friday, september 14

a small epiphany: last night while I sat curled in the corner underneath my windowsill sobbing incoherently into the phone, I realized that what I really want to do right now is go to new york. I just want to be there. I want to smell the chemical-burned smell because in my head new york smells like subway steam and sidewalk food and garbage and electricity (and I love that smell). I want to see all the photocopied pictures of missing people taped to sidewalks and poles because there are so many of them whose names I still don't know, and because I'm still afraid of finding names I do know. I want to see the funny empty streets where I've jaywalked so many times and ended up sprinting to beat the oncoming traffic. I want to go to chinatown and see if the sidewalks are have spread out trinkets and shoes and fish, because someone said chinatown was acting normal and I can't imagine that. I want to see the paper debris and the shattered glass and the everywhere ash-dust. I want to see my friends and my ex-classmates and everyone so I can touch them and make sure they're still real. I want to look at the sky because even though I know those towers are gone I still can't picture them gone, really gone, and my imagination refuses to fill in the space with anything that makes sense. it doesn't make sense. I want to go to central park and stand on top of climbing rocks. maybe I shouldn't but I just want to understand what it's like; I want the new york in my head to match the new york in reality, and even though I wish I could make it work the other way I would rather have the ugly harmony than complete discord. I want to breathe with the city. I know it will hurt.

I'm still in the suburbs, though, and even though not a thing feels normal I can imagine now that something will, eventually.
22:56 ++

thursday, september 13

I'm still here, but my ability to turn feelings into words mostly isn't.
20:21 ++

wednesday, september 12

today is a series of things, because I still lack the ability to process time as anything but instantaneous.

(one) cnn still on in the parlors downstairs at still-dark-early hours this morning, surrounded by a semicircle of empty chairs. (two) the flag at half mast, first thing I saw on my way up the hill after breakfast, fluttering gracefully over parrish. (three) sunlight glancing softly off the hanging vines along the side of the science library. beautiful weather. (four) last bits of deep bleeding-red summer pudding in a translucent pink plastic bowl, repeatedly escaping my white plastic spoon. (five) the moment when the door hit my arm and water lept from my cup and splashed all over my shirt, and I laughed and laughed, leaning on the railing because I couldn't stand up. (six) the old, varnished columbia wave machine sitting in the physics chair's office, with a row of little white metal discs next to the label ether waves, patented in the same year that einstein said there was no such thing as ether. (seven) "hi" in the subject line of an email. (eight) pale blue cotton too close to focus on, the smell of another human being, and the sudden realization that I really did need to be hugged. (nine) a lone white jetstream splitting the sky horizontally, dissipating into twilight. (ten) the lights of the oil refineries in philly glittering through the trees, from the third-floor window where I climbed out and sat with my feet dangling, and the whole world stretching away to the north.
20:40 ++

for some reason I need to be surrounded by something so I'm wearing long sleeves even though the sun is bright and warm outside. but really what I want is to just be quiet and hold the world, and everyone on it, as if I could keep everything safe through sheer force of love. some things are unfixable, beyond comfort, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to try.

dear world. I love you.
11:34 ++

hello, new day.

I am always happy to see the sun in the morning, to be alive in the morning, and perhaps I should feel moreso today but I don't. I am grateful for a new day but today isn't about me, except that I am supposed to pick up and go on with normalcy, artificial as it may feel. no. today is about the people who lost something, really lost something. the list of victims is still incomplete and growing but it is shocking and almost unbelievable to see even one name I recognize, one name whose face I can see just like that even though the face is gone now, and I know that for every one of the thousands of names that will be added to that list there are many people reading and reeling from the blow. all I know to say is that I am so sorry for everyone who is dead, or dying, or dying inside, and I am so sorry for the cities that are wounded still as well, for everyone and everything not afforded the luxury of sleep, not allowed to keep nightmares trapped in the cage of unconsciousness.

the red cross won't take my blood, so I am giving them money, because I refuse to be helpless.
09:18 ++

tuesday, september 11

what must it have been like on that first airplane? people just sitting, dozing maybe because it's an early morning flight, and then suddenly there is screaming because the flight attendant's been stabbed, and then just confusion, hysteria, people on the planephones calling their families back in boston. some of them are crying, some of them are shaking, some of them are just pale and still, frozen, but the plane keeps moving and oh god, there are more of them with knives and the people in uniforms are bleeding and crying too, and there's no one left to make things right. maybe then over the noise of panic there is banging and cracking and yelling from the cockpit as the terrorists break in and steal the plane from the pilot, and everything jerks a little and shudders and everyone is scrambling for seatbelts and trying to remember the pictures in the little plastic safety card, do you put your head between your knees or is it hands behind your head? the skyscrapers are looming closer outside, shining in the sun, and people scream that we're going down, the plane is going down. closer and closer, so fast you forget how fast planes move and then suddenly they're next to real life-size objects and it is so fast and the plane is going to crash. people praying, holding each other, holding their armrests, their heads, anything to hold on to. and then, the noise, metal rending metal and a sudden rush of air and darkness and explosion and then nothing, because that first blossom of fiery orange destruction is the end of the plane, the plane that came from boston...

