october 2

On the radio talk shows and the T.V. You hear one thing again and again How the U.S.A. stands for freedom And we come to the aid of a friend But who are the ones that we call our friends-- These governments killing their own? Or the people who finally can't take any more And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone Well, blah. I'd meant to write about going home and having the holiday with mom and Craig and Lynda and cousin Jesse and Buddie and a friend of mom's from work and now it's so old it's all faded and too many other things have happened. I'd have written earlier, but once again, all together now: AOL sucks. For no good reason it began acting up, and everything took a year to do -- not only on AOL but also whenever I had to do anything Internet-related, so I'm horrifically behind. Then I ended up re-installing all of the original software on the computer because AOL refused to give me a reason why this was happening ... and I signed up to Earthlink. I'm almost off the AOL teat. Any day now. People are still tentative. They don't want to be caught having a good time if they haven't cleared it with everyone else around them. I'm finding myself tentative only in that I don't always feel like having a major political debate with those who might think war is a good idea, so a lot of the things I say are kept bottled up. But leave me long enough with people and preferably some kind of drink, and we’re off to the races. It's exhausting. But I went to another council meeting and afterwards the group of us had a lively discussion on the whole subject. The Greens apparently feel the need to issue various statements on the possibility of war; they’re hopelessly peacenik, which I suppose I am, too, but they issue statements about it. Here’s an example of a draft that The Candidate's campaign manager is putting together:   (Draft) Position statement of the West Queens Greens regarding the World  Trade Center disaster of Sept. 11, 2001 The West Queens Greens, a local chapter of the New York State Green Party  and the international Green movement, is a group that espouses and  continually works toward achieving four broad goals: grassroots democracy,  social and economic justice, ecology, and peace. We deplore the heinous acts of murder that took place on September 11, 2001,  and we mourn the lives lost in the tragedy. While we condemn all violence, we believe the United States should pursue  every non-military means available as a response to this and all acts of  terrorism. Taking revenge on more innocent civilians is not justice, and the  threat of military force in the Middle East has already begun to escalate  tensions; therefore, we oppose the Bush administration’s massive military  build-up in the Middle East for practical as well as moral reasons. We also believe that an examination of the root causes of the United State’s  strained international relations is long overdue and is necessary for an  appropriate response to the terrorism of September 11. In many ways, the United States has not acted as a responsible member of the  international community. The U.S. must change inconsistent and undemocratic  policies before expecting aid or assistance from other countries in its  so-called "war against terrorism." In order to help diminish the atmosphere  that fosters terrorism, we must address the conditions that permit the  growth of such hatred. We advocate long-term steps toward achieving a more just, secure and  peaceful world, such as: * Canceling the Third World debt. * Supporting alternative energies in the U.S., so as to alleviate our  dependence on imported oil. * Replacing military aid to developing countries with humanitarian and  educational support. * Ending the U.S. support of anti-democratic international agreements, such  as NAFTA, the WTO, and the FTAA that allow international corporations to run  roughshod over the rights of workers and democratically elected governments  around the world. * Paying the U.S.’s United Nations dues. * Retroactively signing on to the Kyoto [Treaty ???] . . . (need some  language here). We dismiss the U.S.’s current militaristic action plan as dangerous,  ineffective, and unlikely to end the destructive cycle of terror in our  country and our world. We stand firm in our belief that the only solution to  violence is peace. Other than her misuse of an apostrophe, I'm generally on board with this. The Candidate, however, felt we can't very well propose that there be no military solution without offering some kind of solution in its place. There was debate on whether or not that was "our" job to do that at this stage. The Candidate had some interesting thoughts on the whole subject, and we all feverently argued against most of what he was saying, which was an odd thing to be doing, since we were theoretically there supporting his candidacy, which should indicate we were in support of his positions. But these things aren't that important. I got another walk to the subway out of it. Not sure what this all means, if anything, but I'm working on it. Alas, the next meeting, on Thursday night, is out for me since I've got a class – which I signed up for prior to What Happened (which is the polite way of talking about it) – about Understanding Islam. That I'm prefacing the fact that I signed up for it prior to WH is a sample of the tentativeness. So that was last Thursday. Last Friday Mel came over. She's a friend of mine I met via our own Law & Order freakishness, and who I don't see much. She's training to be an engineer. A real one. On the Long Island Railroad. She says I can ride up front once she's driving. Fabulous! I told her that Larry, a real train nut, would also want to probably do that. So she's not only studying and taking classes and working all of the time, but because she's union and low woman on the totem pole, she gets shit hours and shit holiday schedules. We headed down Northern Boulevard for dinner and ended up at a Peruvian restaurant called Pio Pio, I think. It's pretty heavily Hispanic in pockets around here, so the guy at the door greeted us: "Como estas," and I immediately came back with, "Bien, gracias, como estas?" and then he started going "taco taco taco taco," which is not exactly what he said but it might as well have been. I corrected him and explained that was the extent of my immediate recall of Spanish. They took us upstairs and sat us oddly at a huge round table that could have held eight. The menu was small but useful – I got some calamari and Mel had the chicken – and we kept getting ogled, or at least watched. Like a moron I asked the waiter, "What is pio sauce?" having seen it on the menu as "Chicken Pio." Sometimes I'm not too swift. Afterwards, we planned to head home and watch some DVDs (one bonus of the holiday home was that Larry gave me one of their DVD players. He's a gadget hound and loves buying new equipment; they had a second DVD because this first one, he said, had a sound problem. Not to me, it doesn't, but I took it home and now have a DVD player!), Magnolia, Memento and The Jerk. Mel was all excited to see the scene in The Jerk where he finds his name in the phone book and shouts, "I'm somebody!" Me, I live for