My notes from Sept. 11, 2001

This is a very lightly edited transcription of the notes I took in the days after 9/11. Mom just mentioned that she and Dad can't really know what it was like for me...and I thought, "well, maybe if I type up those old notes...they can!" I've always planned to turn it into a short story, but this isn't it. It's just the blow-by-blow. Maybe this is the best format for it, after all. (2011 and 2021 updates included at the end)

September 12 or 13, 2001

Robin says she heard the first plane hit right before I left the apartment. She said she heard a noise she thought was the garbage trucks, then she saw my head pass by her door as I walked out, then looked out the window.  I didn’t hear a thing.  I think it happened as I was waiting for the elevator, or in the elevator.  The first of many differently remembered moments.  I remember thinking as I walked down the hall to the lobby that my ‘fashion sneakers’ I’d decided on really didn’t go well with my baby blue pants…that I should have worn those blue heels after all.  I was walking quickly, efficiently.  I was on the way to vote for my Democrats of choice and make it to work by 9:30.

I turned the corner into the lobby and saw 10 or so people standing right out front, staring up.  My first reaction was to be annoyed.  “What?” I thought. “Did somebody lose a balloon?”

Of course, as soon as I stepped out and (lemming like) looked up, I saw the tower on fire.  “My beloved tower!” I thought.  I thought it was an explosion.  I thought people were dead.  I felt very little but vague urgency, and a vague sorrow for my poor Trade Center, and the people that were dead.

I pulled out my phone, to try to call my parents to tell them I was fine, but my cell phone wasn’t working.  I tried over and over as I was hurrying out to South End Avenue for a better view.  I think I tried to call Marco then.  I hope so.  I’m so unsure of my thoughts that I can’t swear if I did or not.  I think so.  I saw one woman running back into the apartment building crying, and it caused a tiny pinprick of emotion in me, but just for a second.  My new goal was the payphone by the car rental place, but there was a line, and I was in a hurry.  So I went for the phones on South End Ave.  I remember pulling change out of my wallet (only many days later remembering I would never have been able to call Massachusetts for a quarter anyway).  But right before it was my turn to use the phone I noticed I only had 20 cents.  I would have to call collect and I was trying to get the commercial jingles for long distance numbers straight.  The guy in front of me told his co-worker to put him on hold and dial a CONFERENCE CALL and I was annoyed that he thought his business was more important than other people’s.  Now I hope he was calling people in the towers and telling them to GET OUT.  But I wasn’t listening because I was listening to snatches of other peoples’ conversations.  I heard “bomb” and it made sense.  I heard “plane” and it really didn’t.  I heard “commercial plane” and I was totally confused.  How could a commercial jet fly into a building?  Weren’t they too big?  I heard “737” and thought – big.  Too big.  No way.

I couldn’t get through.  I gave up.  I joined the rest of the shocked people on the street and looked up.  It was there that I heard a woman say she’d seen body parts up the West Side Highway. On the street – before the second plane hit, I saw a man jump. I remember crying out – but low-pitched - “AAH” low and wobbly.  I saw more people jump.  Not many, but some.  The first one was the only one I really felt at all.  And it was there that I heard the second plane crash.  ZVRRROOOOM CRUNCH CRASH.  I probably screamed.  I know lots of people did.  And we all ran south.  One woman dropped her large Styrofoam cup of very light coffee and it splashed everywhere.  And someone dropped her paperback novel.  And we all ran.  Ran to the corner, turned right, ran to the water.  Stopping and looking back to see if there was anything to see – anything coming at us. More planes…maybe with bombs?  By the water, we stood and thought.  Tried to use cell phones but we couldn’t.  A woman in front of me was crying and saying “I quit” about her job at the WTC.

I decided to try and contact Robin.  There was one shoe on the sidewalk of Albany St.; a purple pink suede flip-flop with a purple fake suede flower on the toe. And peoples’ front doors were open so I walked up the steps to one and asked the woman standing on the left if she was allowing people to use the phone.  A different woman answered that I could try but she didn’t think I’d get through.  The woman I asked was black and the woman who answered was white and I thought with a jolt – my god – is this the kind of house with a live-in maid?  Weird.  Anyway, Woman #2 was wrong.  I did get Robin on my home phone, and I asked what she wanted to do – should I come get her?  She said she felt safer inside, but to come up anyway and we’d figure it out.  I walked back past the shoe, the coffee, the paperback novel, and lots of other small personal items people had dropped.  I stopped and talked with a man right in front of the car rental place and we looked at the towers and communicated some sense of disbelief and confused horror.  Politely.  Remotely.

