A lot of it was wrapped up in my feelings about September 11th. I realized that before, but watching Obama’s acceptance speech drove it home. I’m only 30 and ain’t been alive long, arguably, and missed some major cultural milestones. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think any man has walked on the moon so long as I have been alive. The sixties are full of a lot of cultural imagery that will only ever be grainy footage to me; JFK and RFK and MLK. I came in at the tail end of the seventies, and missed free love and freer sex. While I enjoy the Beatles music in some ways, I still don’t see what the big fuss was about, and by the time I came around, Elvis was gone, too. I enjoy few movies made before 1980, Star Wars being the most notable example.

Still, the other night, watching Obama accept the presidency, I thought of what I have seen. I saw a black man become president of the United States, and while I know that racism is in many ways still alive and perhaps too healthy in America, I think it’s the surest sign there’s hope.

I remember this, too:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtYdjbpBk6A]

Which was in 1987. Two years later, in August 1989, 28 years and one day after it was constructed, that wall came down:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnYXbJ_bcLc]

I think a lot of us had that feeling first thing Wednesday morning, just after midnight.

The end of one era, and the beginning of a new one.

(I’ve just realized, too, that 28 years and three days after I was born, I left for USC. That’s kinda neat)

Because the other momentous thing I’ve seen during my lifetime is something that too often hurts too badly to talk about too much. A few weeks ago, I caught the premier for Life on Mars, a show by which I was singularly unimpressed save for a single moment:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zyPEL_2LGE]

I often feel like that day started a time of corruption and incompetence carried through 7 long years. Seven years during which America lost internationally most of what reputation it had, invaded countries it had no right to attack, ‘defending freedoms’ it had already taken away anyway.

I don’t know what Obama will do, nor what he will change. I don’t know that he will be a good president. But I think he has both dignity and integrity, two things the office of the presidency have been sorely lacking for a long, long time (and not just during this past administration. I like Clinton, but dignity and integrity are not words that come to mind when he does), and I feel comfortable enough with the next four years (at least) in his hands.

I don’t think much will change for a while; Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Berlin Wall didn’t fall the day after Mr. Reagan challenged Mr. Gorbachev. Then again, September 12th, 2001 saw the sun rise on a world completely changed from the one that had existed just 24 hours before, so who knows?

I don’t. But here’s the thing:

While I don’t remember much about the morning of September 11th up to, say, 8:50 or so, it is because that day at that point in my life was unremarkable, which means it was a good morning. It was a morning on which I woke up a little later than I wanted, brushed my teeth, walked a block up to the PATH station at Journal Square. It was a morning I walked from Herald Square at 34th and 7th to my office at 40th and Madison, and if I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary during that several block trek, I will claim it was a good one, because those walks were, back then. They weren’t all sunshine and roses, of course (not many rosebushes on the streets of Manhattan), but after that morning, those walks were different, and they disappeared all together several weeks later.

I cried when I watched Obama’s acceptance speech, just like I cried when Hillary Clinton spoke at the DNC. I cried when I watched McCain concede. Not because I was so happy, though there was that, but because I was feeling something with which I had been unfamiliar for so long. I watched the polls and results with hope but also with caution, and even posted over at Making Light that I would believe it only when he took the oath of office.

Because the thing is, when you’re so scared, when you feel so beaten down, when you get so wound up and anxious, if you feel that way long enough, it can be hard to give it up. Watching Obama speak, I started to give it up. I started to let the sun shine in again. I started to feel myself open again, and that’s something I haven’t felt in a long, long time. Watching Obama speak, I started to realize that things might not always be so dark as I felt they were.

Then again, I also know that I may well be projecting my personal feelings onto those of the country as a whole. I took this election more personally than I took the one in 2004 because I’ve changed in the years since. In 2004, I was working as an assistant editor and living in my parents’ basement; this just a couple of years after I had graduated college with all the promise in the world and gotten a great gig at a prestigious advertising agency. In a way, I think I felt I was going backward if I ever felt much at all, because I know at times I was going just to go, doing just to do, coasting through to get by. This year was personal because I don’t feel that way. I’m working and living and doing. I’ve stopped waiting around for life to happen and started to make things happen, and I think I projected some of that feeling onto the election. I think I felt as though, since I was changing, the world should, too, somehow, in however small or large a way.

I think, too, I felt ready.

I don’t know what the future will hold. I don’t know what tomorrow will be.

But just the hope of it makes me smile at the possibility.

For now, that is something. For now, it is enough.

New York/Manhattan is, obviously the epicenter of the financial industry. When the Dow sinks, it sank first in Manhattan.

Manhattan is also pretty much the epicenter of the publishing industry. And given that the financial climate is what it is, one would think that the publishing industry is every bit as concerned about its own welfare as financial sectors are concerned about their own.

And one might not be wrong.

For example, one of the regular publishing/agenting blogs I read is maintained by Lori Perkins, of the Lori Perkins Agency. Lori is extraordinarily well known in the publishing industry and has quite the agenting reputation. She is renowned and respected. This is her blog. I like reading her blog.

So today, Lori wrote about how the faltering economy might affect writers. Money quote:

It’s not all doom and gloom. I just sold another book for one of my clients to Harlequin’s Spice line. But the bad news there is that it won’t be pubbed until 2011.

And there’s the rub. These publishing companies work so far in advance, that when they decide to slow down acquisitions, they can literally just stop buying for 6 or 9 months. And that’s what I predict will happen here.

So my advice is to close on any offer that comes your way now, or try to get a three book deal, because it’s going to be very slow for the next few months.

Which is interesting, certainly. It gives me pause. It might not be doom and gloom, I guess, but, well, it’s a little doomy and gloomy. At least on my end. My end being recently graduated MPWer who studied with Sid Stebel and is currently seeking representation for his debut novel. That end.

But here’s the thing:

Perkins recently partnered with two colleagues to form Ravenous Romance, an e-publisher specializing in romance available exclusively online (no printing-on-demand, it seems). Perkins is, understandably and justifiably, excited about this: it’s a brand new publisher actively seeking new material. To wit:

There’s more than enough to go around, as we are buying over 400 books a year and at least 365 short stories.