the "I'm Picking Out A Thermos" song. I can't explain why that kills me. But we ended up watching just Memento and part of The Jerk before we got exhausted and fell asleep. But not to indicate that we're such losers we could only eat a meal and watch a movie, no sir. We were busy out lighting candles. Sincerely. Walking back from Pio Pio, we specifically decided to pass the local firehouse, the outside of which (on either side of the huge garage doors) had been festooned with candles and buckets of flowers. There was even a child's firetruck with a roll of "Life Savers" in it. The candles were mostly out, some had split and run wax all over the ground. Two women had taken it upon themselves to light all of the candles, but didn't have matches and were trying to use whatever they could to get them lit. But the night was breezy and it was like Sisyphus and his rock. Then they wanted to rearrange the candles to spell out "USA." So we stopped to assist, unable to resist. After a time, the firefighters returned from whatever they had been out doing, and two of them came out to watch. After a while, we abandoned (that is, Mel and I abandoned) the candle lighting to talk to Fireman Number One, who was blond and wore slick eyeglasses and had fabulous arms. He was a little older than either of us, and his hair was thinning, but he was just so charming and adorable and – I am a sucker for arms. Yum. So we asked a million questions and he told us whatever we wanted to know. He'd been down at Ground Zero, doing some cleaning, there were three guys from their company (indirectly – they'd started there, but when What Happened happened, they were with other companies) who died and he pointed out their photos tacked to the outside wall. He said they'd gotten huge amounts of food and cookies and cakes and everything as donations, and there was no way they could ever finish it all. I kept hoping he'd invite us in for dessert, but no luck. The testament to his adorableness was that even when he mentioned he had a 7 year old at home, we didn't blink an eye. So we were there a good hour or so, talking about what it had been like, if he had thought the buildings would fall, what being a fireman in New York these days was like. It was good, as an actress on my show told me, "to take it out of the black box." After a while, he had to go in, and we went home and watched our movies.   The next day, I headed downtown, as I'd promised myself I would do. It was a bit like a pilgrimage – to not go and see first the memorials in Union Square and Washington Square, and then to as close as I could get to Ground Zero. It's ghoulish in a sense, but it's also a need to make it real. To smell how bad it smells down there. To see the cranes. To see the absence. So Saturday, a glorious bright day – the kind that will, for a long, long time make me feel a different kind of tentative – I took the train to 14th Street and saw some of the handiwork of the thousands who had passed through Union Square in the time since What Happened. Again, the candles, the paper, the messages, the "missing" posters. It all covered the far southern end of the park, every fence was wallpapered with messages, special ads ("share your stories with us at www.WTCstories.com"), calls for peace, calls for war. Children's messages, colored drawings. A box of chalk sat ready in case someone wanted to scribble. In the midst of one large grouping was an office chair decorated with more well-wishes.  office chair, center stage Two makeshift World Trade Centers had been erected – one of chicken wire with a slot cut open for messages to be fit in; another made up of silver spray-painted novelty license plates, the ones you can get with people's names on them.  It was heartbreaking, and nothing cynical about it. Whereas I'm usually against the makeshift memorials that spring up on the sides of roads and at the sites of death, this was different. It was hard not to be overwhelmed. In the midst of all this sat several individuals – Buddhists, I'm going to wager – beating regularly on drums, all in time, all with unwavering, Zen-like calm.    Then I headed to the north end of the park to find the other side of things. Up there were almost no memorial signs; I'm not sure if by decree or not. A drum-and-fife band had come down from Massachusetts (well, that's what their drums said) dressed in Revolutionary War outfits, and were playing marching tunes and patriotic songs. A group had knotted around them, and applauded. A man sat on a park bench with a parrot, though this didn't seem connected. It was hard not to make the connection between the hawks and the doves – both with their drums, both beating out different tunes. I took some pictues. After that, I headed south, not knowing the best route or way, just started walking. South of 14th, people became more sparse. Shops were closed. Cars were fewer. And we weren't even all that near the frozen zone, the area of town you can't go to without an ID proving you live in the area. I kept walking. There was still traffic, still people, still shopping going on. But it just felt empty. It was quiet, which is all the more unnerving once you've learned to live with the constant buzz of New York breathing.    I stopped briefly in Washington Square, which had its own memorial. Usually it is so clogged down there on a nice sunny day, with street performers and people sunning themselves – and some were, but it was just so empty, comparatively. The memorial there had been plastered to the fence surrounding the arch.. A big sign read "New York City: The Toughest City In The U.S." Maybe so. "why" After a while, I ended up on Church Street, and you could walk straight down the middle of the road. The block came up at Duane; a small group of people stared into the nothingness that had been the Trade Center and took pictures. A policeman directed us to where we'd have a better view, at Liberty, so we headed down that way. Then I saw where all the people were: Here. We were all walking along, unhurried, nobody pushing, just a gentle, resigned walk like refugees. At Liberty you couldn't see much, and again, seeing the nothing is always hard. You caught glimpses of rubble, more cranes, some soldiers. After snapping a few more photos and beginning to feel the onset of a huge headache from the persistent terrible acrid smell that had begun on Church, I headed to the nearest subway and caught my first real glimpse of devastation. My film had just run out, and the cop was insisting we not take pictures at this point, which was stopping nobody. It was half of a building, and you could see clean through from one side to the other. The ground floor read Borders. It wasn't part of the WTC – it was a building that had collapsed later on – but it was enough. capturing the absence I got on the subway and headed back. I've since been told the memorial at 14th is gone, though I don't know why. But it was a piece of living art, and I'm glad I saw it. No matter how hard most things are, the best thing to do with them is walk through, and get a little burned. Then you know. on church near liberty go mets Seen on a Quality Inn, Rutherford, New Jersey: United We Stand Patriotic Rates Available