At the door, Angel said I could go up – but just to get Robin. I did go up, and was surprised to be unable to say anything to the girl on the elevator on the way up, and I walked into my house. (Later, I wondered - Was that the last time?  If not - when will I go back, and what will I find?)  Robin was up, brisk, had decided by then that we should go downstairs.  She informed me that she was taking Emma…which I absolutely agreed with.  (What must a cat have made of all this? Emma was extremely calm, all day.) I walked into my room, went right for my camera case, and realized I was out of film, as I’d feared.  No film in the other camera either.  I asked Robin for hers, and tried to snap some shots of the burning tower from my window, but it was an old, unlikely, disposable camera.  I sort of put my camera back, but I didn’t zip the dust-proof bag.  I briefly considered taking a bag with my photos or negatives and…stuff, but instead, just took my passport, changed the message on my machine, and walked out the door with Robin and Emma.  We double-bolted the door against looters.

Boscoe’s owner (never knew her name, only her dog’s) was in the elevator and was hysterical – saying she’d seen the whole thing.  We touched her to try to comfort her, rubbed her arms and asked after Boscoe.  That’s when I noticed how little I was reacting.  The back door of the elevator opened first so we were glad to take the back way out, and just as we came outside, there was Marco.  I really didn’t even feel surprised, just affirmed.  As if we’d planned all along to meet and the pieces were falling effortlessly into place.  We decided to go out to the esplanade through the pool building, but first I wanted to call my parents so Robin sat on a bench in the garden while I went into Steamer’s Landing to ask for the phone. Inside Steamer’s, there was Boscoe’s owner, still crying but energetically organizing a free coffee effort.  I tried calling several times but couldn’t get through.  Nothing was picking up at Dad’s work number.

We decided we wanted to be able to see the towers burn. So as we walked back into the garden so we could see the towers, I told Marco I’d seen people jumping and he said he hadn’t and didn’t want to, and I said “Then don’t look up.”  Marco and I were standing, looking.  I said “Care to hazard a guess?” and he replied (I think) "Palestinian terrorists"…or some version of the above.  I first heard the name Bin Laden later that day and it was not a name I recognized.  (It’s amazing how much I’ve learned in the past few days – and how much easier it is to retain things in a situation like this.  Before all this I’d hardly heard of the Taliban.) Then we saw Robin’s friend Lisa Sokoloff who told us to come into the synagogue for safety.  (Another thing I’m not proud of is that once the tower started to fall, I didn’t think of Lisa once.)  We did, hoping there was a TV, radio, phone.  Robin felt uncomfortable right away and went back outside toward the river, but Marco and I stayed.  I went into a side room to use the phone, and was still trying to get through when I heard ... a thundering sound of crumpling and tumbling, rumbling, breaking, falling.  I knew immediately that the tower was falling. I tried to hang up the phone properly, but I couldn’t because my feet were already running.  Marco was yelling for me to run out of there with him, I was yelling “is it FALLING?”  As we ran we yelled “Where is Robin?”  She was running toward us to get us.  We thought “run for the river” but there was a fence and a drop.  “Run left! Run left,” and then we were by the water, and we could see the cloud of dust roiling toward us, but the trees formed a little air pocket which gave us just enough time to get to the esplanade, face south, hold our shirts over our faces, and hold on to each other’s shoulders, before the cloud enveloped us and it was very suddenly very dark and very silent.

(I can see I have to get this written as quickly as possible, since each new day brings new perspective with its new events.  Marco reminded me that I did call him and I must have reached him from the South End Ave payphone.  It was because of my call that he was on the phone to my parents’ machine when the second plane hit.)