Then again, it seems like an entirely different business model from that of ‘traditional’ publishing (we really need a better adjective for that). It doesn’t sound as though it’s based on advances; it sounds much like Harper Studio, the new Harper Collins imprint, which asks writers to either accept drastically reduced advances or forego it altogether in favor of greater sharing in profits. Which seems kind of cool, in a certain way; it’s certainly getting writers to put their money (books) where their mouth is. I’ve often thought I might fight for a higher advance but then reinvest it into whatever publishing company offered it and the marketing/publicity budget they had allotted me.

Arguably grandiose publishing plans aside, the timing of Perkins’ posts and venture is interesting to me. Sure, acquisitions from traditional publishers might slow, but meanwhile, Ravenous Romance is purchasing upwards of 400 manuscripts for e-publication. Also, actual publishing might slow, but a digital publisher inherently lends itself to faster production. Which is why Ravenous Romance seems like it might be a terrific alternative in an otherwise troubled time.

The question I ask, though, is of degree. I salute Perkins and really admire what she’s doing. But digital publishing gives me pause, if only because it’s so accessible to anyone. Publishing a printed book requires conversion, printing, and often distribution. Even self-publishing companies like Lulu affiliate with a printer because not just anyone can produce a professional-looking book, and even if they could, how might they get it into bookstores.

Digital publishing, on the other hand, completely obviates that need. In a few moments, give or take, I’m going to hit the ‘publish’ button here. The conventional phrase is that I’ll be sending this post ‘into the ether,’ which I suppose is partially true, but it’s an easily accessed ether, ain’t it? After all, you managed to find it. Ravenous Romance bills itself as an online publishing company, but aren’t Blogger and WordPress, too? One could make the argument, of course, that something like Ravenous Romance allows for a gatekeeper similar to the traditional publishing houses and somehow lends some authority/credibility based on the fact that any work published was somehow acquired, but then again isn’t that one of the problems with traditional publishing; since when has it been concerned with either authority or credibility so much as whether a book will sell?

Me, I don’t know. Really, all I know is that though publishing may be changing in drastic and exciting ways, the more it changes, the more it will remain the same. Because all it is, really, is simple: words finding their way.

Which, I think, they generally tend to do.

Because it’s a perfect day for a ride, ain’t it?

***

I should really just sell the damned thing. Manhattan just isn’t a place for such a beast, much less the Village. New York’s a walking town. A subway town. Sometimes a bus town, and some other times still a taxi town. It’s a bustling town and a jogging town, a drinking and dancing and staying-out-till-4-am town, and in fact it’s a different kind of town just about every minute for just about every person in it, but it’s not so much a driving town. There are too many cabs, too many long limousines with precious celebrity cargo, too many delivery trucks and big buses, too many Lincoln Town Cars shuttling CEOs to the office and back. The air is too bright and the sounds are too vibrant and the color is too loud to be shuttered away from the world by four windows and a growling engine, but still I keep the dilapidated duster.

I tell myself I keep it because I wouldn’t get much for it. The old lady who used to own it never did know much about anything she put a key into, and the engine’s hoarse in her memory. The duck tape on the torn cloth top; the old, nearly bald tires; the muffler that might as well not exist—selling it might cover a month’s rent or a fancy night on the City, but not much more.

That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

But I know the truth. I don’t keep it because selling it wouldn’t make enough; I keep it for days like this.

As soon as I woke up this morning, I knew you were going to call. You always do on the days when I wake to sunlight like glory streaming through my bedroom window. Golden hardwood floors, red brick walls. Sheets like eucalyptus. A good day to be alive. A good day for you to call.

And when my cell rings and it’s you, I answer it. We haven’t spoken in months, but we do so now like no time at all has passed.

“Good morning, sunshine,” you say.

“Indeed it is. I knew you’d call,” I tell you.

“Did you? And why is that?”

“Perfect day for a ride.”

You pause. As if you want me to believe you’re looking out your window. But I know otherwise. I know you’re fingering the knot on the checkered silk scarf already around your neck. The one you wear when we go for a ride. “It is, isn’t it? Do you want to go out?”

I know you use me for my car, but I don’t mind. You use all the boys, and none of us ever do. The supermodels who bicycle across town in the rain just to bring you chocolates and flowers, the schoolboys with deliriously fawning crushes, the older ad execs and producers and artistes who want to cast you and make you a “Stah, baby, make you a stah.”

But you and I both know you’re already a stah. A shooting supernova across all of Manhattan, and the entire city wishes on you when you streak on by.

You show up just like I knew you would. Giant, chunky, black shades. Your silk scarf over your short, smart, black hair. Your gingham farmers’-daughter shirt tied in the front and the daisy-dukes you painted across your hips and thighs. You look innocent, and that’s even more dangerous, isn’t it? You smile and greet me, throw your arms around me in an effusive hug I feel your chest in, and I’m sure you can feel me in it, as well, but if you do you don’t mention it.

And for that moment, just that one moment, I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. I’m certainly the luckiest guy on the lower East side.

“How’s the Baroness?” you ask as we walk down to the old yellow jalopy, even though you don’t need to. The Baroness is the same as she was the last time you rode in her. The same, in fact, as the first time you rode in her. The Baroness doesn’t change. And maybe that’s why you love her. And me. Us.

We fall right away into our familiar ritual. We put the top down. We drive to the first Starbucks we find, and you hold the two lattes because the Baronness is too old to have cupholders. We turn the radio up full blast, and the music cuts out twice as I attempt to start it. It’s an ugly old heap, but it gets us where we want to go, past Union Square and Saint Mark’s, past the NYU buildings where you teach beauty and truth. You may feel all grown up when you do so, all dressed up in your professional slacks and studied words, but you take off your scarf as we leave the City and the wind whips through your hair and you giggle like you’re six years old.

