Radio Free Kirkopolis

My friend Eileen is a New Yorker through and through. If you visit her site (which I highly suggest you do) you’ll find the scattered musings of her day to day activities whose common denominator is the many fingers of the Apple. Little things that most New Yorkers probably take for granted, such as Central Park, Broadway Shows, and the Subway. The kinds of things that people like me only experience through Seinfeld re-runs but leave me in wonder none the less.

Eileen and I converse via this crazy Al Gore invented (huh?) internet thing on a pretty regular basis. Knowing her to the amount that I do, I was aware that she lived in N.Y. at the time of the attacks. As the anniversary approached I wondered what her take on that day (and the following days) was. Where she was, who and how many (if anyone) she knew, what she saw, how she felt, etc. However well the two of us get along I really felt it inappropriate to ask her such questions. Really, this is a subject that I figured best for her to tell on her own time and in her own way. Something she would share only if and when she wanted to.
Well, she shared.

Not to me, but to the whole world. Or, at least the part that reads her blog. I didn’t ask her permission to post her work, but I’m pretty sure she won’t mind- besides I don’t think she’s got a copywrite lawyer on retainer at the moment.(please note, the text in blue is a mass letter she wrote to her friends and family five years ago, in the days following).
Anyway when you’re done, be sure to check out the rest of her work, it’s really quite worth it. In the meantime, here’s her story- one of the thousands, all different, all important, all in our hearts.

Five years later

Dearest family and friends,
My brother asked me how I’ve been since the attack. Loaded question. Everyone in NYC has a harrowing where-they were story. Mine is a where-I-wasn’t: I live by myself on the upper west side of Manhattan. With nowhere to be on Tuesday morning, I slept peacefully through the atrocity transpiring a mere few miles away. I also did not lose anyone close to me. How? How could I be so oblivious and so lucky? How could I sleep through genocide? Oh sure, my mother and brother were calling me to see if I was okay, but I turn my ringer off when I go to sleep. There was no hubbub outside my window. No one came to me in a dream and said, “You better wake the hell up and turn on the TV,” which I’m open to, being a Pisces. I even recall feeling deliciously rested before learning about hell on earth. I feel so stupid about that.

I used to work at One Financial Square, right near the attack site (I hate the dumbass phrase “ground zero”). Would I have run for my life were I still down there? Uptown feels far away, and it’s easy to go about my business as though this happened somewhere else. There’s no smoke up here, no “missing” posters, no suddenly homeless and jobless families, no ash and rubble, no visible altered skyline. I live as I always have. But it feels wrong to live as before.

I ventured to a ghost-town Times Square that Wednesday, marched into a tourist-trap gift store, and bought a mini-World Trade Center for ten bucks. I proudly display it atop my computer. On Thursday I headed downtown just to be closer. South of Union Square, where a big makeshift gathering place made a home, streets were closed to traffic, so pedestrians took over. I smelled that burnt-wire smell, watched people run errands wearing surgical masks, and observed the smoke further down through some buildings. Bill Clinton suddenly appeared, joining everyone’s dazed, somber, quiet destination-less walk like Joe Citizen, just talking to people, crowds forming around him, Chelsea waiting patiently off to the side. No media at all, if you can believe it. I saw him through the crowd even though I’m short. He felt my pain. I was comforted. His nose looked big. His hair’s really white.

That night, my shock wore off. I cried myself to sleep while God spoke in the form of a thunderstorm. I hoped he was telling us we would be okay, but I wasn’t sure. On Friday I received a gag gift from my friend Maria in the mail, a Powerpuff Girls watch. I’ve worn it since. “Saving the World Before Bedtime” is their motto. We could use all the help we could get.

A friend told me that someone she knows in L.A. doesn’t seem to get it. He presumes that “New Yorkers are feeling what we did after the big earthquake” a few years ago. Yeah, what a stupid thing to say, I thought. But later I was angry. Don’t compare this to something else, something different. You don’t know how I feel.

So, now what? I’m depressed. Because as everyone “returns to normalcy,” I remember now that before the attack I was at the bottom of the roller-coaster of emotions that comes with living the predictably unpredictable life of an actor, engulfed in self-pity. Then I was distracted, and things were put in perspective. And now I return to self-pity, and it’s worse because it seems so petty. I cry unpredictably and in short bursts. I’m scared of the idea of war and more deaths. I’m disheartened by the racism that still exists. I’m spooked by loud sounds and I watch airplanes overhead. I enjoy giggling when something’s funny. I’m too distracted to read books. I haven’t listened to music again, really listened. I want to live my life now with a greater purpose but I don’t know what that is. I knew what it felt like to truly live in the moment for a couple of days. And the weather here has been unbelievably gorgeous. Still grieving. The best thing is to be with people.

I love you all!!
Eileen

Let's now take care of our first responders and volunteers who are sick and dying from breathing in pulverized glass, asbestos, concrete, and chemicals from working for months on the "pile." The fight continues. They are all in my thoughts.

R.I.P. Adriana Legro from Queens, NY, with whom I attended St. Michael's School, Kaye's Dancing School, St. Agnes Academic School, and Boston University, who died in the towers on 9/11.
You will always be remembered.