So.  In the cloud of dust, I had Emma over my right shoulder and my shirt over my mouth. Someone was holding on to my shoulder or hand – don’t know if it was Robin or Marco, and then the other one was holding on to the one holding on to me.  I don’t remember there being a plan to form a chain like that, or how it happened, but when the cloud hit, we were walking blindly along the esplanade toward the south.  I opened my eyes to see if there was visibility, and saw only a dark brown impenetrability.  I could see NOTHING.  And there was almost no light. It was a brown dark, not black.  I know we each removed our shirts from our faces to say things like “don’t let go.”  I remember my left foot hitting the curb once, which kept me oriented, but I do not remember feeling uncertain of my direction at all at any point.  We were a blind, silent band among others, moving slowly and deliberately in our best guess of the right direction.  Because the air was so full of dust, and it had been so blindingly thick for so long, I started to be concerned.  I thought  “I might die’ or “we might die” and “I might die of suffocation or dust inhalation, from lack of clean air – or air so solid as to be un-breathable.”  I thought it would be a very painful and scary way to die, and I flashed on an image of the three of our bodies curled up on the ground, groping to touch flesh, holding each other, dying.  I thought that if the dust and smoke didn’t clear up soon, we might die.

But it did clear up.  Eventually it was only half as dense, and now beige-ish gray, not dark brown.  And we could see again.  Everything, everyone was covered completely in this gray dust.  The grocery bag on the curb, the benches, the abandoned baby carriages.  The unidentified objects dropped here and there.  The ground, the trees, ourselves.  Amazingly, I didn’t trip over a single thing.  I saw an elderly person in a wheelchair being tended to by two other people.  He or she had nothing covering his or her mouth, and it seemed as if there was a debate as to whether the person would stay in the wheelchair or get out to be carried? To walk?  I wanted to stay and help but my feet kept walking even as my eyes stayed behind, and Marco pulled me back to facing front as if to say saving ourselves was important enough.

I ripped up my light cotton outer shirt to share between us, and tried to think of other things we could give to people who had nothing to breathe through.  As we approached the blue-lights gazebo at the corner of South Cove, I thought of how beautiful it usually was.  During this whole time of half-light, I don’t remember looking out at the water after the first time I tried to see it and couldn’t.  I know that I considered jumping not to be a good option unless large pieces of debris started falling on us.  As we rounded the corner, there were people handing out surgical masks, which we took.  Or maybe it was earlier, since I seem to remember running ahead a few steps to put Emma down and put a mask on her. When we rounded the curve to South Cove, there was a Coast Guard (I think) boat in the water with someone with a megaphone saying “anyone in the water” over and over.  I don’t think there was.  People would have had to be pretty hysterical to have jumped, and most of us were just robotically, determinedly moving forward – not panicking.  Anyway, we got down by the metal outlook bridge, which looked like Planet of the Apes wreckage, and I chose to walk up through the park instead, beautiful even in its new ghostly incarnation. When we got to Wagner Park, Robin had to sit for a minute near the cat statue and Marco said I had been “so great” at handling the situation, and I was embarrassed by the praise. When we got as far south as Wagner Park, we had to choose between staying there and waiting for a boat or actually going back into where the cloud of dust was still thick to get to Battery Park.  Everyone seemed to choose the latter, and a uniformed person told us to keep going, so we did.  (There was some woman trying to climb the big chain link fence to get out of the construction zone.  How did she get in?) We passed a dust-covered empty stretcher. We passed two abandoned Barbie lunch boxes. I gave some of my shirt to a woman and told her to halve it for her two babies. I ripped my piece in half yet again to give to a man who had no mask or cloth at all, and the force of tearing it smashed my elbow into a stone wall.  It really hurt.  I thought – how dumb to be injured not by falling buildings but by carelessness in shirt-ripping.  Oh well.

Eventually, we found ourselves at Clinton Castle. Down by the water there were boats trying to see if they could pick anyone up but they said “injured only” so we decided to find shelter behind Clinton Castle.  I think we knew the second tower was going to fall, or maybe someone told us – so we decided to climb into one of the deeply recessed windows of Clinton Castle, deep enough to hold the cannons designed to protect Manhattan Island.  Robin clambered right in, and I was amazed at her ability to do so.

The second tower fell. I was afraid of the second cloud of smoke, afraid it would come in through the back of the window, but it wasn’t as bad.  Our air pocket stayed pretty clear.

After the air cleared, we did things like try to brush the dust off each other.  But it hurt, because of all the glass or fiberglass or whatever was in the dust.  So because I had on a tank top, my whole chest and arms and back were covered, and inside the waistline of my pants was really irritated.  But Robin poured water all over me (I figured the wet-t-shirt look was the least of my issues).  And we did things like try to get the dust out of Emma’s carrier, and we accepted water from the many people crusading around helping.  People everywhere were passing out drinks, and fruit vendors were giving away fruit.  We took water often.  Robin said we never knew when we’d get more or just need it, so we took it although I kind of felt like we shouldn’t, since we weren’t injured – or at least, Marco and I weren’t.  I kept trying to keep Emma’s mask on.

