Despite the inanities spouted by organized religion this week, there are still several reasons why I'm glad I was raised Catholic. Let's face it, the Church has produced some pretty impressive art when it hasn't been slaughtering people. I can thank my finely honed sense of Catholic guilt for the fact that, as John Waters once pointed out, sex will always be dirty, and therefore more exciting. And there's the custom of wakes when someone dies, something I was exposed to at a very early age: you go to the funeral home, look at a dead body for a while, and then go to your aunt's house and stuff yourself full of food. It's a ritualized form of grieving which is very helpful in making peace with loss: you confront and accept the fact that something you loved isn't there anymore, and then go on with your life.

It's in that spirit that I decided to go to New York tomorrow after all. I want to share and vent and remember and cry and laugh with people I care about. I want to volunteer if I can, and spend time in Central Park and the Met and the Frick reminding myself that there's still beauty in the world if I can't. I somehow want to make peace with what happened, even if the journey will only raise more questions in my mind than it answers. And if nothing else, a 32 hour train ride through the heart of America at this moment in our nation's history might make for my own interesting story to tell the grandkids someday.

Still, 32 hours on a train is a long time. I bought a new portable CD player yesterday for the trip (just doing my part to keep our already shaky economy from sagging further), and am packing it along with a case full of favorite music and favorite books: Lolita and Low Life and some Welty and Wilde and a vintage paperback copy of a particularly lurid translation of Petronius' Satyricon and my journal (because one should always have something sensational to read on a train.) Accomodations once I arrive to be generously provided by the Minx and/or the Blogstalker, bless their shiny hearts.

Hope to see many of you there. Peace, y'all.

Among the several epiphanies I've had over the past few days is the realization that I'm not as bothered by the current efflugence of patriotism in this country as I have been in the past, or as some people seem to be now. There was a beautiful moment during our next-to-next-to-last performance of Hedwig yesterday evening when Hedwig came on stage for the first time wearing her cape made out of the American flag: the audience clapped and cheered for several minutes before she even had a chance to start singing the first song. (Afterwards, someone complimented us that it must've taken hours to sew together that costume this week - actually, the costume is written into the script. But I digress.)

Yes, a lot of flag-waving is a mindless palliative. Yes, the money spent on all that star-spangled merchandise might better be spent on relief efforts. And it's also true that a certain type of patriotism only pushes us dangerously closer to this "wrathful, shadowy and inventive war" in which we're inevitably going to become entangled. But come on folks - these are difficult times, and if people find comfort in symbols like displaying the US flag or attending candlelight vigils, it's not such a bad thing. Everyone is processing this tragedy in different ways, no matter how distasteful some of them may be to some of you.

Personally, I've found a lot of comfort in playing video games over the past few days (no, not that one). Feeling depressed or frustrated or angry? Buy yourself a Dreamcast (go on, treat yourself - they're cheap), pop in a copy of Rival Schools or Soul Calibur, and forget your troubles while pretending you're a tennis-playing Japanese schoolgirl superhero or kicking some serious medievalesque butt, respectively. Mindless escapism works wonders. Just ask my boyfriend, who's been handling the events of this past week better than anyone I know.

Photo: James Nachtwey.

"So I wonder whether an orchestrated, programmatic diffusion of American culture is probably the best weapon we have, one which needs to be total if it is to be effective: send every Talibani child a television set, a DVD player, and a stack of J-Lo videos."

Not a bad idea at all; as much as it may have precipitated the events of this week, the irresistable power of American popular culture might also be the only truly efficient weapon we have at this point. My only suggestion would be to send along some Britney Spears videos instead of J-Lo's: after all, Britney's a much better role model for little recovering fundamentalists, being a virgin and all. And at least she doesn't hang around with gun-toting thugs.

"The firmament that is New York is greater than the sum of its parts. It is a city and it is also a creature, a mentality, a disease, a threat, an electromagnet, a cheap stage set, an accident corridor. It is an implausible character, a monstrous vortex of contradictions, an attraction-repulsion mechanism so extreme no one could have made it up."