People watch as we leave the city, and I’m the envy of the entire city when you smile at the passers-by.

I know you use me for my car, but I don’t mind, because it’s mutual. I don’t mind because you remove your top as we drive farther into the green hills of the country outside the City, as we reach stretches of unoccupied highway that go for miles. And finally we are the only people in the world, and you climb atop me, and we ride, baby, we ride. It’s a perfect day for it.

~~~

Ever hear a song you just think there’s more to? That’s the story here: I heard the Magnetic Fields’ “Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side,” and I was like, “Man, that’s a short story.”

So I wrote it.

Here’s a rad video of the song:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhO1XlDFqxE]

The Magnetic Fields are, by the way, one of the most spectacularly awesome bands I’ve ever heard. Stephin Merritt is up there with Roger Clyne and Elvis Costello in terms of how well the guy writes a song, and I don’t think there’s a bad Magnetic Fields CD out there. Merritt is, of course, the guy who composed 69 Love Songs, a three-CD box set everyone except Merritt titters about the title of because he seems to simply believe the joke is so damned obvious it ain’t worth acknowledging.

I like that. There’s always something to be said for eschewing subtlety.

And Claudia Gonson? Magnetic Fields bandmate? Seriously, seriously awesome. She introduced me to Neil Gaiman when I went into total fanboy catatonia. I’m not sure I would have been able to speak otherwise.

So I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend, and if you’re not, I hope that helps make it a little more sublime.

And again, “Perfect Day for a Ride” is one of the stories in my collection, all proceeds of which I’m donating to the United Way NYC in honor of those we lost on September 11th and in the days following. So if you ain’t picked it up yet, now’s a good time to. And if you already have: thanks!

Every year, I’m wrong again.

Every year, I think I might sleep a little later, and every year my body shocks me awake at almost exactly 8:45 am Eastern standard time. Every year I think I might just make it to my alarm, and every year I don’t. Every year I wake up confused and bewildered for a just a moment during which I don’t remember what day it is. And every year, I do, all over again. Every year, I get quiet and reticent.

Every year, I watch two videos. They are as traditional to me at this time of year as Twas the Night Before Christmas is traditional to December.

The first one is of Jon Stewart introducing The Daily Show on the day it returned to broadcast on September 20th, 2001.

The other is the video for Ryan Adams’ song “New York, New York.”

Unfortunately, WordPress, Comedy Central, and MTV don’t seem to play nice, so you’ll have to follow those links, but trust me, they’re worth it.

I just wanted to share them, because they are cathartic on a day on which I otherwise shut completely down. I tend to solidify like concrete, mute and rigid and immobile, and each of those videos seems to serve as tiny, persistent chisels, busting away all the defense mechanisms I’ve thrown up since the day I smelled that dust (some days I fear there are too many). And I figured, since I truly believe there is catharsis for all of us in sharing the memory of that day, I feel too that there is similar relief in sharing how we cope with it.

This year, I’ve had an epiphany, prompted by Making Light, a blog maintained by Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Making Light is intertwined with my memories of that day; there was a check-in post there, that day, and I remember I either posted there or to the well. Today, Making Light pretty much defiantly rejected commemoration of the terrorist attacks in favor of other anniversaries/memories:

I am sure that there will be many places to remember the dead, and to debate the lessons they can teach the living. I’m confident that the Making Light commentariat will have a lot to say on the subject.

This thread is not for that. This thread is for defiant normality. If the aim of terrorism is to produce terror, grief and anger, then let us laugh, and rejoice, and love.

And I both understand and acknowledge the value of such a sentiment.

Moreso, I say, I’m sorry, but grief, for me, is normality today. Today, I laughed at my students, and rejoiced in the fact that people read what I’ve written, but both come in utter defiance. That doesn’t necessarily mean that both are tainted, but still, I look around at where I am and what I’m doing and remember where I was and what I was doing. This year, I acknowledge it hurt, and I accept that it’s okay. In the past, I’ve felt at times like I don’t have a right to feel this way, because hey, I survived and that leaves me so much better off than so many other people, but this year I note:

I’m sorry. I’m not okay. I’m not even a little okay. I miss Manhattan more than I can express. I miss my friends and my crummy little apartment and riding the subway to work. I miss all the terrific people I worked with and all the wonderful friends I made. I miss the neon and the way the sidewalk sparkled under my feet. I miss blowing half my paycheck on bad CDs at HMV, and watching movies alone at Virgin.

But most of all, even though I may not be okay, I am grateful.

To you.

I don’t think I’ve said it lately, but thank you. Because a reader is not solely the single best thing any writer can have, but also, arguably, what makes a writer in the first place. In “Your Name on a Grain of Rice,” Roger Clyne wonders:

What good is my love song if you ain’t around to hear it?

I’m forever grateful I don’t ask that question.

I was born on May 8, 1978, and so I had six months experience being 23 years old. I was mostly single and certainly didn’t have any commitments in the world. I was working as a freelance broadcast production assistant at 285 Madison Avenue, which was my fancy way of saying I was a temp at Young & Rubicam, New York. I was only a year out of college and deserved fancy ways of saying things, didn’t I? I was young and naïve and blissfully unaware of the world on a grander scale, all of which was about to change.

Given that I didn’t know that morning was going to be different from other mornings, I didn’t mentally record it. I remember the shower curtain with the tropical fish in my bathroom and the trunk of the old elm tree just outside the bathroom window, and ironing my pants and hurrying out of my apartment at a few minutes to 8 in the morning, but those are as likely memories of other mornings as they are of that day. There were a lot of mornings like that back then. I miss mornings like that.

The first real memory I have of that day, the first that I am certain, mentally, was part of that day, is of waiting in the line of the corner breakfast cart to buy a cranberry muffin and an orange juice. I did that often, but I remember that day, an attractive brunette was in front of me. I’d seen her before. She had a nice figure and was gorgeous in spite of her enormous nose. Or maybe I thought she was attractive because of that enormous nose; perhaps it added a touch of distinction to her to separate her from all of the other spectacularly attractive brunettes I often saw on the streets of Manhattan. I remember thinking one day I’d have to say something to her. Maybe later that week. Maybe I’d invite her out for a drink.