I think it was Robin who said she wondered if there was radiation involved, and having read Black Rain, I felt and said that if I had radiation poisoning, I would rather kill myself than suffer from it.  I knew I was being melodramatic, but in the moment, I felt serious.

(What am I forgetting from this time?)  Oh, yes – the people in the window to our right had a radio, and I learned that they’d struck The Pentagon as well, and that really horrified me – I was scared that this was a nation-wide attack and the fact that they hit the Pentagon seemed nasty and nose-thumbing and scary and impossible (the horror of our immediate event not quite registering yet) and the radio was reporting things like – the number of places, other targets… I don’t really remember.

It’s now Saturday (that would have been the 15th), and it's getting harder and harder to write just the facts.  But I want to save my current perspective until later.

Anyway, I was torn between listening to the radio and paying attention to Robin – making sure she was okay, so I didn’t hear as much as I wanted to.  At one point I just picked up someone’s Wall Street Journal and used it as a poncho.  It didn’t occur to me to ask until I’d already done it.  I did it because so much of my skin was exposed. When I went to the drink vendor a little distance from our window I remember feeling that I looked really good that day.  I am a little ashamed of this, but the point of this is to remember every detail. Maybe I'll edit it out some day.

After a while of waiting at Clinton Castle, rescue boats started arriving. At first they were for women and children only, but we wouldn’t leave Marco, so we waited. Since Robin was in need of more help, we wondered if it would be better for her to take an earlier boat, but she refused to leave us. I said she should go if she got another chance because Marco and I could always run.  I imagined fighting to convince her to get on a boat if more attacks started happening, but it never came to that. 

Eventually a boat came that was open to general public, so we thought – why not?  Let’s try to get on this one, although for some reason leaving didn’t seem urgent – just inevitable.  We had to climb over the sea-wall railing and I asked a man with uniform if he could help Robin, that she was injured.  With his and Marco’s help, she got right over.  Suddenly we all had to wait and STOP PUSHING because some man had fallen between the boat and the sea-wall and had his leg crushed.  Robin got on and I was about to step on and they said “no more” (after me) and I was about to say “I’m not leaving my boyfriend” but Robin did held on to his hand and said “He’s my brother.  I NEED him!”  And they let him on.  We walked into the boat, past the man in agony with his broken leg, and sat down in a booth of sorts.  We made room and two young men sat with us.  I could see the smoking, dusty gash in the skyline as we pulled away, and it boggled my mind as much as it was capable of being boggled.

During the boat ride Robin said we had to stick together from now on – no matter what. We were taken to the tented parking lot of the new Datek building in NJ right across the river where the emergency service was amazing.  Fruit, juice, water, soda, doughnuts.  And medical crews going around to make sure everyone was physical okay, and putting placards around their necks with what was wrong written on them.  When they approached us, they asked how I was.  I think they were checking for shock.  After asking to make a phone call, I was escorted into the building into this side room, that side room, the mailroom, and finally a room off the mailroom to find a phone.

I got through to the high school but they said Mom had gone home so I called her and I couldn’t believe I got through, but I did.  I didn’t break down weeping at the sound of her voice like I thought I would.  I think I choked up a little. I had the feeling all day that I SHOULD, but I just didn’t.  I gave her Marco’s Mom’s numbers, and Jen’s and Kelly’s numbers and asked her to call.  Back downstairs we did things like drink juice, eat fruit, and befriend a woman who’d broken her leg jumping onto a fire boat in the dust ball. I wiped the dust from her hair because it was just SO THICK, and seemed so triumphant.  Permanent.  So I wiped it off.  We couldn’t sit still.  We kept jumping up to accomplish one task or another, like finding out about further transportation, asking for prednisone, getting Coke, feeling ACTIVE.  My legs started to feel really tired and I really wanted to sit, but once I did I couldn’t stay sat. I gave a girl a hair band and knew what an enormous relief that was.  (Later, at the barracks I gave another to a girl who’d left the house with no keys, ID, wallet, anything.  Her boyfriend who’d just come up to visit her had left without shoes and had black cloth wrapped around his feet.  He had $10 and Robin ended up giving them $80.) Then my eyes started to hurt so I got escorted up to the 5^th floor and I washed them with the contacts in and then took them off and hoped I wouldn’t rip off my corneas like the girl I’d just heard about the other day.  I didn’t.  Downstairs again we’d acquired an elderly man named Ed who used Marco’s phone to call his wife, and we didn’t want to leave him alone because he looked slightly frail, and when Robin said we might find a hotel room he asked if he might join us and of course we said YES, OF COURSE, out of survivor comradeship, and so on.  It was a little embarrassing to me – someone asking for help – my NY social barriers not having been totally knocked down.