Back from the bars, up late, rereading Luc Sante's brilliant Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York in an attempt to both alleviate my insomnia and historicize this latest (literal) upheaval and transformation of the Manhattan landscape; a futile effort, of course, since there's no historical precedent that can usefully illuminate the events of this week. But it's still a wonderful book. And the only reference to the World Trade Center in the index is somehow relevant, I think, to the current situation:

"On the west side, slums ran continuously up from the Battery into the streets numbered in the sixties. Around Washington Market - the city's great produce market for nearly two centuries, until its business was relocated to Hunt's Point in the Bronx and its site leveled to make way for the World Trade Center - lay a motley collection of settlements, including a Syrian district."

There's poetry, or a lesson, or a moral, or some kind of irony in there somewhere. But right now, while we're tottering on the brink of civilization as we know it, I can't begin to try to figure out what it might be.

Call me just another high-minded, hypocritical pacifist, but this makes a lot of sense to me.

I understand why we're hated. I understand why this all happened. I don't understand why it all has to continue.

Unless it's inevitable. In which case, what's the use of trying to understand?

Except for a sputtering fit when I read the article linked below, I felt better today. Not great, but better. I woke up early and made myself a nice hot breakfast. I straightened up the house a bit, paid some bills (thanks for all the "courtesy calls" this week, Sprint PCS - I'd have thought you had more important things to worry about this week besides my unpaid balance), worked on some projects for clients. I tried to ignore the fact that CNN has taken it upon itself to say we're at war, with all the repercussions that entails. I took a shower and shaved for the first time in days. Then Richard came home from work early and we took the hounds for a long walk down Royal Street into the Quarter, flags flying from the balconies and painted in shop windows, the bells of the cathedral pealing during the memorial service this afternoon, Red Cross volunteers collecting donations in Jackson Square. I went to the gym and had a nice long workout, stretching all the muscles made tense by four days of sadness and frustration. I may even go out this evening to meet my friends for a drink or two. Life, as they say, goes on.

I also bought a ticket to go to New York next week, though I'm still not sure why I want to be there so badly. I want to be with people I love, of course, and see for myself what my home town is like at this moment in history. But part of me is questioning whether whatever "closure" (hate that word, but it'll have to do) I'm seeking by taking the trip will end up not happening - in fact, the reverse might just end up being the case.

I still have a few days to decide whether I'm going to use the ticket or not.

The terrorists who hit the U.S. this week are people who pray to the God of Hate. Their terrorism is not aimed at reversing any specific U.S. policy. Indeed, they made no demands. Their terrorism is driven by pure hatred and nihilism, and its targets are the institutions that undergird America's way of life, from our markets to our military.
- Thomas L. Friedman, "Smoking or Non-Smoking?"

"Of course, to one as modern as I am, the world will always be beautiful." Opening on Friday at the Morgan Library in New York: Oscar Wilde: A Life in Six Acts, an exhibition of original manuscripts, letters (including one written by Wilde at age 13, found last summer by a book collector in Houston), documents, and ephemera chronicling the life of the artist, curated by Sally Brown at the British Museum and Christine Nelson of the Morgan. Sounds wonderful. (And somehow familiar ... )

Blogstalker: did you hear this? whitney houston is dead
jonnodotcom: you're fucking kidding
Blogstalker: we just heard on the radio that she overdosed

Just when you thought this week couldn't get more bizarre ... except this time, it's not true. (Thanks to Keith for setting the record straight.)

A City of Quiet: Nothing Is Same One Day After

Things are cautiously getting back to normal here in New Orleans, though: if it weren't for the newspaper headlines and a few local news reports showing smiling commuters dropping money into Red Cross buckets on their way to and from their shiny office buildings, you could almost - almost - make yourself believe that nothing happened. The initial feeling of shock has worn off and people are going about their business, which I suppose is a good thing: life has to go on. Everything's open. The streets are busy, if quieter than usual. And the weather is lovely, sunny and warm and clear.

I woke up today still feeling numb. I've been sleeping badly, in fits and starts, waking up every few hours to stare at my computer or to try to read a book, and I haven't had much of an appetite. I haven't shaved since Sunday. And I've barely left the house since Tuesday afternoon, except to buy cigarettes and a trip to the gym yesterday evening to soak in the hot tub for an hour, trying to relax my body and mind.