I paid for my muffin and orange juice and walked into my office building. Young & Rubicam had temporary ID patches for their freelance workers, but I’d been there for more than a year by then and could greet all of the front desk attendants by name, and they always just waved me by. They did so that morning.

But that was the last morning they ever did.

***

I worked on the third floor, and took the stairs to my desk. It was in a cubicle, and I got to my cube at five minutes to nine. My voicemail indicator light on my phone flashed, so I dialed our audix system as I booted up my computer.

Just as I did so, one of the business managers with whom I worked came hurrying down the hallway opposite me. It was not unusual to see any of my colleagues hurrying down hallways.

“I just heard a plane hit the World Trade Center,” she said as she passed, heading further down the hall toward the office of the director of our department.

I wonder if you ever realize the exact moment your life changes. I didn’t. I keyed in my extension and password to listen to my messages. I don’t remember what they were, but I remember I wasn’t concerned. I do remember my first thought: single-engine Cessna, pilot error, clipped that giant antenna sticking out of the top of the one tower. Port Authority officials would be fishing the yahoo out of the water off Battery Park before most of the city had gotten its coffee, we now return you to your regular programming. Not for a moment did I consider the possibility of . . . well. What actually happened.

***

I walked down the hallway to our director’s office. The business manager had fished the key out of the director’s assistant’s drawer and tuned the cable-enabled television to CNN. That third floor office was on the corner overlooking the intersection of 40th Street and Madison Avenue, and given the density of sky scrapers in Manhattan, we couldn’t see the World Trade Center from where we were, and so we watched it happen on cable, just like everyone else in the nation. You know what I saw. You saw it, too. Somewhere, wherever you were, you saw it, or heard about it. Your eyes were riveted to a television, your ears to a radio.

Given the timing of the impact of those two planes, many of our producers were already on their way to work when the first struck, and as they arrived they joined us in the office. The usual morning pleasantries were dismissed for something more intimate: exchanges of information, and hugs.

“Did you—oh, thank God you’re okay!”

“I was so worried.”

“Did you hear from her?”

“Has anyone talked to Los Angeles?”

No one had. It was still early. The towers still stood, pouring grey smoke into the sky like blood into water. We all had cell phones, but the circuits overloaded in an hour, and even the land connections were spotty at best.

When the first tower fell, I went numb. Words like “shock” and “surreal” were used a lot during the following days, but neither quite adequately describes what I felt at that moment.

Not even terrified manages it. To really explain that feeling, I need to take you back to my childhood, when my grandmother gave me The World Book of Knowledge, which contained hundreds of articles arranged with no real order about subjects from the first money to black holes to odd musical instruments. It was a fun book, and, at the end, included an article about Nostradamus. Who he was, what he did, what people believed he predicted.
That article mentioned several of his predictions that hadn’t by then come to fruition: shooting stars and a couple of others, but the one I remember most was “The destruction of New York and the start of World War III in the late 1990s.” I was six or seven years old when I read that sentence, during the mid-80s.

It terrified me. For years I had recurring nightmares about that sentence. Buildings falling, airplanes and boats… In my teens, those dreams came less frequently, then stopped completely when I went to college. By then I was anxious about other things.

Until my senior year. I was engaged then, had just realized I didn’t want to be a doctor but not yet figured out what else I might do, and was completing my major when my nightmares began again in earnest. One every few weeks. Dreams of watching the Manhattan skyline fall, of fire and smoke and chaos.

I don’t believe those dreams were precognitive; I think the book scared the wits out of me when I was young, and it became a great subconscious source of anxiety. When I started to worry about grades and credit card bill due dates and assignments, I think I made that anxiety into the biggest, most terrifying thing possible.

And there I stood, in a corner office, and the biggest, most terrifying thing I had ever thought possible, the thing that had haunted my dreams for so many years, was happening. That was how I felt when I saw that first building fall. That terror had been part of my dreams for so many years that it was almost familiar. It was like opening the closet door when you’re thirty and meeting the bogeyman.

***

I don’t remember much about those first few hours, save a few intermittent moments. I remember the moment of looking out those office windows, down at the corner, and seeing cars backing down Madison Avenue in reverse at decent speeds. I don’t think, before that moment, I’d ever seen a car in Manhattan driving in reverse before. It may have been related to the evacuation of Grand Central Station, but I can’t be sure; there were many rumors, and even having been right there, I’m still not sure exactly what happened.

I remember the moment those towers fell. I remember the image on CNN; that one moment both were there, the tops in flames and obscured by smoke but still intact, and then one just wasn’t. The tumbling down of dust as first one tower and then, an hour later, the other. I remember watching that occur with my colleagues. I remember the tear that traced out of a green eye and down the drawn cheek of one. I remember the empty feeling that came, the feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that I still haven’t been able to identify. I still feel it sometimes, and I still can’t figure out what it is.

I knew I should call my parents, who lived near Philadelphia, to let them know I was okay, but I realized I knew neither of their work numbers. Instead I called my old high school, where my sister was then a student. She was out at lunch and couldn’t be contacted, so I told the principal I’d call back in 45 minutes. When I did so, they put my sister on the phone.

She was in tears; they’d told her I’d called but not that I was okay, because I’d forgotten to tell them I was. She gave me my mother’s work number.

My mother burst into tears when she heard my voice, but I don’t think it was the first time she’d done so that day; I could tell by her relief just how worried she had been. She asked what I planned to do and where I planned to go from there, and I had to admit that I hadn’t gotten that far yet. We’d all agreed that it was safest to remain in our office building for the time being, but as the day progressed, that changed. People made plans to stay with one another, extended invitations, made plans to find homes with people they’d only ever drunk coffee with, previously. My director pulled his backpack over his shoulders and set out to walk home across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Just after noon, one of my colleagues and her husband mentioned that they were going to trek across town to the Hoboken ferry to get back to their own apartment in New Jersey, and they invited me to join them. Though I’d been invited to stay with friends in Manhattan itself, I hadn’t wanted to remain in the City: I had nothing with me, no contact solution, no toothbrush, no extra clothing, nothing but what I had with me and maybe twenty bucks. I didn’t have any credit cards because my credit wasn’t very good after college.

