Tuesday September 11th, 2001

Last year, my dear friend Claudio, a Brazilian artist I first met in NYC in the 1990s, introduced me to the PS22 Chorus from Staten Island. With the approach of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I have had their version of Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down" on repeat:

 

When I lived in NYC, from 1996 - 2002, my only constant companion was my gigantic set of headphones, pumping music into my ears as a soundtrack for the ebb and flow of the dynamic energy of the city. From time to time, I also used my headphones in silence, as earplugs, to quiet the noise around me and give me some semblance of solitude in the midst of the masses. 

(There are my big headphones...and my archnemesis Eric.)

I wasn't born in New York. I was born in Wisconsin. When it came time to research colleges, I spent an entire year of high school lunch hours in the guidance counselor's office, researching every university in the United States and abroad that I thought had potential to be the right fit. If memory serves correctly, I was accepted at University of Chicago, Sarah Lawrence, Bard, University of Wisconsin-Madison, New York University, and possibly a couple of other schools I don't remember. (I only remember being rejected by Brown, but I'm sure there were others. Hey. Brown. GFY.) 

The NYU application process involved an audition, so I traveled to New York to perform a monologue (from Romeo & Juliet) and sing two songs ("Something's Gotta Give" - in the style of Ella Fitzgerald - and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"). After my audition, I was given a tour of the campus. I remember the feeling I had when I first spotted the purple NYU buses and trolleys. You see, purple buses regularly appeared in my dreams as a child, so I felt like I was somehow going back home when I was in New York, though I had never lived there, before.

(I do not own this image.)

When the tour guide told me a paraphrased version of the following tale whilst walking a group of prospective students through Washington Square Park, it was signed, sealed, and delivered, New York (I was yours): 

"In 1913 ... Gertrude Drick, a painter, accompanied at night by Marcel Duchamp and the actors Betty Turner, Forrest Mann and Charles Ellis, climbed an interior stairway to the top of the arch in Washington Square. The five conspirators brought food, wine, Chinese lanterns and hot water bags.... When they reached the top, Ms. Drick, who also went by the name Woe, and when asked why would respond 'Because woe is me,' read a declaration of independence and announced the existence of the Free Republic of Greenwich Village. The revolutionaries celebrated by firing cap guns and releasing red balloons. By morning they had abandoned their perch." 

(Colin Moynihan, New York Times)

(I do not own this image.)

"Yes," I thought, "there is no place but New York for me."

On move-in day Freshman Year at NYU, in Fall of 1996, NYC welcomed my family in the perfect way: theft. My bike was stolen out of my parents' rental van within the few short minutes it took us to park in front of the hotel near Wall Street in broad daylight, run inside, ask a quick question, and run back out. Seriously. They smashed the rental van windows and just took the bike, leaving everything else. (That was one of two bikes stolen from me over the course of my six years in NYC.) My parents spent a few minutes immediately following the theft trying to convince me to reconsider my choice, but I think that experience actually made me more resolved than ever to be a New Yorker. "OMG YAY I'VE HAD SOMETHING STOLEN ALREADY!" 

Oh, New York, how I love you. Hmm. That brings up a few other memories. I had at least two phones stolen in the city over the years. One was taken off a bar table right in front of me without my noticing, the other was taken RIGHT OUT OF MY HAND from a kid biking by as I walked home barefoot from 7A, my slingback heels hanging off my right fingertips. I remember feeling a group of guys following me and starting to get nervous, so I took out my phone and pretended to make a call. That's when they made their move. It was a StarTAC Motorola. That phone was THE SHIT back then. Oh well. At least I didn't get raped or beaten up. The guy thought that by leaving me voicemails, he was changing the outgoing voicemail announcement, so I checked my messages before deactivating the phone and heard something like this: "Yo. This East Dog. This my new phone." Um...ever heard of VERBS, East Dog? Guys on bikes seemed to have it out for me. I remember another one smacking me on the ass as he rode by, then responding to my verbal protest by shouting back, over his shoulder, "You don't have an ass, you just poke it out." Hey. Kid. If you're reading this, while I appreciated the Gang Starr reference, I still thought you were an asshole.

Freshman Year, I lived in the dorm known as Rubin. 35 Fifth Avenue. You can imagine how cool it made a college freshman feel to have a FIFTH AVENUE address in NEW YORK, NEW YORK:

(I do not own this image.)

