I haven't had the heart to write anything here. I'm tired of talking about the World Trade Center. I'm tired of thinking about it. Maybe that's selfish, or maybe I'm protecting myself from the pain. I know it's not so easy to move on for a lot of people. And I'm not moving on, not without changes. Things have changed. The city is different, and I don't think it's going to be the same.
Yesterday I left work at around 6:30 and started walking. I couldn't quite face getting on the subway, so I following the F line above ground. I was thinking if I got tired, I could just get on wherever I was. I ended up walking all the way home. It took about 3 hours I guess, I stopped for a sandwich at City Sub, and talked on the phone for a while. A year ago you never would have caught me saying this, but cell phones are a great invention.
I walked down to Canal street, at which point almost all the streets are closed. There are large groups of police at every intersection, checking IDs, asking people for their birth certificates, shining flashlights in people's faces. I had to walk east to Centre Street to be able to go south. It was really eerie. I was a good ways from the site, but the streets were empty. Once in a while a Humvee would drive by. This isn't the same city, that's for sure. I walked past city hall, and started across the Brooklyn Bridge.
It's a different feeling being on a landmark like that. I couldn't stop the flood of thoughts of what could happen there. What a target it was, how vulnerable I felt walking across it, 10 minutes from either shore and a hundred feet off the water. Turning around, I stared at the bright white lights illuminating the spot where the twin towers used to be. That image of the phantom towers is pretty accurate, really. It actually looks like that. Columns of white light and smoke.
If I'm not writing about Denyse, and the way I feel right now, it's because I can't quite stand it. I've been talking to people about it some, but mostly not. I was alone last night, but thankfully I nearly wrecked my computer so I wrestled with that all evening. Evening, he says. I guess I was up too late, as usual. I didn't get home until 10, and of course couldn't go to sleep until I fixed the computer. Friends have been comforting, and I'm very lucky for it. I hope Denyse realizes she has friends here too. I'm worried about her. That doesn't begin to cover it.
Work grows more difficult each day. The depths of my current apathy surprise even me.
"What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? What a waste, what a senseless waste!" - Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