So we got on a bus to Liberty Science Center, which was supposed to be where we would be shipped for a while, but whoever changed the plan didn’t tell our bus driver.  The real emergency center was an Army Reserve barracks, so it took us a while to get transported over there.  While at the Science Center we made a lot of phone calls, and tried to get NJ friends to pick us up so we could sleep in NJ. We weren’t really allowed inside except to pee.  Instead there was a tent out in the parking lot with some folding chairs.  We could see the gashed skyline from the top of the stairs, and the flags were at half mast. I think that’s when I got my parents on the phone and Dad asked if they should be getting in the car to come get us out of there. It had never occurred to me to want to leave, and I was surprised at the idea. In fact, after that experience, I thought I’d NEVER leave my beloved NYC.

I can’t recall when the 3^rd building fell – 5 World Trade.  7 World Trade fell also, and then the rest of one of the original towers.  But there were so many rumors - 8 planes, 5 planes, 4 planes.  It was heading for the White House, it was heading for Camp David.  NY Medical Center uptown was also hit…NY Medical Center being a botched attempt at the UN.  A million rumors.

We were going to get picked up by Marco’s friend, but the freeway was closed.  I couldn’t get in touch with Kate Ambrose.  We couldn’t go anywhere we couldn’t take Ed.  Eventually we got taken to the barracks where there was food and more medical attention.

Talk of terrorism and speculation abounded, and people were asking if anybody had taken responsibility for the attacks yet, and I started to really want to know what Our Nations’ Leaders were going to do.  Remembering how FDR had made his famous statements just hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, I wanted Bush to step up to the plate and make us feel led.  Prove to be a leader – or at least deliver the script convincingly.

Ed, on the way to the Science Center was saying this was much worse than Pearl Harbor.  He was also very adamant about bombing the shit out of terrorist nations in retaliation, which made me very uncomfortable, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to contradict him. I think Ed’s wife picked him up, but I’m not sure. In any case, when Giuliani got the PATH trains running by 6:00, Ed didn’t come with us.

Tuesday night.  We got into the city on the PATH, and the girl in PJs I’d given the first hair elastic to was there in the train with us.  There were also two French guys and I was trying to figure out if they were from here or were just visiting.  We came out at 33^rd and there were some of our neighbors, Gus and Gus…Augustus and Augusta…the beautiful family, and we were glad to see them.  It was spooky to be there when everyone was acting quiet and stunned. I know it was bright and sunny and gorgeous. Perfect weather.  I was grateful for it.  Yet Manhattan upon return seemed cloudy in my perception and now memory.  As if there was actually something strange about the light.

Unfortunately, a fight broke out between a cab driver and his passengers who claimed he was charging them double.  A police car came to break it up, and it was upsetting to see that (reality check) petty things could still occupy our minds and resources.  But again – everyone’s behavior was strained.

I ran into Mia Barron and Melissa Kievman on the bus and told them our story and hugged them and was glad to see them.  It was the first time I’d told the story to people who hadn’t been there.  Melissa looked very concerned, and they had a friend Gabe with them who’d been down by us to, but for some reason, I didn’t feel like bonding with him – didn’t want his story (I feel so terrible about this) but wanted to tell ours.

Robin panicked getting on to the downtown bus and had a skirmish with a banker type and his friend, and we were all pissed and upset and I said “can New Yorkers PLEASE be nice to each other today” and eventually Robin and the guy apologized to each other but it was pretty upsetting.

Near Charna’s there was already a graffiti mural commemorating the attack, with candles and photos of the towers at various stages of destruction and collapse.  I put one of our masks down as an offering and spoke to a beautiful blonde, dreadlocked-to-her-butt, hippie chick artist BMCC student named Katherine who saw angel wings and owl wings in the dust and said that they helped her understand and personalize the experience.  I was trying to be on her level, trying to be all spiritual and open with her because I liked her – and wanted to nourish my own spiritual side and all, but I could not see anything but dust and debris and the literal image of a massive skyscraper falling down.

