archive is here if you're looking for it.



Monday, September 17, 2001
september 11, 2001 - is it just me, or are these amazing?
9/17/2001 11:20:57 PM | link to this


i went back to work today. for what, i dunno... my saving grace was having a few friends visit about half an hour before close... they were lovely enough to hang out until it was time for me to pack it up.

then, you know, i rode my bike home like a jockey...

this morning, i crossed the bridge for the first time since 'the attack'... there's a police department/fire department combo at the bottom of the bridge that i have to pass when i get off... i spent a day in jail there once after a street protest... it was not a pleasant experience and, for the most part, made me think a bit about the political actions i participate in - i mean, i had all day to think about that sort of shit, in between hating the vegans who kept talking about how bad meat was (different protest, same day) - i hadn't had a damn thing to eat all day. visions of hamburgers floated over my bed...

anyway... yeah so i rode by this, and stopped to view the candles and all the things left out in front of the engine house and all of a sudden i looked at those young guys, putting on their uniforms and getting ready to head in - no one had an ounce of hope on their face and everyone was so so so young... younger than me.

i had to leave right away - couldn't even look at 'em anymore... so i rode away, hard, so i wouldn't cry... that would look really fucking stupid if i were riding my bike down the street crying. god...

i have to pass another engine house on the way to work - after the Hell's Angels, and before Broadway... same thing, there - lots of candles and flowers out in front and more young firemen heading into the rubble... bleh.

there was a dark cloud over my booth today. i can't figure out why i'm there, but it took everything outta me - and i gotta go back all this week...

yeah, pity me, and that is the world's smallest violin playing in the distant background, but i picked up extra shifts and maybe a job on the weekend - and i'm a person who really hates to work for other people...

but what's gotta be done has gotta be done - we have to eat.

and i'm going to bed early again...

on the bright side, a beautiful young guy came by my booth today - he bought a fifteen dollar ring for his girlfriend, because 'we're getting engaged'... he looked happy about it, and i shined it up for him - two intertwined hearts with marcasites - coincidentally, the only ring i had in her tiny size but so appropriate...

"we're poor, you know? but..."

it's all good, babe, it doesn't *have* to be a diamond, just a symbol... you go.

and someone i met a couple of times, that i thought was beautiful, had a baby this saturday - on my birthday... it's a californian baby, and hence comes with the prerequisite hippie name, but it's all good - i bet she's just beautiful. this is a frightening time to bring children into the world but all we can really do is love each other anyway, know what i mean? </hippie>.

i also have to say that last night, there was a large gathering in the place where we normally go to firedance on the weekends... a marching band. projections on a wall... a moment of silence. dancing, with and without fire.

quiet moments on the waterfront.

and all my good friends, doing a pretty good job at appreciating our own life for a moment. wow, did i need that. because i got to work today, and on the wall next to my booth was a flyer - "My husband is Missing. AON. 92nd floor, South Tower".

Underneath that were two pictures of her husband with their young baby.
9/17/2001 11:06:11 PM | link to this


Urban Legends Reference Pages: Wooden Spoons (The Numbers Game) - this is bizarre...
9/17/2001 10:56:05 PM | link to this



Sunday, September 16, 2001
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | They can't see why they are hated - one more gem from the guardian (via neille, but so appropriate to my personal cause here i had to post it myself)...
9/16/2001 03:02:49 PM | link to this


nil by mouth - a-fuckin' men, girlfriend...
9/16/2001 02:59:50 PM | link to this


Amateur Newsies Top the Pros

"I was on my back, facing this massive cloud that was approaching, it must have been 600 feet off, everything was already dark," Farman wrote. "I normally wear a pendant around my neck, inscribed with an Arabic prayer for safety; similar to the cross. A Hasidic Jewish man came up to me and held the pendant in his hand, and looked at it. He read the Arabic out loud for a second.

"What he said next, I will never forget. With a deep Brooklyn accent he said, 'Brother, if you don't mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us, grab my hand, let's get the hell out of here.' He helped me stand up, and we ran for what seemed like forever without looking back."

now that's cool...

btw, my phone for some reason doesn't ring when you call - email seems to be best - i'll be home until around 5pm or so tonight, when we're gonna get together goddamn it, and celebrate some life, if we can... time to smile, folks. we're resiliant people.
9/16/2001 12:05:21 PM | link to this



Saturday, September 15, 2001
Salon.com Life | Now more than ever

"With this astonishing human bravery to bless America, who needs God?"

i grew up with the holy terror of blasphemy looming over my head. at night, awake and in bed, i would start to think "there is no god" - daring myself to go as far into the words as possible, to make myself complete the phrase, dooming myself immediately to hell for all eternity.

years later, i also decided i made a shitty new-agey paganist - because dieties, to me, are just other entities.

still, for some reason, i'm shocked by the last sentence of that article...

regardless, today is my birthday - so today, i was doubly glad to celebrate the fact that i was born today 28 years ago (and on a saturday, too), and that i am still alive today.

it was a beautiful day in post-apocalyptic manhattan - i mean it was quiet and sunny, and people were starting to smile again, even though we all stopped and read them every time we passed a poster - someone missing, working on the 79th floor of tower 2 or the 106th floor of tower 1, or whatever (check the facts yourself, i'm tired of thinking about it right now - i didn't survive anything - i just saw it all happen) - floors in towers you wanted to have a little bit of faith in, but man, i saw what happened and, realistically, there's only so much hope i think i can have.

