WOID #VI-32. The Day After
Wednesday, September 12, 2001 5:58 pm
Yes, it really is like a funeral. Yesterday, after the explosions and collapse, there were crowds of people, nicely dressed, wandering uptown in the lovely sun of late summer. As at a funeral, there was no anger, not much emotion, really. It was more of a dream for most of us.
It was also quiet, respectfully. There were no cars, of course. Today, still, it's very quiet in downtown Manhattan. And we are busy toting up what we've lost, and what’s been spared.
Disasters like this can show you who you are. As at a death, there are those who acted well. My friend A. J. was working on the ground floor of World Trade Two. She managed to get out, and get the people she supervises out. One of them had an asthma attack, and she managed to get him out of there, to a hospital in New Jersey, then back again to New York, thirteen hours later.
As at a funeral, there's a lot of façade: trying to be brave; trying to hide your satisfaction, the selfish joys of the survivors, the nervous jokes, the heirs' half-hidden grins. The gloating from the Israel Lobby has been no less obscene than the ill-informed reactions of some Palestinians. In the New York Times, Clyde Haberman's disgusting article ("Do you get it now?") used this event to justify Israeli murder squads. Renidet usquequaque.
What I want to tell those who aren't here, because they don't know: there is no anger, here. We leave that to others. The Governor of Texas may talk of ultimate battles of good and evil, but we know about evil already. Like death, it's all around us always, and all our victories, for being always temporary, are cherished all the more. Sorry, Governor, Good will not prevail. It's too late for that.
Among some tribes of the Northwest Coast it was usual, when someone died, even of natural causes, to raid the other tribes. Against the many Muslims or Arabs in New York there have been few acts of retribution. Being human is not easy, but that is our only victory. Being human is not easy, because it involves more than the gut reaction; more than the fantasy of omnipotence; more than the denial of our own mortality. As Anselm of Canterbury put it almost a thousand years ago, "in our minds there is constant strife between the defense of our desires and the affirmation of the truth." I was listening to a rescue worker who had just pulled someone from the ruins, alive. When that happens, he said, everyone is happy. "Even the dogs get very happy." I think at times like that we'd all like to be dogs: happy one minute, barking the next, always forgetful, never conscious of our own weak selves. For most of us, though, it's too late already.
WOID #VI-33. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid
Friday, September 14, 2001 1:05 pm
At first, of course, the media were equalized: a pay phone worked where a cell-phone wouldn't, you could get on-line but you couldn't reach crosstown. Then authority reasserted itself, some media were more equal than others, and you had to choose.
Yesterday I was told that, according to National Public Radio, there had been "widespread" attacks against Muslims. So I listened in, and heard about the five same attacks I'd heard about the day before, except that five now counts as "widespread." As of today in New York, those few attacks on Muslims have been mostly verbal. Kids from Joisy, probably...
Yesterday the news mentioned that there had been ninety bomb "threats" in New York City. They obviously meant bomb scares. Even today, after every one of these scares has turned out to be unfounded, the news call them "threats." Perhaps someone will set up a temporary shelter where volunteer English teachers can be on call for disoriented newscasters.
Last night, on TV, the roving reporter reported that in Lower Manhattan there were flags "everywhere." That's odd, because just that afternoon I'd cut across lower Manhattan, and there were a few flags, here and there. That's all right, there'll be plenty, now.
Steely Dan came on, looking grim, as though he wasn't personally responsible for the news. Then his friends came on, and they told us there was anger in New York. So they looked for people with anger, without much luck. Then we were taken to an Army recruitment center, and told that "people" were signing up with the Army. That's what people do at Army recruitment centers, sign up. So we saw three people who had come in to sign up. Poor Dan, looking for hate in all the wrong places...
Speaking of media. Never have I more wanted to be downtown, with a pad of paper and a sharp pencil. To get the details, and get them right. "The poet lives. The coffin-birds are snapping."
WOID #VI-34. How to Listen
Tuesday, September 18, 2001 2:15 pm
I've figured out the face New Yorkers wear - the one that looks as if we all have a migraine. It's Listening Fatigue. As usual, the media got it wrong this week: "New Yorkers for once put down their guard and talked to each other, blah, blah." New Yorkers are always talking to each other, that's why they always have their guard up: it's exhausting.
I was sitting on the stoop when a young woman walked by. She said hello, then she started to talk. "They just don't know," she kept saying. Then she added, " I saw people jumping from the World Trade Center..." I was listening so hard I forgot what she said next.
A shopkeeper on my block, a Muslim, was harassed over the weekend. I told him he should tell the cops. He shook his head and said: "Some people angry. I understand. Do you know how many killed? Do you know how many Muslims?" You have to make the connections yourself.
Here's a flyer I picked up: "Are you unable to express your feelings about this week's events? Then come to an open-mike evening at Café Blahblah..." Next up: Grief Karaoke.
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It's a safe bet, though, that talking will never be the same. You can tell, because the politicians are the last to get it. Talking to Liar Lopez, my councilwoman, is like playing a part in a Restoration drama. Watching TV is like standing behind a gilded chair in livery and a powdered wig, and grasping at bits and pieces of conversation. If I dare have a word with His Excellency?
On the chat-list, people are arguing - trivial things. Then someone chimes in: "I don't think negative comments should be aired on this list. We should all stand united." In the Midwest, I'm told, people talk to one other. Yet I wonder: do they listen? Maybe the Migraine Face is a better response: "Keep talking. Who knows?"
Learn to listen. It's the trend of the future.
And have a nice day.
WOID #VI-36. Review: Union Square
Sunday, September 23, 2001 12:12 pm
Union Square in New York City is hallowed ground. The North side has been a speaker's corner for a hundred years or more. Here in 1911, people marched in mourning for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, when young women went billowing out from a tall building, their clothes on fire. Then there is the corner where Emma Goldman waited during her brief, unproductive career as a Hooker for Human Dignity...
In the past decade the speaker's platform was turned into a brunch outlet, and the Business Improvement folks made it "safe." No more. The new plaza on the South side has become a gathering place for grief, for anger, for endless discussions - and for writing. Henry Kirke Brown's dull bronze of Washington on horseback is covered top-to-bottom with graffiti, and there are multicolored flags sprouting all over it.
Flags tend to iron out specifics - right now the American flag is more of a comforter than a call. Here the flag is not denied, just marginal.
And writing is everywhere. Eighty artists dressed in black stand in a vast semi-circle, each with a large poster reading OUR GRIEF IS NOT A CRY FOR WAR. One of them holds up her own artwork, a Kahlo-style picture of the WTC burning, with a poem written across it. It's too small to be effective. Across the way, three Buddhists sit on the ground, beating drums. One of the drums reads, in English: "Non-Violence."
There are signs all over the park: schoolroom projects, hand-written notes, flyers of every kind: "No aggression without representation;" "Dose them all, let Goddess sort them out - Peace through psychedelic enlightenment." The best-organized, and therefore the least interesting, are the God-boys and -girls who come with slick brochures and T-shirts: ready-made text for ready-made sentiments.
Over all, the silence is phenomenal - not the silence of devotion but of a searing, striving, pain. If, as Nietzsche once said, a joke is an epitaph on the death of a feeling, then what is a slogan?
Writing from Moscow in 1935, Bertolt Brecht noted the forest of hand-made signs at Mayday demonstrations, remembered the streets and buildings covered with writings in 1917, and wondered why the new, spanky Moscow subway had so little lettering. The authorities, he felt, had not kept up with populist culture.
Perhaps we all should listen to our Mayor, now: "Make New York City the place that it should be."
Scribble.