Day One Report

received 9/12/2001

Pardon me if you've already seen this. I just need to write down a few things today just so they exist somewhere - it's been the kind of day in New York that forces you into such bleak contemplation that perhaps a bit of venting is necessary.

During the Gulf War, most sporting contests cessated for a few weeks, even the Carolina-Duke basketball game, which is the High Holy Day for sports events. When I saw the postponed game, a lackluster performance that we ended up losing anyway, I could scarcely muster a care, most likely because "sports events" themselves are a modern, acceptable, superego substitute for war itself. Participating in the game almost seemed redundant.

I think today may do the same for violence in movies, if only because every description of downtown's carnage was expressed in filmic terms. Sure, there were a few Dante misquotes thrown in for good measure, but most of all, it was "like [insert movie here] only forty thousand times worse." Folks in America finally saw something more unbelievable than digital and CGI compositing, more riveting than squib shots, more ineffably monstrous than any explosion we've seen in the movies. In essence, reality has outdone Art, and there's no going back.

The things I saw, the things I heard today - Jesus, if any of you could have been walking down Greenwich Avenue around 11am... I've tried to explain my encounter with the old couple searching for their little boy, but probably failed. When the handle and wheels flew off their soot-covered luggage as I dragged it uptown, I was so happy I was there - there's no way they could have carried it. My back is in spasms right now, but they found their son. I was proud of Tessa, too, who took her phones out into the Village for refugees. I came back to her apartment as she was trying to shout - over the phone - to a Hindi mother that her kids were safe.

Outside, a pack of girls held hands, eyes luminous and post-traumatic, trying to spot their parents as they wandered up Hudson Avenue. A band of five black dudes marched towards the Lincoln Tunnel, telling everyone they were going to make a run for Jersey. One construction worker walked up 8th Avenue by himself, bawling in the crowd. Most fittingly, a huge homeless man, the kind that would (in movie cliche) be holding a sandwich board saying "The End of the World is Nigh" sat atop a USA Today dispenser, his body covered in sores, downing a 40 of malt liquor and cheering on the crowd.

The rest of the day was filled with stories of near-misses and lucky coincidences. Jamie Block, my friend of 14 years whom many of you know, was yards away from the first tower as it fell, and luckily was pushed into the South Ferry. Mass hysteria exploded as a chorus of "We're at War!" broke out among the passengers and those dragged by lifesaver rings as the second building covered them with soot and shattered glass.

Tonight, Greenwich Village is unsettlingly calm, unseasonably warm, unbelievably quiet, yet inexplicably crowded. Hurricane Fran, which hit North Carolina five years ago this week, brought on the same zombie-like trance, but when you see 200 people wander your block with no apparent destination, talking in hushed tones - you realize you are doing the same. All 12 million people in this town are thinking the same things right now, all confluent molecules in a greater organism. Pass anybody and they give you that look, a mix of plaintive commiseration.

One thing I can't stand in movies is dismemberment; if anyone loses a body part, I have to fight off nausea and head for the exit. "Robocop" nearly killed me, and that scene in "Road Warrior" where the guy loses his fingers always makes me want to die inside. Our city has now been dismembered, two arms at the bottom of the island have been lopped off, and it's so sickening. It's not a movie. And now maybe movies can't be either.