I also wanted to get back to my room. My bed. My floor messy with the clothes I’d laundered but hadn’t yet put away. My apartment. Home.

The PATH train from 33rd Street was my normal transportation home, but they had shut down the subway in downtown Manhattan for fear of the subterranean vibrations, so I accepted the invitation from my colleague and her husband to walk with them, and at around two in the afternoon began a journey across the city along 40th street.

***

It was only upon leaving the building that I realized how quickly and vastly Manhattan had changed, and that I suddenly felt completely exposed. In the office, I had been insulated from the noise, the chaos, the destruction. The windows and walls and floors and ceilings had created a bubble, isolating us, where we already had friends and family. I consider that now, and it makes me feel so terribly guilty; so many people were lost that day. Almost 3,000 workers and rescue personnel lost their lives during the attacks and the subsequent recovery efforts, and there I had been, in a cushy corner office on Madison avenue watching the events unfold on CNN. When those buildings fell, when I watched them tumble down over themselves in massively roiling clouds of dark grey dust, I watched it happen on the large television in that office, surrounded by the people I loved and worked with.

I couldn’t sort my feelings that day. Scared and shocked, yes, but mostly just numb. Overwhelmed. Everything felt new, and different. I’d always believed Manhattan is a city unlike any other, but I realized even more true how true that was that day when I realized how different it had become.

The Manhattan I’d grown to love over six years was a cacophony of discordant scents all jostling each other for elbow room: body odor under failed deodorant; streetcart pretzels and hotdogs and falafel; those hot, muggy, surprising blasts of foulsmelling steam from subway grates; sudden-and-then gone whiffs of designer perfume like lavender and lilacs worn by beautiful women who make so much money in such high positions they could buy and sell you and you probably wouldn’t mind, not when they smelled like that.

Manhattan, too, is a million-instrument orchestra: car horns and engines; jackhammers and clanging percussion; people shouting on their cell phones; homeless people who are probably mad and certainly angry. The sound thrums through the streets like blood through veins, some in frequencies you can only feel, and as though it is the City’s life. It is industry, and it is constant. I often went out with my friends to bars and clubs, at nights at the end of which I would trek back to 33rd street to take the PATH train to my Jersey City apartment at 4 in the morning, and there were always other people around. Sinatra sang that Manhattan never sleeps, and he was half-right; it never even goes to bed.

The first difference I noticed when I left my office building that afternoon, through those revolving doors and into the stillbrilliant sun, was the smell. The air seemed heavy, as dense with dirt and dust and grit as it could possibly be without actually becoming solid; I could taste the grains in it, feel them rattle down my throat and into my lungs. I was several miles from the World Trade Center, on 40th and Madison, breathing the towers and the attacks and the fear into my body. Though I was several miles from the site of the attacks, they became a part of me, trapped in my lungs, in my eyes, in my memories, as crystallized as silica and asbestos.

It smelled like a construction site. A vast, near-silent, deserted construction site.

Even now, years later, I sometimes find it difficult to take a deep breath. I work out, and afterwards I struggle to get enough air. I know that smokers get emphysema and cancer because foreign particles accumulate in their lungs over the years and form tumors, and I wonder if a similar thing occurred that day. I wonder if I still have dust from that day in my lungs. I wonder if my breath caught the World Trade Center and won’t let it go.

The city was near-silent, too, and nearly empty. I walked out into the same city, with the same great buildings, the same famous avenues and streets, the same stores and public library, but they seemed different, sapped of their usual energy. The whole city was preternaturally quiet. There was no industry, few cars, even fewer people. I felt as though the city were hurting, and I could feel it on the street; without the sound and the life that was its energy, the city itself seemed to be in shock, as if it were bleeding out.

It felt so foreign.

It hurt.

***

My coworker, her husband, and I made light conversation as we walked across a City that felt unfamiliar. All that remained of the towers was the dust you could smell all over the City. I remember hitting Broadway and looking downtown; given the density and height of Manhattan’s architecture, I’m not certain I would have been able to see the World Trade Center from that spot on 40th and Broadway, but I couldn’t then. All we could see was a great, settled mass of grey-white smoke we could taste even from where we stood.

I only ever managed to visit the World Trade Center once, that previous June, when I’d attended a reading by Neil Gaiman on the day his novel American Gods was published. The Borders in which he’d read was at street level, and its second floor was the highest I had visited; I’d never had occasion to go any higher. When I was in college, however, I’d taken a class called “Culture and the City,” in which our professor took us on walks in various neighborhoods of Manhattan, pointing out the architectural styles present. I remember going on the walk around downtown Manhattan and pausing next to Saint Peter’s church and listening to my professor talk about the Chinese gothic style of the World Trade Center, and I remember standing there, in the shadow of the towers, and craning my neck as far as it would go and still not being able to see the tops but goggling anyway, because that was really all you could do.

***

As we continued walking across the city, I remember hitting 9th Avenue and seeing a dazed business man. His shoulders were hunched, and I couldn’t determine how old he was because he walked slowly and as if he were much older than he appeared.

His charcoal suit hung loose on his frame and looked expensive but didn’t fit him well; it was wrinkled, too, and it appeared as if he had slept in it. His hair was mostly dark streaked with some grey, and then my coworker pointed out the man’s feet.

His shoes and the cuffs of his probably-tailored pants were caked with thick, white dust.

I wondered if he’d walked all the way to 40th Street from the World Trade Center. It would have been a long walk, in the bright, warm sun, dressed in a suit like that, and walking as he was.

***

When we finally got to the line for the Hoboken ferry, which went down several blocks, I don’t know how long we stood in it. Quite a while passed before we boarded the ferry: a large, white boat with benches for seating spanning starboard to port with two aisles cutting through. We took a seat in the middle of the boat; on any other day it would have been a gorgeous ride on the Hudson River. The water was calm and sparkled silver in the late-afternoon sun, and the ride was smooth.