I'm just very, very sad. Every time I read another article, or turn on the television, or look at Choire's photos or read something Dori's written, my heart breaks all over again. I just feel so fucking helpless and disconnected.

I've been checking Amtrak fares, and deciding whether going home for a few days next week would make me feel better, or worse. I still haven't made up my mind.

You're making us all proud, baby.

More great writing from the Times this morning:

Language failed this week. "Beyond comprehension," "beyond our worst imaginings," "beyond belief" - those were the phrases heard again and again in the last two days. As people struggled to describe the events of Tuesday morning, they reached for metaphors and analogies that might capture the horror of what they had seen. One witness on NBC local news described the World Trade Center collapse as "one more circle of Dante's hell." Brian Williams on MSNBC compared it to Mount St. Helen's. Tom Brokaw on NBC compared it to "nuclear winter." Diane Sawyer on ABC compared it to standing on "the edge of a crater of a volcano" ... Many others invoked Pearl Harbor, but no one could come up a phrase like President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy," which summed up the nation's sense of terror and grief and anger.

In a day when hype and hyperbole have become a staple of cable news, in a day when the word "reality" has become associated with stage-managed fame-fests like "Survivor" and "Big Brother," words felt devalued and inadequate to capture the disasters at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and near Pittsburgh. After all, we live in a culture where inflationary phrases like "nuclear scenario" were attached to the developments in last year's Florida election imbroglio, a culture in which cable television networks have repeatedly cried wolf, devoting hours of sensationalistic and alarmist coverage to shark attacks only a week or two ago.

- Michiko Kakutani, "Struggling to Find Words for a Horror Beyond Words"

* * *
As I restlessly lay awake early yesterday, with CNN on my TV and dawn breaking over the holy places of Jerusalem, my ear somehow latched onto a statement made by the U.S. transportation secretary, Norman Mineta, about the new precautions that would be put in place at U.S. airports in the wake of Tuesday's unspeakable terrorist attacks: There will be no more curbside check-in, he said. I suddenly imagined a group of terrorists somewhere here in the Middle East, sipping coffee, also watching CNN and laughing hysterically: "Hey boss, did you hear that? We just blew up Wall Street and the Pentagon and their response is no more curbside check-in?"

I don't mean to criticize Mr. Mineta. He is doing what he can. And I have absolutely no doubt that the Bush team, when it identifies the perpetrators, will make them pay dearly. Yet there was something so absurdly futile and American about the curbside ban that I couldn't help but wonder: Does my country really understand that this is World War III? And if this attack was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means there is a long, long war ahead.

- Thomas L. Friedman, "World War III"

Asked if the World Trade Center would be rebuilt, the mayor said, "There's no question we're going to rebuild. I can't say that we know the exact nature yet of how we're going to do that," but he added: "The skyline will be made whole again." (full article here)

Devastation. Terror. America Under Attack. Assault On America.

The same words, repeated over and over again until they lose all meaning: of everything that's happened today, perhaps one of the worst is being reminded that language is ultimately useless when it comes to expressing or understanding the magnitude of this tragedy.

Still, and in addition to all the blogwitness accounts (this is one of my favorites so far), the NY Times is doing an excellent job conveying what life must be like in New York right now.

No vigil at the Cathedral this afternoon; apparently, there are to be no mass public events anywhere here for the next several days. Sometimes it's easy to forget we live in the city with the busiest port in the United States, with a large percentage of our nation's oil reserves in the refineries strung out along the corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. At first, I thought who the fuck would want to bomb New Orleans? But we're just another potential target, like everywhere else.

It was almost three o'clock when I realized that I hadn't eaten all day. My friend Eric came over to make some phone calls (including one which finally got through to his brother who works as a financial consultant in New York, who told Eric he'd have to call him back because he had an important business call on the other line), and after we'd called or emailed everyone we could, we decide to have lunch at Mona's (an unconscious act of support for our Arab-American fellow citizens?) the waitresses red-eyed and raspy, people at the two or three other occupied tables speaking in hushed tones. A girl I don't know very well but who knows I'm from New York comes over to us and hugs me without saying a word. The air outside is soft and warm and very, very still.