At Charna’s, we rested.  Robin had held up amazingly well, but her pain was resuming control.  So – we showered, I washed our clothes and banged off our shoes and we watched TV and made phone calls.  Then, after Bush’s address, and after our clothes were dry, Marco and I headed off for Adam and Antonia’s house, stopping for Chinese food (which I did not want until I got to A&A’s house – then I devoured ravenously) and beer.

We told our story to Adam and Antonia and her sister Chicken (!) and ate Chinese food and watched the news.  Everyone was counting blessings and not really feeling.  That night I had Jane Austen dreams… thank you, defense mechanisms.  Emma Thompson riding through the countryside, with me both as viewer and screenwriter.  A nice happy-ending story.  I’d had 2 beers and fell right asleep and slept through the night.

Wednesday morning (Sept 12) we got up, bought disposable cameras and a muffin, and headed down to Marco’s house.  We showed ID at Canal St, but then I think we weren’t stopped at all until we got past Stuyvesant High on Chambers. It looked like they’d sprayed the streets off, or maybe they weren’t dusty up as far as Duane & Reade, but there were cars that seemed to have been dragged there.  A mangled police van, two destroyed cars, one on top of the other, others just completely covered with dust.  When we got to Marco’s, there was just a tiny bit of dust – mostly in Gabe’s room where his window was open, but even there… not much.  His custom-made leather pants were lying on the floor and had a thin layer of dust on them – proof that the clothes-lover had left in a rush. We wondered if we should take anything, but decided not to because Marco hadn’t reached Gabe yet and we might have to go back to get more of his stuff.

(All during this time, living our lives normally felt somehow wrong. A few blocks away, thousands were dead – and some might even still be trapped alive or dying… I kept pushing these thoughts out of my mind…but wondering if that was right. Would those people want us all to go on living? Or would they be furious? Come FIND us! Don’t just ignore us!)

So we went from Marco’s down to Chambers and Greenwich and there’s where all the dust and debris started.  The awning of McDonalds I remember was quite dusty, and the street and sidewalks were a uniform gray with sometimes deep piles of papers (burnt, ripped, intact) on the sidewalk edge.  And firefighters everywhere. Nobody stopped us, but only because they had better things to do.  I felt uncomfortable taking pictures, but then again it’s not like I was just a curious tourist – it was my neighborhood, and it is my life.  I tried to take a picture of the National Guard using Stuyvesant High as a base but the guy said no pictures and although I was stung, I just said okay and kept going. In retrospect I suppose he could have taken my camera.  We got further and further and I began to have the faint hope that I might actually be able to get Home!  But at the water, someone told us no.  I was NOT going to press the issue but I guess one of us asked a second time and the guy said “Comprendo?  No!” and so we left, feeling rude and foolish for even having asked.  We took the overpass bridge back across which was intact, if dusty, and strangely enough, there was an abandoned 5 lb. weight in the middle of the walkway.  I kicked it over to the side so nobody would trip on it if there was a need to run. 

And I kept thinking… NEVER WEAR HEELS!  WEAR SENSIBLE SHOES!  You just NEVER know when the outfit you choose for the day will become more than decoration.

On the way back (we had our masks on for this whole excursion) I saw a piece of paper that had highlighting on it.  Something that yesterday morning had been on somebody’s desk...  

Over all of our actions these days was the need to be as polite and cooperative and patient as possible.  That and the need to be recognized as someone who was THERE.  I found (and still find – this being Monday night) that I obsessively want to tell my story to anyone who will listen.  After we took what we needed from Marco’s – and luckily I had an amazing amount of necessities there – all I’ve had to buy were a brush, undies, a new natural deodorant, razors, and new contacts – but I needed none of these immediately.  In fact I didn’t buy them until Friday and Monday.  I even had two dresses for auditions – and Antonia lent me some shoes.  We walked up to SoHo – past businesses offering free supplies to emergency workers – such as Sullivan Street Bakery – and Marco bought a sandwich from a little Italian shop.  Then he had to go to school and I went to get contacts to help me until I could get a real check-up or my glasses (I hope they’re at home). They gave me a set for free.  I didn’t put them in that day just in case I had some glass in my eyes, but it was very nice of them to do that.  I made an appointment for the following day.  Then I went to an internet site and checked my massive inbox (at A & As the night before I’d sent a message to everyone in my address book that we were okay) and I learned about Tracy’s sister Barbara having to jump through a storefront window, pregnant, but being okay. Wendy Nash was okay, much to my amazement and joy.  I didn’t realize for a few days that she must be totally bereft. She worked at Windows on the World.