The lobby was cool, too:

(That's me on the far right, with my friends Preeti and Channing.
Our beautiful friend / roommate Flore took the picture. )

When Sophmore Year rolled around, it was time for me to step up my game. I moved out of the dorms and into my very own apartment in the East Village, next-door to my friend Christina, in ALPHABET CITY OMG I WAS SUCH A BADASS! (I never used all caps or "OMG" back then, FYI. I was too hip.) A Russian classmate cut off all of my hair, and I bought a "pit bull"-type (likely an Ambully mix) puppy out of a shopping cart on Saint Marks Place for $50. I named her Echo. (I didn't realize back then that I was supporting a backyard breeder. I felt like I was "saving" her at the time.)

(Echo the "pit bull" in front,
McGregor the Bouvier des Flandres behind her.)

I always wore big black platform boots and awesome long coats that tied really tight at the waist with faux fur collars and cuffs. I knew how to flick my wrist just so to get my umbrella to go back to normal after the wind had blown it all helter-skelter. I weaved in and out of crowds as if it were a choreographed dance. I was becoming both an artist and a New Yorker. I mean, I partied at the now-closed Korova Milk Bar, went to punk shows at C Squat (with my friend Max Leavitt, RIP), and was asked several times by random strangers if I had been in the movie Kids. I trained at THE EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE WING. You can tell by how "artsy" the exterior of my apartment building was that I kicked ass: 

I lived in the same apartment from 1997 - 2002, and I lived A LOT of life in that place. I lived there through the suicide of a teacher I adored:

...the sudden loss of a good friend to a walnut allergy:

...the challenges and rewards of coming of age:

...the deaths of my Nana and Boppa:

...drug experimentation:

...the journey of finding my voice as a young artist:

...and the adjustment to my very first "real" job after graduation:

My first "real" job was a corporate gig, working at a busy PR firm. I quickly worked my way up from Receptionist to Executive Assistant to Account Coordinator, writing press releases and such, all for Receptionist pay. I know, I know --- I had a BFA in Drama from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Why was I not tending bar or waiting tables so I'd have a flexible schedule for auditions and art? Why did I say no to my biggest dream, when I got a call from my idol Annie-B asking if I'd like to join Big Dance Theater at Jacob's Pillow? Well, that's another story...

Yes, 269 East 10th Street, between 1st and A, saw me through all of that and more. Many stories, indeed. I still lived in that apartment on Tuesday September 11th, 2001. I was running late that morning, as I was most every morning. I strapped my rollerblades on in a panic, worried that my boss would beat me into the office. I got on my way, huge headphones on my ears, backpack strapped to my back.

As I did every weekday morning, I headed west on 10th Street, first passing 1st and 2nd Ave, then angling down Stuyvesant to 3rd Ave. I whizzed down to Astor Place, said good morning to The Cube, then took Broadway down to 4th Street. When I got to Washington Square South and Laguardia, I stopped just west of Bobst Library because I saw a small group of people standing and pointing south. I looked in that direction and saw the North Tower (1 WTC) ablaze. I now know, of course, that I reached that corner shortly after 8:46 a.m., when American Flight 11 completed its course. I did not see the first plane hit.

I remember pausing there for just a moment, acknowledging what a huge fire it appeared to be, but then having autopilot kick in, pushing me to just get to the office. I had lived in NYC since 1996, after all. I was a bit numb, never acting vulnerable to anything going on in the world around me lest I be viewed as some tourist. I had places to go, like every New Yorker.

"Whoa. The World Trade Center is on fire. I hope no one got hurt. Shit. I'm late. I need to get to work."

I continued over to 6th Ave, down to Houston, and finally arrived at 375 Hudson Street. The journey from door to door was only 1.6 miles, yet New York had been forever changed in the time it took me to complete it.

By the time I had changed from rollerblades into shoes, taken the elevator upstairs, and gotten situated at my desk, everyone was talking about a "second plane" hitting the towers. Several people in my office had seen United Flight 175 hit the South Tower (2 WTC) at 9:03 a.m., but I hadn't, so - I know it sounds strange, but - I assumed it was all just some horrible mistake. For some reason, I remember thinking, "It must have been two media helicopters or something. It must have been a freak accident. These people are getting all worked up over nothing." My sister called me on my work phone from our apartment land line and told me I should come back home. She was watching things unfold on the news. I was still in some sort of surreal haze of denial and said to her, in a matter-of-fact tone, "I need to finish this project by the time Maria gets in from Jersey. I don't have time for this. I've got to go. Stop worrying." I hung up abruptly.

