The 911 Museum is a bit of a quagmire. Objects aren’t objects but icons of unimaginable suffering, both past and present. 
However one thing stands out: the retaining wall, looming, the wall at the foundations of the towers that, despite the collapse, kept the river from running down into the tunnels under the city. It’s certainly something to remember.
Tag Archives: New York City
Bushwick Photo Tour
Bushwick is photogenic as hell. 
Colorful and raw.
A distinct smell pervades.
The contrasts stand out most of all.
1,200 pounds of Rose Petals Dumped over Statue of Liberty
1,200 pounds of rose petals were dropped from helicopters over the Statue of Liberty to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion in Normandy. 
Blue, red and white water, shot from a nearby fire boat, puffed out as tiny smoke clouds of red wafted from the helicopters, as they hovered closer to Jersey.. 
Not quite the spectacle expected.
Good Apocalypse
The city is in ruins, not still smoldering but that feeling there, the sky bright, endless, the depth terrifying and clear. 
There is nothing. And it is a good thing. 
Yes, a good thing. It is not that people haven’t been lost. They have. They are distant and gone. There is a gap from that. But not as much as would be expected. 
The screams have gone, not from dying, but the drunkenness, the all-knowingness, the certitude banged up against in the street, dumb-eyed, suddenly stopped, turning. There is none of that. 
The quiet is sure. It is a free place, drifted to, away and alone, the climb to the top, the twist through the shoulders, feet firmly planted, hands tight, watching, clear-headed, almost happy with nothing on TV but Gilligan, too poignant, verging on Camus. 
But the funny thing is I feel good, too good.
And I know I should feel guilty about that.
Homeless Indifference
While walking home last night, we witnessed a group of low-riding biker kids rocket along the sidewalks of 56th Street. They swerved through the few pedestrians and then around a homeless man asleep against a building. 
“We should jump him!” Two of them spun back while another brought out his cellphone to record. It was an easy jump, and they laughed about that.
I was incensed. “You guys are a bunch of assholes!”
They looked back, half smiling, grunting. What was the big deal? It was just some homeless guy. And off they went.
We thought about calling the police but knew that would get the homeless man in trouble as well. And so that was that.
Here is Where You Aren’t
It’s always where you’re not. 
You try to find it, knowing it won’t be there. Or maybe it is there, an instant, through a crack, sudden and clear. 
And then it isn’t. Like music. You remember and think. You dream of getting back there to how it once was. It’s a disease like that. 
The only trick is to forget.
Reading Camus
They beat it out of you, and by they I mean we. 
It’s us, just us, with our wisdom and cruelty, our dreams of being whole and true, yeah, lying about that. We’re good at that, pretending to be on the subway, losing the call, sitting on our friend’s lap and saying we are laughing when that isn’t inside at all.
It’s our demise, our degrading bodies, our trip into the nothing, not loving, not dreaming, not slimming down our skirts as we sit, but just standing there, thinking we might be something and then remembering we’re not.
The Best Place in the World
This just might be the best place in the world. 
People pass by, here and not here, beggars and suits and children and lost sad women and college kids and military personnel, moving like they matter, all at different paces, the wonder of the world beaten down by life but still moving, unseeing, unsure, lost in their own world, but still like they might know where they are going. There are so many that they don’t have to talk. 
Stupid things are said like “Life is life and it’s funny” and nobody is listening. Anything can be bought – orange ski gloves, faux Thai food, booze of all kinds. It is cool, not cold, not warm. It is so loud that it is almost quiet. There is an echo that never stops.
I could stand here for hours. And nobody would care.
The Noise of Everything Else
It is almost silent. 
There is the air outside, that vague sound, but it is low, quieter than the buzz in my ears. My fingers tap and stop. I adjust myself, scrape my shoe along the floor. I think. The city could be dead. 
It is empty in my head. The sirens are broken, the streets deserted. There is nothing out there. I am alone. The apocalypse has been. The noise of everything else is only in my head.
I am in a forest, and now a desert, and now in space, where I have always been, destined for another place, waiting to get there, so that I might find a place to be quiet again and write about that, alone in the silence, the air, the world reduced to the buzzing in my ears.
New York Through Dirty Windows
I like this city. 
Some say it is dirty and full of garbage. 
Maybe they are right. 
But I still like this city.