Nouns and Verbs

To “george,” who left a comment to this entry tonight at 8:28 pm: I really don’t know how to respond to you. I can only assume that, like all of us, this tragedy has hurt you and made you angry, and that this is just your way of processing that anger. As for me, my way of processing these events is to write my way through them, to describe them as I’ve experienced them. If you don’t get that, then you totally misunderstand the purpose of a blog or online diary. There are plenty of newspapers you can read if you want. I actually agree with some of what you said about Bill Clinton, but that’s about it. Anyway, this is all the energy I can expend on you. Be well, george.

I think I might go back to Jersey City/Manhattan tomorrow. I miss my New York friends. It’s frustrating not to be able to see things firsthand. I’m still on vacation for another week and a half, and therefore I have nothing that can take my mind off what’s happened. Even if I were working now I don’t think I’d be able to take my mind off everything. On the other hand, the idea of being in Manhattan kind of scares me.

This entry by Mike is very poignant: “It just hit me: in 2000 the foundations of American democracy were deeply shaken, and in 2001 the security of America as a republic has been more seriously questioned than ever before. These are the two worst years in American history to date.” Mike, the only upside I can think of is that at least we have knowledge now. At least we know. There’s no more fantasy. Actually — in this case, I think I might have preferred the fantasy.

An e-mail from a Manhattan friend today:

we live across the street. our apt is probably totalled. i was there. we left the building 10 seconds before the first tower fell. dust, smoke everywhere. couldn’t breathe. boats rescued us and took us to NJ. never thought i’d be so happy to be in jersey.

in westchester now. all is well.

There are an endless number of stories out there. Most of them will never be heard.

I heard on the news that there were 90 false bomb threats in New York City today. The word “evacuation” seems to be routine.

I think I’m going off the deep end. Last night was another night of insomnia. I’m at my parents’ house and I didn’t feel safe last night. I was sleeping in my childhood bedroom — which my parents have turned into a guest room — and I thought, wow, I remember when I used to sleep in this room as a kid and the world seemed so innocent.

It was three in the morning and then four in the morning and I tossed and turned on the pullout bed. I kept hearing noises outside and I was afraid there were burglars outside our house. When I was a little kid I had this book of Jewish folktales, and one of the stories involved robbers. I remember walking into the bathroom while my dad was shaving and asking him if there were such things as robbers. I just couldn’t believe there could be such bad things in the world. He told me there were indeed such things as robbers. That frightened me.

So anyway, I was freaked out last night, despite the fact that the alarm system was on. I turned on WQXR, New York’s classical music station, and tried to soothe myself, but they were playing a disturbing piece. Eventually they played a recording of Mahler’s Fifth, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, an idol of mine. If Lenny were still alive, I wonder what he’d have to say about this attack on the city he loved so much. He was always such an idealist.

I slept for a couple of hours and then woke up around eight. My mom was downstairs and the TV was on. I brought in the New York Times. Part of this morning’s front page headline: “THOUSANDS ARE PRESUMED DEAD.”

Thousands are presumed dead.

That doesn’t happen here. That happens in earthquakes in Turkey. Not here. Three hundred people is awful but I can fathom it. Thousands of people are dead in Manhattan. I can’t fathom that. I burst into tears again.

I’ve been falling into tears several times a day. The last time I felt this much grief was when my uncle died of bone marrow cancer four and a half years ago at age 60. But this grief is different. It’s too diffuse. It’s too much. There’s too much information.

This morning’s most disturbing newspaper photograph: page A7. A huge color photo of the upper part of one of the towers with a huge smoking gap where the plane hit. At the bottom of the photo you can make out a tiny figure — a man is standing there with no wall in front of him, he’s peering out into the world, his arm is shielding his face. He seems to be wearing khaki pants and a black short-sleeve shirt. The freaky thing is that from far away he almost looks like my dad, because he appears to have the same body type.

I can’t deal with this.

Meanwhile, my dad is still stuck in San Francisco.

I just heard what I thought was an airplane. I felt a slight panic because I know that the three major airports in this area are still closed. But then I realized it was thunder. It’s going to rain soon. I wonder what the rain’s going to do to everything. It’s been at least three whole days without rain. This is going to be the first rainfall of the new world.

No wait, I really do hear an airplane. I’m not used to hearing airplanes anymore. The sound is scary. I’m afraid of what kind of plane it is.

My god. What the hell has happened to us if we’re afraid of hearing airplanes?

This afternoon my mom told me I needed to get dressed and go for a walk or something. I needed to get out of the house. She was right. So I showered and changed and went for a walk around my town. The main shopping street is lined with American flags. There are signs on all the storefronts publicizing blood donations and trauma therapy groups. I walked around the park three times and it felt good to be out in the fresh air.

American flags everywhere. A reader named Tim points out to me that even in Alabama there are flags and three-hour waits for blood donations. I haven’t realized until now that this really has affected the whole country, not just us.

I had two moments of sweet normalcy today. In the afternoon, my mom and I went grocery shopping. Except they were selling the special edition of Time, so we each bought one. Filled with disturbing pictures. So much for normalcy.

But in the evening, my mom and I took the puppy to obedience school. We were in a room with ten of the cutest, most adorable puppies I’d ever seen. They were so cute and cuddly and adorable that I wanted to cry. I thought to myself, This must be what Israel is like. You cope with the constant threat of terror by living normal lives. You take your puppies to obedience school because you have to. For yourself.

I hear another airplane. I wish it would stop.

At night I called my friend Tim in D.C. Tim’s part of the same circle of college friends as me and CanadaGirl and Doug. We’re all supposed to go down to D.C. in November for Tim’s wedding. He’s sort of the anchor of our group, and I needed to hear his voice. We talked about Doug, and then Tim told me about being sent home from his company’s office after the Pentagon was hit, and after a while we just had to talk about normal things. So we talked about my new job and we talked about his wedding preparations. He also gave me the phone number of Doug’s girlfriend. Apparently she’s started to go through Doug’s Rolodex and call people.

So far, Doug’s name is not on this list of accounted-for Cantor Fitzgerald employees.

Via Sparky: first, these beautiful and sad photos from someone’s bedroom window. Second, from Sparky himself — photos that make me want to bawl.

I don’t have a digital camera, so the only tools I have to cope with are my words. But language isn’t functioning well right now. We’ve run out of adjectives; all we have left are the nouns and verbs. That’s the only way to cope at this point. Nouns and verbs.

I can’t tell if what I hear is thunder or an airplane. But it’s just started to rain.