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09/12/01 Just a few notes from the front here... Kathleen walked home to Brooklyn yesterday en masse, as did Cinde. Kath said that she never in her life imagined so many New Yorkers could be so quiet. My sister-in-law walked to Queens from midtown. It took her two hours. She described it as similar to the New York Marathon, the solid blocks of people streaming across the bridge. Quietly. We are all quiet right now.
My brother works a few blocks away from the WTC. He works new media hours, so he hadn't gone in yet yesterday morning when he found out about the bombing. He has no idea if his office is intact, or if any of his co-workers were injured. We speculated on the status of his building last night. If Century 21 is blown out (and it is, based on the news footage), what would happen to his building, three blocks away? And then we tried to figure out how many people could have died based on how many people could have been working. Ten thousand? Five? We were playing the worst kind of detective, because it's easier than focusing on the individual. My mother went to donate blood this morning in the suburbs of Chicago, and ended up staying and volunteering for a few hours. She sends me new emails every few hours, each one with the same subject heading: "Okay?" *** This morning I noticed they are checking IDs at 14th street, a block away from my house. It's good to know I live at the far end of the catastrophe area. The burnt plastic smell from downtown has finally made its way up as far as midtown (at least that's as far as I was today), through the subways and on the streets. Someone just emailed me and told me there's abestos in that air. Guess I might as well start smoking again. No one one the subways was talking to anyone else. No one was smiling. No one was making eye contact. Actually, I'm not sure if that's any different than usual. There is little street traffic in midtown and none downtown, except for police cars. Every post-apocalyptic movie I have ever seen popped into my head. Mostly I was thinking of that Steven King miniseries from a few years back (the name of which I can't recall; I'm useless, I know) where an awful disease kills everyone in Manhattan except for Gary Sinise and Laura San Giacomo, and they walk the streets of midtown freely. Except in my movie, the East Village is the setting, and people were, amazingly, still sitting at the outdoor cafe around the corner from my house. New York, I think, will survive. People will always want to sit at outdoor cafes on sunny days, even when asbestos-laden air, thick with tragedy, floats by and through them. ***
Our friend Stuart is missing. He works on the 104th floor of the second tower to collapse. We've heard that they got people out of the 106th floor, so there is hope yet. I prayed for him this morning, and then again on the subway home. You can pray too, if you like. I am crying, and then I am trying not to cry, and then I am fine again, and then I cry again. |