they don't want to tell us how gruesome it is down there, but it's bad. worse, you know, than you really want to imagine, but that's about how bad it is. there are body parts hanging out solo on the corners.

i can only have so much faith...

some people don't know what it is they can do to help - others aren't really worrying about it. instead they're outside, doing whatever it is that they do, just because, so they can do something - murals painted, chalk drawings on the sidewalk, paper hand-outs with inspirational messages on them. anything...

and then there are others selling memorial tshirts on the streets...

some of this is, dare i say, poetic terrorism - an opportunity to assault the newly vulnerable with propaganda... but some of it's also really really good... because this is new york. people are smart here.

some of me thinks that in three weeks or so, we'll be back to 'normal' and walking around like blocks of ice... guiliani will go back to being an asshole and invading neighborhood watering holes and people who only weeks ago resented america will once again stop wearing the flag.

but another some of me is an idealist - that some of me thinks that this is gonna change things forever, that people will learn something from all this and maybe realize that it shouldn't take a tragedy to function as a community, that we should take any opportunity we have to show some consideration to someone besides ourselves, that we should constantly educate ourselves so we don't have to rely on other people to figure out what it is that we believe, and that we should express ourselves artistically whenever possible... because life, when you have it, is supposed to be lived...

so i walked around today in the sunny, so-fall weather...

i'm still alive. i've made it 28 years so far...

thanks to the tons of you that have written to wish me happy birthday. please take the time to appreciate the fact that you're alive.
9/15/2001 07:11:15 PM | link to this



Friday, September 14, 2001
The author of the bookAfghanistan: Fighting for Freedom is purported to also have written the following...

whether or not it's real, it makes perfect sense, to me...

----------------------------------- I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ron Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done." And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who deeply hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. My hatred comes from first hand experience. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden,think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "theJews in the concentration camps."

It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering.

A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food.

There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age". Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide.

Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs would not really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time.

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks.

Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the West would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that?

Unfortunately, Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
9/14/2001 09:12:52 PM | link to this


so yeah, life appears to be returning to some sort of normality - sitting around the house making jewelry. boy's making a work table...

and reading... lots of reading...

because we are bored, and it's raining, and it's ugly out, and no one wants to go to or be in manhattan right now, anyway...

too much, you know, stuff to talk and deal with...

but i'm with brian, we should think about how we can make people smile now... if we can... they don't want us at the volunteer centesr tho - they're only taking on 'professionals' - so someone in my building is hosting a forum tonight, regarding what artists, and other people who get paid to make things, can do to help. a lot of us feel useless... you can only donate so many bottles of water.

other things i've learned, via discussion and well, in plenty of cases, one-way email - there are militant rednecks in every culture... in fact, come to think of it, there were some pretty militant Native Americans... America was, well, just more powerful... go figure. geez, it's amazing what you can remember from your education - it may have been useless, but what's a mind for if not to be fed full of mind-numbing historical trivia? no, don't answer that. that was sarcasm. apparently, not everyone catches that.

regardless, in the end i still don't think bombing everything to hell and back is going to say anything other than 'my dick is bigger than yours'... perhaps i'm an idealist but i think i'd much rather see this in international courts, instead. coating afghanistan with the same kind of terror is like saying that all palestinians would like to see us die. plenty of them just want their land back. my local deli owner thinks some of his people are pretty disgusting too - that's why, hey! that's why he lives here instead... and the rest of them, the ones who wanna dance in the street when we get bombed, well, hey, remember what i said about militant rednecks... sometimes religion and anger combine to give people some seriously dangerous causes. goddess forbid they have guns... makes 'em think they have a right to anything they want.

there's an old redneck/republican bumper sticker philosophy that says "America, love it or leave it." i think i'd like to amend it, just a little. How about "love it, or try to make it better?" we have that sort of freedom here, you know...

and yeah, i must be an idealist. i support peaceful palestinians... i'm not evil for this. i think militance is ridiculous - but i also think it's a bit sad when a middle-aged palestinian man's only job option in his homeland is as a bus boy... and on the other hand, it's not exactly pleasant watching your israeli coworkers crying at work because their hometown just got bombed, either... i don't know what the answer is - i'm of the mind that giving some land back to the palestinians might stave off the majority and then maybe, just maybe, we'd only have to worry about the militant minority that insists on flying its flags all over the place... there is more than one palestinian cause...

this is so off-topic, however. i'm bored, obviously. we wanna leave the house but nine times outta then that means spending money - on the bright side, living in a community of broke artists means that for the most part, we were saved the terror of being employed Tuesday morning by the likes of Morgan Stanley. On the other hand, one of the artists here had a show in the WTC - sure, he didn't watch his family or friends blow up, but he lost years and years and years of his work, regardless...

air force one just flew by, flanked by two f-16s... should we get used to this? i have to say tho that despite the fact that it sucks right now, there's really no other place i'd rather be than here at home in new york...

tonight, i'll be down at the Mermaid Bar, aka Local, on S. 5th & Kent for a rescue workers' benefit - to celebrate my gratitude in being alive, and seeing some of my friends, because god, we need to get outta the house, we need to hug each other, and we need to try to get on with things... and dammit if i don't need a drink, too...
9/14/2001 05:16:15 PM | link to this


Trade Center's Past in a Sad Paper Trail - tomorrow, I turn 28 years old... the same age as the world trade center towers, when they died...
9/14/2001 02:18:15 PM | link to this