It was 5:20 then. I don’t remember the time because I looked at my watch; rather, I know what time it was because I’ve read, since then, that was when the third building, World Trade Center 7, fell, and I watched that happen from the middle of the Hudson River. Everyone on that ferry watched that building fall, in fact, because all our eyes were fixed to the dust cloud that covered most of downtown Manhattan as we rode past it.

There’s been a recent proliferation of conspiracy theories about “what really happened” that day and much speculation about why that third building collapsed when it did; I’ve read many people argue that it was controlled demolition. I’ve seen controlled demolition, both on television and in real life. I’ve watched construction crews collapse the buildings in on themselves so that first one section falls and then the next and the next, until all that is left of all those stories is a pile of rubble and dust.

What I watched happen to World Trade Center 7 from the middle of the Hudson River did not look like any controlled demolition I’ve ever seen. I remember seeing that reddish-tan building in front of the dust cloud. There were no tiny, squiblike explosions that puffed from the sides to bring that building to the ground; rather, it shimmered like a heat mirage over hot asphalt, didn’t sparkle with the light of tiny explosions but rather wavered slightly without ever actually moving, and then it sank as if the ground beneath it had become water.

That was the moment I remember having been terrified. It was a cold, icy, resigned terror, not a panic, because why would you panic when you’re on a ferry in the middle of the Hudson River? There was no place to go. I remember wondering, in that moment, if there had been a nuclear weapon aboard one of the planes, if it had been timed to go off several hours later to wipe out the rest of downtown Manhattan, and I remember wondering, in that detached way, how quickly it would happen. How long before the blast radius hit the ferry I was on and capsized it and blew us apart and boiled the very water on which we were floating, all at the same time?

I counted to five, and those five seconds seemed to last forever. I didn’t feel safe after they had passed, either, only reasonably sure that whatever had made that building fall hadn’t been nuclear, and that we people on that ferry were going to survive that day, that we’d made it out of Manhattan alive.

I didn’t feel excited, nor jubilant, nor triumphant, nor even relief.

I remember noticing that my coworker was watching that same space, where that third building had been, as I was, and that her eyes filmed over and that several tears streaked down her cheeks. I remember taking her right hand, and her husband’s taking her left hand, and I remember riding for the remainder of the ferry ride like that, and I remember how I felt.

I felt incredibly sad. I felt heartbroken. I felt guilty. I felt deeply affected, but also like I didn’t have the right to feel that way, that there were people who had jumped from the building, that there were who-knew-how-many rescue workers who had lost their lives, and there I was on the ferry on the Hudson River because I only wanted to go home. I’m an Eagle scout, part of the Order of the Arrow, and I felt like I should have put on my uniform and gone down to the site and helped hand out water or helped sort through the rubble or God, helped any goddamn way I could, and I felt so selfish because all I wanted to do was go home. All I wanted to do was hug my family and my friends and for everything to be okay, even though I knew that it wouldn’t be, it couldn’t be. I felt so impotent, so useless, too, because what could I do, really? I couldn’t even give blood, because I’d just gotten a tattoo the previous January. I was 23 years old and I might have been strong and smart but it didn’t feel like enough. It was the first time in my entire life I felt like the best I had to offer wasn’t enough.

***

When we got off the ferry, there were several places to go: one was a general exit, while another included decontamination equipment, including flash-showers, for anyone who had been caught in the dust and the cloud that had permeated the air at the site of the attack. My coworker asked if I was sure I didn’t want to join them at their apartment, but I declined. I only wanted to get to my own, and so we separated. I found my way to the Hoboken PATH train, and realized, even as I did so, that if I had left my apartment only ten minutes later that morning, I would have been on the train when the first plane had struck.

The PATH train is much like the subway, with a similar setup of seats, but I never sat: trains always filled up, and I always gave up my seats to people who looked like they needed them more, anyway. I took a spot against a wall by the door, and for the first time that whole day, I exhaled. I felt like I was almost where I wanted to be. Almost home.

While we waited for more passengers, two gentlemen boarded the car, a well-dressed black man in a caramel leather jacket guiding a white man dressed in a wet, flame-resistant jumpsuit. I wondered why it was wet if it was flame-resistant. The white man’s eyes were red and irritated, and the black man led him to a pole in the center of the train, then sat down. I noticed the man with the irritated eyes was constantly blinking and shaking his head, and I offered him the eyedrops I always kept with in case my contacts started acting up.

He declined, telling me about what had happened. He’d been there when the first tower had collapsed, and the dust had scratched his corneas badly. They’d taken him to their decontamination shower, which was why his clothes were wet, and even as he explained I realized that the dazed business man my coworkers and I had seen hadn’t slept in his suit; it had dried that way.

The train ride was smooth and uninterrupted, and I felt a rush of guilty relief when the doors opened at Journal Square, as I bounded up the stairs and into Jersey City, as I walked the block back to my apartment and then collapsed on my bed. I didn’t realize how much nervous energy had been thrumming through my body until it finally left, and I passed out.

***

I was awakened by a call from a girl who lived just across the street and with whom I’d gone out a few times even though nothing physical had ever happened. She asked if I was home and then what I was up to, and then invited me to her place to split a bottle of wine and just be together.

I went. She opened a bottle of red and we split it between us, and she turned on CNN until we couldn’t watch the planes fly into the towers any more, and then we just sat and talked.

She was an accountant at American Express and had been at World Trade Center 7 the day before, and she was supposed to have been there the following day.

This is probably the point where it would make sense, storywise, if we had sex. That we needed to connect somehow, that our words and feelings had failed us and we needed to use our bodies to do something physical, something to escape, however temporarily, from what was occurring, but we did not.

All I remember, now, is that I wasn’t in any sort of mood for any such thing; I was tired and scared and felt impotent in a way that had nothing to do with sex, and maybe I could have initiated something, but I didn’t have the heart. The wine had gotten to me, perhaps, and I just wanted to be back in my own bed.

