dead center on my own building, much too convenient I thought knowing how I'd write about it later & obviously later when I'd be saying it was centered on my apartment it would be bullshit even though right now there it was, dead center.
Turning left on Montague after 8 blocks I walked toward the Promenade, and its landscaped wrought-iron shrine before the view. Now I was running. There was something I had to get to and see really fast, I was afraid I would miss it, it was like running down the beach in the summer in case the girls farther on you'd been told were sunbathing nude were going to leave & you'd miss it. It's just something you do to deal with your head, it doesn't make sense, you rush knowing you have to but knowing it's some bullshit way of dealing with what's inside you that you shan't be fixing. You know it scares you & thus never finish thinking about it.
Smoke pouring out and over both sides of where they both were, I guess, thick black smoke rolling out and slurried on, liquid skudding down, lighter filth blowing to where I'd been. It looked like a volcano because it was that, inner core burning hotter and vomiting out, it was vile.
I stood & watched for awhile, had my camera around my neck but couldn't manage to lift it past my neck, I tried twice. Looking intently I saw through the clouds once, when the wind tore them up, saw for a second scarred volcanic edges of formerly something. There were many, many Euro-looking guys in shades & shorts, short-sleeved shirts & sunglasses lifting and snapping, looking and lifting and snapping again, just doing what they'd have done anyway I imagine. I tried to get mad at them but wasn't really able to, I let myself down, found no release in it.
I still had no recognizable feeling whatso and it made me mad, made me feel indifferent which I hated. I wanted clear feeling sent somewhere cleanly closing out the matter and had none and laughed at not having it. Laughed at knowing I could not anticipate the least thing inside of me.
Back home I wrote the email to my email list, the whole list, not looking to be careful, just "all" even though it had everyone from women I now despised to people from work I never really liked to people I'd been afraid to tell myself why I hadn't deleted from the list.
Michelle had called me first. I'd slept to some ridiculous hour, like 1:30 PM, started paying bills in my underwear. Had not flipped on News Radio 88 like usual. Someone was burning trash, or something, it smelled like burning plastic with trash mixed in. I'd once passed a cheery crowd of folks from the projects watching a crummy tenement burn in Fort Greene, it smelled like that, the smoke of an unplanned, not-beautiful fire. Woodfires from chimneys, they smell nice; burning buildings smell like poor people and failure.
"I called to see how you're doing."
"How'm I doing?" I smiled. "I gotta go to the ATM, I have to get out about twelve bills, got no job & don't know what the hell I'm going to do, no girlfriend, no wife, I'm lousy!" I'd seen my fancy screen phone light up with "Michelle" on top, her name keyed off the Caller ID the way I'd entered it, of course I answered the phone happy because I love Michelle. I'd wanted to marry her.
"Two jet planes hit the World Trade Center, both buildings are completely destroyed. I called to see if you were all right."
Pause. Pause. Pause. Pause.
"That can't be true."
"It is true, it happened this morning, how can you not know? How late did you sleep?" Michelle knows me for real, she sees inside me.
"I slept too late, I've been doing bills, I really can't absorb this. I can't talk."
"Turn on the TV, don't be so disconnected, OK? You have to try to stay more connected with the world, all right?"
"I love you."
"All right, bye."
I called my dad. He had tears in his voice.
"Hi Dad, Michelle just called, I didn't know. Sorry for not calling you earlier. Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I've been watching the TV. Watching the people . . . "
In my life my dad had cried once that I knew of, that I'd been there. It was at his father's funeral. It pissed me off how much sense his feelings made.
I was still sitting at the computer after I wrote to my world & I found that my eyes really, really stung. The smoke in my apartment was so bad I knew I had to leave. Forgot until later that Ace was getting hit too, forgot all about him. Never gave it a thought.
The Yale Club felt like a safe place. It's always been solid, and self-affirming, and old for me. It's where I stood when Bush annouced the start of the Gulf War, it's one of the places where I step outside of time, like McSorley's that way. The FM radio mentioned a whole bunch of trains NOT running Brooklyn to Manhattan, didn't mention the F, I knew the F ran in a whole other tunnel from all that IRT/IND usual-Manhattan-via-WTC shit.
The F train was there! Sitting with doors open at Jay Street - Borough Hall. As I sat the conductor opened up. "Folks, you know what happened today, we are going to try and go to Manhattan. I don't know how far we'll get, you are welcome to come along, I may have to throw you all off anywhere we stop, I don't know. It's up to you." He sounded extremely human and it scared me so much. Train guys do not talk like that, train guys follow procedures driving or speaking, get their ass in trouble when they don't. I started realizing things without finishing it, new to me thoughts like that, humble not as a choice, but as a moment. So fucking scary.
After a few stops the usual blend of Lower East Side/Chinatown folks got on. Some of them turned out to be Chinese tourists -- not Japanese, or Korean. New York had left me confident in stuff like that. A man pulled out pictures and showed them around to his fellow travelers; they smiled. It was a satisfaction I knew, it was the feeling of catching a moment, not missing a train, he was saying to them "how lucky!" and they were saying "oh yeah!" The pictures were of the Twin Towers burning before they fell, fire coming out just a ways below the top, so disaster movie. Before I'd finished again trying to get mad, not that I'd thought about it I just knew I'd tried, I heard sniffling coming from my left. Someone was crying. I didn't look, looked down at the floor. Then I heard sniffling to my right. The tourist put his pictures away and everyone fell silent, I had no distraction keeping me from knowing I'd been #3, almost. I got past that thinking about a humanity so beyond understanding that it trounced my entire life. To save myself embarrassment let me say I refuse to know what that moment was in that subway car, I know not to speak, it's not some thing for one.
Got out at Grand Central, walked up Vanderbilt to eat. Huge clouds of smoke got bashed around 25 stories above my head, by the exhaust fans, they filled the view. Inside I met Robinson, who said he'd expected to see me there based on history and how he'd seen me deal with it. He told me his wife had told him to invite me to stay with them. I declined.
I ate dinner, drank beer and went home. Stopped by the Brazen Head on the way, filled to capacity at midnight, guys in suits and ties. Everyone had a story to tell. Felt cozy. Sucked.
Slept with Ace. Used to that. Still am.
END