Chekhov's Mistress
You Can’t Get Away From It
The date says it all
This was an extravagantly beautiful New York City morning. Our little family, I and my wife Lynn and our 9-month old son Auden, took our morning walk to one of our favorite bakeries and then to the greenmarket to load up on heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, poblano chiles, newly picked corn and artisanal cheese. The sun was shining, the temperature was moderate and we were all together. Perfect.
Still, our conversation had a tinge of sadness as we couldn’t get away from the fact that today was 9/11, a date embroidered in our consciousness. Most every New Yorker has a story about that day – my wife and I didn’t lose anyone directly, we weren’t there at “ground zero,” (a phrase that as symbol has in my view been cheapened by the media) but, we have our own stories.
I once wrote about that day, about desperately trying to go the wrong direction to Manhattan from New Jersey when the city was cordoned off and about how I and a handful of others surreptitiously hired a small boat to take us across the river, and upon arriving at the 79th street boat basin finding, quite in contrast to the chaos of the ferry terminal we had left, an odd serenity as if nothing had happened on that exquisitely clear and sunny day.
I wrote the story and threw it away because it didn’t come out well. I suspect because it was too close. I don’t really think about it much anymore; as I said, I didn’t lose anyone I knew directly (although many indirectly). I know it must be particularly agonizing for those that are reminded glaringly by the media and the new world in which we live that someone whose company they cherished no longer exists in the way that they counted on every day.
It is much more subtle for the rest of us; we don’t have the past loss to contend with. But we all share the uncertainty of terrorism, not in the abstract but in the horrific reality that our public and most private consciousness will never let us forget. In my perceptive and political mind I believe that we are probably safer today if for only the fact that the world is more diligent, despite the acts of our bellicose president, and that the financial lines of the terrorists have been knotted up to a far greater degree than ever before.
Yet, when I hear a plane overhead or an unusual conglomeration of sirens out the window, when the lights dim for a nano-second in our 100 year old building, the thought ever so faintly crosses my mind of what it could be.
Before New York, I lived in California where earthquakes seemed like a sport. Not to be taken unseriously, but an “event” nonetheless. This is different. I don’t know what it is, but you just can’t get away from it.
Read widely, think well, and write often.
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: September 11, 2004
- Filed Under:
Song of Myself: Diary
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