I have no idea really what it was like but I want to know, I want to imagine it away from all the real people. I imagine too hard sometimes and then I am sick, crying, but it is just so awful. eighty one passengers on an underbooked airplane and what set of circumstances and coincidences had to line up for each of them to be on that one plane out of the dozens that were supposed to fly between boston and los angeles today? I can't fathom it. and you will have to forgive me for writing and writing, but I don't know what else to do.
23:39 ++

my list has fourteen people checked off, alive, and eleven still with unwritten question marks. and one almost certainly dead.

how can I explain without sounding completely heartless that what hurts the most right now is that empty spot in manhattan where there are supposed to be skyscrapers?

that is my city and it. just. hurts.
19:45 ++

good news trickles slowly in and I am finally able to start making a list, knowing I'll be able to put check marks next to names, but on my list of twenty-six so far there are only five people I know are alive, and I keep thinking of the thousands of names I don't even know. things are slowly looking more normal: trains running by campus again and phones working (so surprising the first time I forgot how to speak) and the web speeding up with pictures again instead of all text; still, the sky is eerily quiet without the whine and glimmer of airplanes from philly, and there are televisions and radios in all corners keeping everyone transfixed, stunned, wordless.

I eat my vegan brownie and breathe and finally the equations in my astronomy paper start to fall into order, but still I can't write in anything but the present tense and every time I see that empty smoke-clouded skyline I think I can never go home again.
16:06 ++

it is a joke at first -- a plane crashed into a building hundreds of miles away and for this we cancel class? -- but then in the middle of the coffee bar me at the computer, cnn is too slow, and everyone around me saying did you see it? do you have it? what happened can you tell me? and then the boy next to me says my mother works in the world trade center and gets up, knocking his chair over, and I am the one suddenly drowning in tears. I sprint between televisions and telephones and computers but I can't run fast enough and the plane from boston crashes into the building in new york over and over and over in slow motion, and my cities are colliding in midair killing people. fire in the pentagon but I just want them to bring manhattan back and the smoke is everywhere, everywhere even though the buildings are falling. the first one falls and the boy says there's only one. there are supposed to be two. there's only one and cellphones won't work and no new email yet I tick off the people I know in new york thinking of where they were this morning at nine? and then the next one falls. there are supposed to be two but now there are none and my very first skyline is gone. the man on tv keeps saying terrible loss of life and I am selfish willing the lives I know to be trapped in subways on the way to work or safe on faraway sidewalks and then a plane crashes in pennsylvania and I cry and cry and cry, waiting.
11:02 ++

monday, september 10

there's a book I remember from my childhood -- perhaps it was a bookmobile book, or maybe a garage sale book, but my first encounter with it was somewhere around kindergarten -- that's stuck with me in a funny way all my life. it's a simple little picture book, illustrated in three colors, called what good luck! what bad luck! and it's out of print now, but the basic plot goes something like this: a plane ride, what good luck! the plane caught fire, what bad luck! a parachute, what good luck! a hole in the parachute, what bad luck! a haystack, what good luck! a pitchfork in the haystack, what bad luck! he missed the pitchfork, what good luck! he missed the haystack, what bad luck! and so on, complete with comma splices and confusing pronouns. I think the real plot has something to do with a birthday party, and in the end the party is for him (what good luck!) but it's the back-and-forth-luck that lodged itself somewhere deep in my brain, presumably with the intention of staying forever, much like all fifty states in alphabetical order and the television commercial jingles from the sixties that my mother used to sing all the time. so sometimes I find myself watching the world, looking for luck, or sometimes (because my brain really is pretty busy) just for good and bad:

I woke up before my alarm clock went off. good!
I was so tired that I spent three minutes staring at my shoe before I remembered how to tie it. bad!
I finally figured out how to hang up a mirror using poster gum and wire. good!
I did so even though I really should have been doing homework. bad!
I did all the math on one of my physics problems right. good!
I couldn't figure out what the next physics problem was even asking. bad!
my professor said he could explain the problem. good!
the problem turned out to be a trick question. bad!!!! (grr)
I said something intelligent in seminar. good!
we spent three and a half hours in seminar and still didn't finish everything. bad!
I led a nice long rugby run. good!
the humidity almost choked us. bad!
it started raining! good!
it stopped raining. bad!
I got to take a nap and now I am all warm and squoozley inside. good!

and so on, sketching myself into lines filled with three colors, white for my skin and black for my textbook and red for my mouth, flooding everything surrounding me with paler shades (grey for the sky, pink for the sun), so that I can live inside the pages flipping in my head. clearly it is the third dimension that is the deciding factor, because even though my superficial little scale tipped back and forth and back and forth, I can't think of a single reason not to count this as a good day. even if it does eventually end up out of print.

silliness entertains me. what's been good and bad for you today?
22:00 ++

in eveninglight after the sputtering rain my room is warm, lit pink by ambient sunset, thick with humidity, and full of only my own noises like the inside of an eggshell. I am still damp from sweating and showering and sweating again, curled up for a nap and trusting that my own little patch of the universe will hold still for just so long even as the rest of it whirls and whirls. it amazes me sometimes that I know how to feel safe inside my own head, but I earned it, and this. I think.
20:01 ++

sunday, september 9

early morning monday must come equipped with headlights, because I already feel myself trapped in their glare just as if I were standing in the middle of a road, transfixed and waiting for the impending collision.
16:28 ++