I kissed her on her forehead and left her there, in her apartment, on her couch, settling in to sleep. I let myself out of her building and crossed the street to my own; night had fallen, but still I could smell the dust in the air on an otherwise clear night. If I dreamt at all that night, I don’t remember them.

***

Five years later, those are the details that remain with me and probably always will. The pain and the hurt remain, as well, and in the years since I have realized that they extend more deeply than I had at first realized. It is only now, recently, when I have begun to write about it, that I have begun to unravel my emotions about it. I’m starting to believe that I blocked myself from feeling certain things until very recently, that perhaps I sensed I wasn’t strong enough, yet, to face my feelings about that day.

Not the fear and the pain; those were the easy ones. No, there were other ones, as well. Guilt, for one, and selfishness for another. The posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms I feel are not nearly so severe, nor acute, as those of others who experienced that day, but they are there nonetheless. Perhaps one of the most revealing things I can tell you is that I feel ashamed that I may be suffering from survivor trauma because I don’t feel like I have any right to that feeling. I didn’t survive that day: I lived through it. I’m not certain I feared for my life except in retrospect; it all happened so fast that I experienced it, that day, with some detachment.

My memories of that day are interwoven with my memories of the years I spent in Manhattan. I was only a New Yorker for a short time, less than two years, and even then my address was in Jersey City. But that was just where my bed was; I worked and ate and danced and lived in Manhattan. When I went out, which was often because I was 23, I did so in Manhattan. I have a lot of memories I hold dear of those years, and that day has become part of them. Part of college and working and being with my friends. When I think of September 11th, 2001, I also think of the “Kiss Me, Kate!” revival, the Met and the Cloisters. When I think of how that day smelled, I also think of my office, of the commercials I helped produce, and all of my friends. When I think of the fear, I also think of being inside the World Trade Center and listening to Neil Gaiman read about American Gods, and of later looking up at those towers from the ground, of standing in the far-reaching shadow of those towers.

I wonder, when I think of that day, what American gods passed away that day, and how many. How many of us has it killed, and in what ways?

***

It is difficult to write about that day, and the only way I can end this account is to acknowledge that. That as essays and writings go, I don’t feel this is successful even if I don’t know how it could be successful: I’ve laid bare everything I have, everything I remember, and still it feels inadequate, as I still do.

Perhaps it is that I still have trouble believing that this world I find myself in can possibly be real. That my nation, my great country of which I’ve always been proud to be part, has strayed so far and done so many things I disagree with. That our own government could have possibly corrupted the ideals on which our entire national ideology was based in an effort to trade our freedom for some false sense of security. In the years since, we have run a rainbow of terrorist alerts and been prevented from bringing hair product with us when we travel.

I can’t seem to shake this feeling that it’s a bad dream. I can’t help looking at the plans and design for the new Freedom Tower and wonder why we can’t just build the World Trade Center back. Why we can’t recreate those buildings so that, one day, when we talk to our children and tell them about that day, they can look up at us and say, “What’re you talking about, Daddy? You mean those buildings? Right there? They falled down?”

I live, now, in Los Angeles and attend school at the University of Southern California, but I can’t help the desire that, tomorrow morning, I might wake up back in my tiny, cluttered bedroom in my crummy little apartment in Jersey City, and I might shower and dress and take a PATH train into midtown, where I might walk again to that advertising agency like I would have every day for the past five years, and I might spend the day writing copy and brainstorming new ideas for new clients and new accounts.

And that I might, at some point in the day, find myself on the higher floors of the building, and I might look out the window, toward downtown. I would see the Empire State Building just a few blocks south, but it wouldn’t be the tallest building in Manhattan again; just a mile or so beyond I would see the sunlight shining off the windows of the World Trade Center, and beyond even that the Statue of Liberty.

And I would stand there looking at it, and I would appreciate where I was, and I would smile.

***

So that’s the essay, and my story. That’s what I remember having seen that day. And again, should you choose to buy a copy of my collection, during the limited time it remains available, all proceeds go to the United Way NYC in tribute to the men and women who lost their lives that day and in the days following. So please help, however you can. If you’re not interested in the collection, perhaps pass the information along to someone who may be.

And thank you, for helping me make this into something worthwhile. Thank you for helping me do something.

I think it’s safe to say I was overqualified for the job, though not by a whole hell of a lot.

I received a call from my temp agency that Sunday (I worked for Force One Entertainment, and if they still exist, consider this a plug; they are one of the main reasons my experience in Manhattan was what it was, and for that I am forever grateful. An amazing staff, with great connections), and they offered me one of two positions: one in human resources, and the other in broadcast production.

Obviously, no contest.

So I started working with commercial producers. For huge clients: Sony, Dr Pepper, Jaguar. This was one of the spots we worked on:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjHkj-uSt_Y]

So was this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Trxpu5jvQ]

At Young & Rubicam, each assistant generally worked with no fewer than 7 or 8 producers. During my time there, I rotated to different desks, and I think I basically ended up working with the entire department in one way or another. Mostly I did the sort of grunt work one would associate with an entry-level freelance administrative position, but sometimes I got lucky. Once, I helped put together a video for the United Nations Millennium Summit. Sometimes I got to watch casting, or even directors’ reels. Never anything major, but certainly a lot of fun.

It was my first experience with production. Budgeting. Finding out how people made the images the rest of the world watched. For a while I had thought I might want to get into filmmaking, but I discovered there I didn’t, really. When I sit down to watch The Matrix, I want to see the Matrix, not the greenscreen and the wires. I like to watch magic more than I like to know how it works, and probably more than I’d like to perform it, unless, of course, it’s the real stuff.

(writing, to me, is the real stuff)