We talk about giving blood tomorrow, wonder if the ban on gay blood is still in effect, discuss whether it's morally justifiable to lie about having had sex with other men over the last twenty years and donate anyway if it is.

(Postscript: Decide that it's not, thanks to a concerned late-night email and this article. Best to volunteer for the Red Cross or donate money instead.)

I manage to get through to my parents, finally, but still haven't heard from my best friend Kerry, who works near 14th Street and is living in my apartment, which is a block away from Chelsea Piers, which CNN tells me is being used as a triage center and temporary morgue.

We stop into the bar on Bourbon Street where Eric works, the screens behind the bar blaring the comforting banalities of a Britney Spears video, a brief respite from the nightmare before we continue down the street, passing by other bars, most broadcasting the news on TV, the jarring lilt of canned zydeco music squawking from the occasional t-shirt shop or strip joint lending a further incongruous note to an already bizarre afternoon.

We get to Saint Ann and look into Oz, where the screens are showing another piece of video footage of the second plane hitting the tower, the one with the woman screaming jesus fucking christ! in the background, and then the scene cuts to 7 World Trade Center collapsing, and I start crying again. I leave the bar and stand on the corner, dazed and sobbing against an empty USA Today kiosk as blank-faced tourists pass by in buggy carts. A random bar acquaintance toddles by and ask me why I'm so upset. That's my home, I say, pointing at the video screen inside the bar, confused, angry, frustrated that I'm so far away from the city and people I love so much. He shrugs and walks away.

Richard won't let me watch television tonight. I suppose there's nothing new to see or hear anyway.

But I keep thinking about how no matter where you used to be - used to be - in New York City, all you had to do was to turn your head to see the World Trade Center anchoring the landscape, instantly orienting your position in the grid. As horrific as today's events have been, I can't imagine it's going to get much easier even after the dust settles and the wreckage is cleared away.

Not with that huge void looming over the end of the island. Not with all the lives that have been lost or will be affected by what happened today. Not for a long, long time.

kingpatric: this is fun: some moron on phones to c-span talking about internment camps for arabian-looking people. nice.
jonnodotcom: maybe i should shave my eyebrows ...
CharlieNYC: I suggest Feria color #18, Sunlight Blonde

(A little bit of gallows humor helps.)

There's a vigil this afternoon in St. Louis Cathedral. As many doubts as I have about the value of prayer in times like this, in might be nice to be around people for a while.

A good stiff drink would help too. I hope the bars are open ...

Two arms operate in a crisis: one works to treat the wounded and clear the rubble. The other investigates the attack. People like you and me will never hear about what goes on, til it is ready to be disclosed to the news services and properly filtered.

So no bloodthirsty cries for revenge. There isn't shit you can do about it anyway, unless you're working for the CIA. So get a grip, tend to the scared and check on your families, and stop speculating about the nature of terrorism. It's counterproductive, feeds looting and potential unrest in places like MY neighborhood, and it bogs down the maxed-out internet.

The only voice of reason I've heard all morning. Thanks, Choire.

Check in with NYC/DC area loved ones here.

Bush is here in Louisiana, at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, making empty statements about "our great democracy" and "our national resolve". The meaninglessness, the uselessness of his words.

First estimated death tolls are starting to come in: twenty five hundred, five thousand, ten thousand dead in lower Manhattan, while people are "dancing in the streets" on the West Bank.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Emails from Chad, Dante, and Dori; i/ms with Choire, Charlie, and Ralph; a phone call from JB and site updates from Dan, Jami and Andy.

They've closed the Superdome and One Shell Square here. Church bells are ringing nonstop all over the city. Otherwise the French Quarter is quiet.

Watching endless replays of the second plane crashing into the WTC tower, the first tower collapsing, then the second; Manhattan covered in smoke and debris in the brilliant sunlight. It's completely surreal.

There was life in the United States before this morning, and there's going to be life after. But they're not going to be the same.

This is beyond words. I can't stop crying.

I hope everyone I know in New York is OK.