Around me, colleagues were starting to talk about evacuation, and I still fought the notion anything truly bad was happening until I was forced out of the building by my coworkers. As I started to join hundreds of other New Yorkers on the street around Hudson and Houston, I started to feel confused. "We're under attack? No way. There would be fighter jets in the air overhead. This is all just some big misunderstanding." I remember anxiously starting to search the skies for some kind of rescue. "Where is the Air Force?" It wasn't until I was on the Hudson River Greenway and heard from several strangers that the Pentagon had been hit that I fully suspended my disbelief. That puts us at 9:37 a.m. Around that time, I lost my sense of hearing. I remember very vividly the images of people's faces, and of fire engines racing past us toward the towers. I remember the looks on the firefighters' faces as they went by, taking us in, taking in our fear, and continuing forward, anyway. I remember feeling as if I had the superhuman ability to slow time.

Time. Time moved in a very strange fashion that morning. There I was, out on the street, with thousands of other people when, at 9:59 a.m., the South Tower started to collapse. I remember exclaiming aloud, "Oh my God," while thinking about all the firefighters, all the people. I remember a beautiful woman with very short hair in front of me doubling over in dismay and letting out a wail. I don't remember hearing the wail, but I remember her face. I remember the agony. I remember, it looked as if her insides had just collapsed. And I remember watching her mouth form the words that her husband worked there. Then several other people's mouths formed words of worry for their loved ones and friends in the towers. I looked around to see faces of panic and fear. Sorrow. Shock.

It's hard to believe that I was out on the street from 9:59 a.m., when I watched the South Tower fall, until 10:28 a.m., when I watched the North Tower fall. I had no idea if seconds, minutes, hours, or days had passed from one event to the next. My office building was about 20 blocks north of the WTC, but to be honest, I have no recollection of how far uptown I had been pushed by the masses by the time the buildings fell. I just know that I could still see them, and that they didn't seem to be far away. A coworker of mine kept telling me that I needed to take a ferry with her to Jersey. I responded, "My brother and sister are here. If I'm going to die, today, I'm going to die in Manhattan with them, NOT IN JERSEY."

I put my rollerblades back on and started to hurry east, back toward my sister and brother. I hadn't been able to reach anyone by phone because so many people were trying to use their cell phones and communication devices that the lines were jammed. Very few people were able to get through to anyone. There were cars on each avenue I passed, stopped in the middle of the street, frozen in time, with their doors flung open and strangers gathered around, listening to people's car radios as if we were in the midst of some alien movie, seeking answers from our leaders. I looked down to see my lavender, sparkly Michael Stars shirt drenched in sweat.

My brother had just started as a Freshman at Cooper Union a few days prior. I passed the dorm he lived in on my way to my apartment and wondered whether or not to stop in and get him. I remember thinking, "No, maybe he slept through all of this. I don't want to bother him." I believe I later learned that he had watched everything from the roof of his dorm with a bunch of other students, all of them new to college and new to New York. I can't fully remember what happened after that. I think my sister and I may have gotten into a fight because she didn't want to be outside with all the dust and debris and smell of death and smoke and fire in the air. She had heard a news report that there may have been biological weapons in the planes. I wanted to be out, with people. I had already decided, since we were under attack, that I might die. I couldn't stay inside. I went to Saint Dymphna's on Saint Marks between 1st and A, in part for a drink, in part to ask about James Hanlon, a firefighter and actor I had befriended there. Barry and Peter, two Irish brothers, the owners of the bar, were very friendly with him. I learned a few days later that James was fine, then was amazed to see the following year that he was behind the CBS documentary film 9/11 with Jules and Gedeon Naudet. There were many other people at Saint Dymphna's with me, and the normal boundary we somehow express in our eyes to one another as New Yorkers, to back the fuck up, was completely gone. It's as if we were all really seeing one another with eyes unclouded, and open to connection. I went through my mental list of people I knew in the days after the attacks, reaching out to folks who had taken the PATH in from Jersey to the WTC regularly, to make sure they were OK. I learned that my coworker's fiancé had died in the attacks. Every time I passed an NYPD or FDNY building and saw all of the flowers and posters of the missing, I felt as if we had all lost loved ones, whether we knew them personally or not.

My team at the PR firm had a conference call and decided to take the rest of the week off, I believe. When I returned to work several days later, I attended an all-hands meeting at which we were all told we would "let the terrorists win" if we became "distracted from our work". Good one. There was a building across the street from our building with US Passport Acceptance, National Archives & Records, and USPS offices, so I saw a lot of big black SUVs on official business in and out of there for several weeks.