After that I went to Charna’s and that’s when I thought to buy a paper.  But there were none of any kind except a few local Lower East Side neighborhood pamphlets, but only a few of those.  So I just went up and watched TV with Rob and Charna and Charna kept feeding us – hostessing – gave me dried cherries like I’d pounced on the day before – and she offered to make me a vodka tonic – which she did – and soon I was completely dulled. I actually got through to my parents at that sitting and Mom told me Nikki Smith and Pete Henry had both called.  So I bit the bullet and called Pete back.  Our conversation was weird and full of partially accomplished attempts to communicate – and then Charna’s other line rang and there was no time to say last words – I said I’d call back, but when I finally got through, he was gone from that number, and to be honest – I don’t want to talk to him.  On the momentum of that call I decided to reach John, but the directory assistance gave me the wrong John A Pawlowski, and I didn’t try again.  The three of us ordered some Chinese food, and then after more TV and wanting to nap, it was time to go to A&A’s where I gave Marco the rest of the Chinese food, we checked email, and blew up the air mattress (the slowly sinking “Adventure Bed,” compliments of their cat Jezebel’s claws) and went to sleep – intending to get up the next day and pursue a more “normal” schedule.

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My blow-by-blow has to end here.  It is the 21^st and so many days have passed and so much has happened.  At Thom’s I really noticed that Mary & Thoms’ lives had not been much altered – the daily routines, that is, and it made me feel closer to Marco and further from everyone else.  

When Marco’s power turned back on, it was great to be there – practically home.  We’d had to show ID at Canal St, and then again to the National Guard at Reade & Hudson.  I have to be honest that I sort of enjoyed that.  I liked being one of the people with the right to go into the restricted area.  Like I was an “insider”…and also…it was very dramatic.  And…I always want it to snow HARDER, and I love to play in hurricanes – the more extreme the better.  And it embarrasses me, and I haven’t admitted this, but I was glad to have heard the plane crash right above me, and have to think I was running for my life, and then fetch Robin, and plan and direct, and be efficient, and even to be covered in the infinite darkness of the dust.  (After the fact, of course.)

See, it’s sick.  When I thought we might die, I didn’t think it was fun…or at least I didn’t really have time for an opinion one way or the other…but when we didn’t…I have been struggling to come to terms with how much I enjoy being one of the ones involved.  I think it’s somehow not right. Possible a little sociopathic or something.  But I’m glad I was there and not just looking on.  I guess I feel like I “belong” to this disaster – that I own a part of it. I don’t know. I’m proud to be a part of history.  To have had something happen to me that is not commonplace, or predictable.  To have been there.

Then I think of people who died or lost someone and I feel like such an asshole. And I think of how worried family and friends were and I think HOW can I have been glad to be there.  But I am.  I’m glad I was there.

Going to Romeo & Juliet with Elizabeth on Friday the 14^th was weird.  I didn’t like being away from people who shared my experience.  (That was also the day I first hear anyone growl about "Fucking flag wavers!"  I was taken aback.  Weren't we supposed to be all patriotic after such an event?  I definitely came to understand what Iver meant.)  But that was nothing compared to Sunday, going to Flo’s wedding.  Getting off that train, alone – when everybody else seemed to be with their significant other - was so scary.  And I felt so alone, and so without armor, and I just started weeping and called Marco, and he said I could come back, and I considered it, but I didn’t want to fail.  And Michelle rescued me and then Jim hugged me and I cried some more and felt all shaky – and guilty about drawing focus on Flo’s day.  And I knew it wasn’t surprising that I’d be emotional, but it made me wonder if there was some greedy need for attention behind it.  Or maybe I should give myself a break, and give other people credit for understanding that circumstances promote unusual and irrational behavior.

This week I was so busy with auditions that I haven’t felt like I had time to do anything I wanted – which included reading the paper, watching the news, getting a lot of sleep, and writing.  Oh, and answering emails – calling people back, etc.  I’ve felt really overextended and longed for some fucking privacy to cry.  And I don’t know when I’ll get it.