One of the producers for whom I worked was named September Reynolds. I don’t think that’s her name anymore; she got married not long after I left, I believe. September looked like a less skeletal version of Elizabeth Hurley, which meant she was a special kind of beautiful, and she was also one of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with. Gracious and charming and cheerful.

It was because of her, and others like her, that I never felt like a temp when I worked there. I felt like part of the gang.

I think about all that every year around this time. It rarely gets any easier. I had always loved fall, and still do for all the reasons it’s wonderful, but the end of summer and the beginning of autumn always remind me of what was a difficult time in my life. Every year around this time I start thinking more and more about September 11th. I start wondering how my life would have, could have, been different. I start to consider how it’s not, and I remember to be grateful it’s still mine to do with as I so please.

I’m not sure I remembered that for a while. I think, for a while, the relief of survival made me selfish, in a way. In fact, not just for a while: for several years. For a few years there, I tried to play safe, tried to build security, perhaps because for a moment there, I was no longer certain I’d ever have either again.

In our commercial and consumerist culture, October 31st is now, popularly, a day of pint-sized ghouls and ghosts and too much candy rushing through bloodstreams rush from door to door to beg for more. Being by heritage Scotch/Welsh, however, it is, for me, an end; October 31st is not Halloween but the Samhain, basically the equivalent of New Year’s Eve. This time of year always makes me reflective about what has come before, and, moreso, it reminds me of those years, and specifically that one. In some ways I feel like I might have survived that day, but in a very real way, a life ended. By that Halloween, I had moved back in with my family.

Five years passed before I left once again.

I doubt I’ll ever separate the extraordinarily mixed feelings I have regarding both that day and that time in my life. Because they were extraordinary years, full of hope and pride but also some anxiety about being young and trying to make my way. I remember the mornings on the PATH and the midnights in the bars. I remember Paisley, who worked on Nickelodeon and was a complete sweetheart, and who had an anthrax scare in the month following the attacks. I remember Marybeth, who always called me dude (so I always called her dudette), who lost several members of her family during the rescue efforts at Ground Zero. I remember Madeline, the music producer, who was a germophobe but gave me a hug, anyway, the day I left, and who once told me, in reference to my writing, “You’ve got it,” and with whom I watched the World Trade Center 7 fall from the center bench on the Hoboken ferry.

And I remember September, the greeting of whom inspired me to write a poem the year before, which was cliched and trite, and which I have since lost to time and moving. September, whose wedding song was “The Girl from Ipanema”–

The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, each one she passes goes – ah
. . .
but I watch her so sadly
How can I tell her I love her?
Yes, I would give my heart gladly,
But each day, when she walks to the sea,
She looks straight ahead, not at me.
. . .
And when she passes, I smile – but she doesn’t see (doesn’t see)
(she just doesn’t see, she never sees me…)

So good morning, September. Another year come and gone, but every time you come around I realize how much I missed you and wonder what we could have had if only I’d stuck around. I know you’ll be gone again before I know it, but in the meantime, well, it’s gonna be magic, just like always.

By this point, I was already having some problems; after what appeared to be a pretty major earthquage (which, for the sake of this post, we’re going to define as any ground shaking of suitable strength it shuts lights off, however briefly), whose first thought it is to go to the roof? Especially in Manhattan, where the buildings are so many multiple stories tall?

What I liked was that the whole movie wasn’t exactly like that. Sure, some of the characters make some questionable decisions, but amid chaos like that, a lot of decisions are going to come flying, and no one can decide them all well. A lot of times you do the best you can with the information you’ve got; a lot of time, the best you can do isn’t much (or could even be nothing at all), while the information you’ve got is limited (or, again, nothing). After you’ve seen a military stand-off between a handful of soldiers and . . . something big as a skyscraper, retreating to the subway tunnels in favor of being caught out in the open isn’t that bad a decision. Also, constant movement in the best direction possible, when possible, is good; otherwise, cover is your friend. The characters maintain a pretty consistent balance between the two.

I like to think I’m good in emergency situations. I grew up in scouts (Be Prepared), and if I never encounter a situation as uncertain as being in Manhattan on September 11th, I’ll be a happy man. As I watched the movie, I kept thinking of what I would have done. First, no going to the roof. Second, on first sight to the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty, get my friends who were just at my party together, walk back up into my apartment, quickly grab some supplies, and start walking. Away from the damage. Considering said monster was in midtown, I’m not crossing the bridge to Brooklyn; I’m starting north, toward Harlem and the Bronx.

Along the way, I’m stopping to make sure the women in my party can get more sensible shoes and clothing than the trendy/pretty clothes they wore to my going-away. I’m also making sure everyone is carrying at least one bottle of water, which I’d continue to make sure they were drinking, rather than rationing, stopping to refill as possible/necessary.

Also, and I think somewhat important, I’m not trying to keep control. Not that I’m running with the chaos, but I think the most important thing in any such situation is flexibility to adaptation. I’m starting north because I think that’s the best option, but if better ones present themselves, I’ll take them. I’m with my friends, at least, and if I can keep a group together, safety in numbers.

Most important, of course, is not panicking.

My father got me into Boy Scouts when I was a kid. He was an Eagle, too, and he was my cubmaster and then my scoutmaster and then committe chairperson–he was very often more than just a father to me, and his influence did a lot to shape who I’ve become. When I was 16 or 17, he handed down to me his old stereo system, in which I found some old clippings, one of which was a copy of “If,” I think by Rudyard Kipling, which included the line, “If you can keep your head about you, while those around you are losing theirs,” and I think I can.

Which is probably why I liked the movie. I didn’t love it, and I could have done just fine without seeing the big monster thing, and, honestly, (MAJOR SPOILER, SO IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW, SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH BREAK), I wish even one of the characters had survived, but it certainly wasn’t bad.

Thinking about emergency prep always reminds me of Making Light, where I’ve learned a lot. One of my favorite posts concerned how the characters in the movie could have (or should have) responded to their emergency; now that I’ve seen the movie, I understand what the author was talking about in which places.

I think it’s stuff everyone should know.