A few days after the attacks, my sister, brother, and I made the tough decision, with all planes grounded, to rent a car and drive to Wisconsin to see my parents for a day or two. We didn't want to leave New York, but we knew my parents were going through a lot of emotions with all three of their children living in NYC. I remember, when we went above 14th Street, it was as if we were in a different world. We started walking up to midtown to rent the car and noticed people outside at cafés, laughing and acting happy. I was so confused. Below 14th Street, life was not boisterous. Life was quiet. No traffic was allowed below 14th Street unless it was a military or rescue vehicle. I took black and white Polaroid pictures of kids skateboarding in the empty streets with white surgical masks over their faces to help protect them from the smoky air. I saw a woman starting to cry in Washington Square Park, one day, and a man who had been walking past her stopped to give her a hug. A complete stranger. I remember my friend Eric breaking up a fight that happened at L'Express. Two men started fighting. They were knocking over tables in a crowded restaurant, actually pushing through the glass doors that opened out to the sidewalk. Everybody just sat or stood around, including my then-boyfriend, a former Marine, shocked that two people would raise hands against each other after everything that had happened; but my friend Eric, born and raised in NYC, jumped in to stop them. He literally wrestled them away from each other, by himself, with strength and compassion. I'll never forget that.

On the drive out of New York, I felt like a traitor, though I knew we'd be coming back right away, but having "the three kids" together was great. I remember being deliriously tired driving through Pennsylvania when we came up with a song: "Osama bin Laden is in Pennsylvania". We weren't trying to be funny or disrespectful. After days of sleep-deprivation, shock, and anxiety, we started to imagine that Pennsylvania was expansive enough to hide the world's most wanted terrorist. As we got closer to Wisconsin, we saw huge American flags on a few farms we passed. That was somehow both comforting and disconcerting. We were concerned, the farther away we got from the melting pot of NYC, that people would be targeted for retaliatory hate crimes by a fearful and ignorant public. Just a few days ago, I read a great article titled "No Bitterness 10 Years after Sikh Killing over 9/11" on Al Jazeera about one such event.

My memory is terrible in general, and I don't completely remember my time in Wisconsin, aside from seeing my sweet friend Joe and feeling, as much love as I knew we had for each other, that he just couldn't understand what I had gone through because he hadn't been there. Later, I realized that we were all affected. People who were actually inside the towers and the Pentagon might have looked at me the same way. It's all relative. And we all had a right to our feelings. I guess I just felt that, if you hadn't seen it with your own two eyes, in person, in real time, you didn't get it. I find it odd in retrospect that, with Joe, I chose to look for ways to feel separate from him at a time we all craved unity.

On Friday September 21st, 2001, back in New York, my sister and I felt that sense of unity as we watched the A Tribute to Heroes simulcast on our tiny TV at our apartment. I remember feeling so moved by the musical performances. A YouTube user was kind enough to upload the entire broadcast here. I started to watch the videos a few days ago, for the first time in a long time. I felt touched by the lack of ego in so many of the performers. People were so ... open. It felt as if they were channeling a higher power. I wish we could all operate from that place, all the time.

Aside from A Tribute to Heroes, I don't remember taking in much visual media or entertainment. I couldn't watch movies or television for some time. I couldn't watch violence. I couldn't watch anger. I couldn't watch hatred. I think, however, I did watch Conan O'Brien.

Oh! I also remember being awake with my sister when a minor earthquake hit Manhattan in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday October 27th, 2001. We of course thought it was another attack. That was horrible.

Many aspects of daily life went back to normal as the months progressed, yet it wasn't ever quite normal. Not below 14th Street, anyway. Every time I heard a siren or any sort of aircraft overhead, I felt anxious. Those were strange times.

Memories...

About three years later, when the Beastie Boys released the album TO THE 5 BOROUGHS in June 2004, I was living in Los Angeles. I had moved west a year after 9/11, in late 2002, for both sunshine and acting opportunities. I missed New York every single day, and I had a lot of guilt about leaving. When I heard the track "Open Letter to NYC", I felt such love in my heart for everything New York that I thought I might explode:

The Beastie Boys. You don't get much more New York than Michael "Mike D" Diamond, Adam "MCA" Yauch, and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz.

Speaking of Jews, an Israeli friend of mine in NYC told me shortly after 9/11 that we Americans needed to "get over it" because "stuff like that" happens every day in other places around the world. While I understood his point, I still found it to be an insensitive and somewhat idiotic thing to say. I don't want to sound like the stereotypical arrogant American, here. I have no delusions about my own government. One of my favorite books is The Poverty of American Politics by the late H. Mark Roelofs, a professor I had the privilege of studying under while at NYU. Further, I recognize that there are parts of the world that have been mired in wars for centuries, and I understand that attacks by terrorist groups cannot just be distilled down to the soundbite-worthy idea that people "hate us for our freedom" because the truth is not that simple. There is a long history of shady foreign policy, religious nonsense, and bullshit from every government in the world, including our own, which has all contributed to the world's disorder.