I am grateful for this hotel room, but I hate it here. I want some quiet time to myself, because…I just do. And I know I’m so, so fortunate, but I’m just having a bitchy day.  And I don’t like being at The Waldorf.  It’s the same as being Aldo’s second-class-citizen guest.  I’d much rather live in less luxe and be able to live the way I please. Anyway – today has been hard.  The other night Marco and Gabe started talking about chemical and germ warfare, and what should they have in the house to protect against it…and the smell from the WTC was wafting uptown and I was scared and so depressed.  And I remember thinking it was a deeper, and drier, and more dreadful kind of depression.

By now you can’t get anywhere near the ex-towers, and taking photos is illegal.  This whole time I have felt uncomfortable about doing it, but I’m glad I did.  I only wish I’d brought my camera the first time I went to the apt. (a week ago only!) but I didn’t know a) that they wouldn’t confiscate my camera, and b) that it would be my only chance to see the skeleton up close.  Ah well.

Oct 18, 2001

What would Dad have thought if he’d known his letter sweater from Cal Tech would have been my only sweater for over a week after being evacuated from my home due to a terrorist attack?

We are starting to live with the threat of bioterrorism. I think about it now each time I get in the subway.  I wonder if I am stupid to stay in NY, but I wonder it without planning to leave.

Because I am shooting this movie, I am not able to keep up with the news, although I imagine I hear about the headlines.  Latest is the fact that they’re actually using a quite sophisticated form of Anthrax and that it is in the air systems of Congress and Pataki’s NY office.  True?  I don’t know.  But it’s horrifying.  I walk home past NBC and wonder if it’s in the air there as well, floating on the tiniest of air currents out of Brokaw’s assistant’s office, down the street, out the door.  I guess I doubt it… because I still walk by.  I don’t think my mail is a threat, as a private citizen, but if they put it in the subway…

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September 10, 2011

Over the past 10 years, I’ve had only a few real bursts of emotion about all this. One was when they played the trailer for the Oliver Stone 9/11 movie, and I found myself suddenly 800 degrees and flooded with tears, and out on the sidewalk before I knew it, and yelling at the movie theater staff for removing my choice over whether to see those images.

Another was riding in the car with Tracy on the way back from Woodstock, having her ask me how I felt about it all, and her being absolutely shocked by my response.  I imagine she expected me to talk of sorrow and empathy, but all I could think of was how bullied kids sometimes grow up and fight back. And they learn their fighting skills from the bully who tormented them. And if America wants to be seen as a shining example and have people emulate its behavior, maybe it should be a little bit more…shining. And a whole lot kinder.

The Cipro I carried in my purse against Anthrax turned to dust, unused, before I finally threw it away. We stayed at the Waldorf for (I think) two months. When were cleared to go home, the area had become almost impossible to navigate, between the construction in and around what was now called Ground Zero and the people who crowded into lower Manhattan to bear witness. It ALWAYS smelled of that dust. To this day, the surest way to sense-memory me back somewhere is to drive past a construction site with concrete dust in the air.

And I also think about this a lot: On that day I saw some of the best of myself, in addition to some of my more familiar, less favorite attributes. I saw someone with confidence and strength. And once you know that about yourself, it’s hard to retreat back into the scared mouse you are used to being. But it didn’t take right away. In fact, ten years later, I am only beginning to actually resemble the strong, confident person I glimpsed in myself. But I'm grateful for the progress. And I’m grateful for all I’ve learned in these ten years. And I’m really glad I wrote all that down as it was happening. Because, I’ll never forget it, but the details do blur, and it’s okay to be reminded.

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September 10, 2021

Hoo boy.

Not too long after that day - maybe the first anniversary? It occurred to me that one day, "9/11" will have happened 20 years ago. My mind re-boggled. Well, that day is...tomorrow.

Oh my god, I am so phenomenally lucky. Everyone I mentioned in that report is still alive. Many, I am still in touch with. How lucky can one girl get? (Oh, except for Emma, but, Dear Reader, she was a Mature Cat on the day...let's not go asking for any MORE miracles.) My phenomenal Aunt Robin and I will talk tomorrow. I'm in awe of her strength. (Even though she left NYC and I have to, like, stay in HOTELS when I go home now. Gah!)

My story is so tiny, tiny, tiny compared to ANYONE who died, or lost a loved one, or was injured, or lost a livelihood.... or whose entire community wore a target on their backs after this.

It's just a little story, but it's mine. I'm glad I was there, what can I say? 

In loving memory, my fellow travelers.