I was blessed with the gift of world travel from a very early age thanks to my mom's job with the airlines, and I struggled with my own sense of identity regarding my family's mixed heritage, so I always understood rather well that our country was just one piece of a very complicated puzzle. On 9/11, however, I started to identify more with being a born-and-raised American. Whether it's "right" or "wrong" relative to the world clique, I had been raised with very American expectations, which included never expecting to witness such an act of war here in the States, particularly one launched against civilians. I know that, for Al-Qaeda, that was exactly the point: They wanted to strike fear in the hearts of "normal" people in America, to level the playing field, and in that goal, they succeeded. But the events of 9/11 affected humankind, not just Americans, and there was nothing wrong, selfish, ignorant, or arrogant about feeling traumatized by experiencing it. As a testament to the spirit of the people of New York - people who had come from every land imaginable to make "The Big Apple" their home - one of the most common topics of conversation you'd hear around the city in the days following the attacks was concern about what was going to happen next, all around the world.

To my Israeli friend, I would now say, "If your leg is broken, that doesn't make my broken arm any less broken, now, does it?"

Inhale. 

Exhale. 

When I first thought of writing out my thoughts on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I planned on making it a masterpiece. I wanted to work on it for several days, thoughtfully editing until it was ready for the New York Times, a Pulitzer, and a pitch to make it a feature film. I didn't want to make it a stream-of-consciousness rambling, per my usual. I wanted to do my feelings justice. I wanted to do New York justice. But now that Sunday September 11th, 2011 is upon us, and I've actually started writing, I've realized that I simply don't have the desire to go back and reconstruct my memories of New York and 9/11 in such a way that I write and edit and write and edit and work and work and work on making this more palatable to others. This is not an attempt to educate the masses. This is not an attempt at a definitive piece on 9/11. This is just one part of one woman's story. There are great pieces like "New York's 9/11, and Not Letting Go" and "Failing to Realise the Promise of 9/11" that touch on many different aspects of what we learned and failed to learn that day. There will be plenty of specials on TV that tug at the heartstrings, honor the fallen, and inspire us to reflect. You can attend a memorial service. You can watch Restrepo, a powerful documentary on American soldiers in Afghanistan, on Netflix. National Geographic Channel's Inside 9/11 series, History Channel's The Man Who Predicted 9/11, and The Science Channel's Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero are three other options. There's no shortage of choices available to people around the world, today, whatever their angle.

What I had REALLY wanted for myself this September 11th was to be back in NYC so I could spend the day alone, privately working through emotions with big headphones on as I walked through the city. I wasn't able to make that happen, so I sat down with my thoughts and wrote some of them out, simply. The "finished product" is not exactly the eloquent, awe-inspiring ode to New York I had originally envisioned, but it has been a cathartic journey for me, to take a virtual walk through the streets of New York and meander through my memories. I know the city I return to visit will be different from the New York I left in late 2002. Where there was a gaping hole, there are now memorials and new buildings, all of which are foreign to me. Without seeing the twin towers to the south, the New York skyline hasn't made sense to me in years. I'm hopeful that the new World Trade Center and I will forge a relationship, but a piece of me is still frozen in time, back in 2001.

Now, ten years later, with tears in my eyes, typing at 0600 hours Eastern Time, not sure whether or not I'll be able to sleep, but desperately needing sleep, I find myself thinking again of the children of the PS22 Chorus. Somehow, watching the passion and freedom of spirit they express through their performances seems to make everything OK. Children are truly incredible. They aren't given a choice of religion when they're born. They aren't given many choices, period. We're all forced into whatever set of behaviors and beliefs our parents and communities want to use to brainwash and condition us into conformity. We're often taught to react out of fear rather than to act out of love. Even with those cards stacked against us, while there may always be people who manifest hate and violence, there will also always be heroes who find ways to connect with and love themselves and one another:

Now, as was the case ten years ago, music lifts me up. Music transcends the human experience. It blurs boundaries and tears down walls. It unites. It allows the divine in me to recognize the divine in you, regardless of what we call it.

As I first learned at Bikram Yoga SoHo many years ago, NAMASTE.

[Note: This post contains links to YouTube videos, Google Maps "street views" of locations, news articles, and other info. Feel free to click around.]