Sent: November 12, 2001 4:19 PM
Subject: Two Months After
Monday, November 12th, 2001

> Today started off much like the morning of September 11th.  A beautiful day;
> I was preparing to go to a few appointments I had this morning.  Then I hear
> on the news what has become the 8 scariest words to New Yorkers ears:
> "...we have received news of a plane crash..."  I rushed to the tv to watch
> what had happened, and saw a black cloud of smoke billowing to the sky.  It
> was exactly like what I saw on September 11th.  I thought, "Oh my god, not
> again, not again... not again..." and felt that familier sickening feeling
> in my stomach and my chest.  Not again, not 2 months minus one day to the
> day and 2 months plus one day to the date of the World Trade Center Collapse
> and not on Veterans Day.   But there it was all over again.  Deja-vu.  I
> turned off the TV and went downtown anyhow.  How could it possibly be as bad
> as what happened on the 11th.
>
> As I boarded the subway, still full of rush-hour commuters, I realized that
> none of these New Yorkers knew what had happened.  They read and dozed and
> looked like they usually did in their Monday morning stupors, there is no
> radio reception in the subways and of course the papers wouldn't have any
> news of what happened 10 minutes ago.  I didn't want to say anything to
> spoil the mood, I didn't want to be the bearer of bad news, I didn't want to
> start a wave of panic, so I kept my revisited hell to myself - they would
> all find out as soon as they got to their offices and workplaces.
>
> The people on my first appointment did not know either.  Happy, smiling
> models and photographers.  How hard to pretend to be so happy, to give the
> photographer that "big smile, with lots of teeth!"  I felt so disgusted
> faking it while my polaroid was taken.
>
> I stopped by two of my agents' offices afterwards.  The first had her radio
> on and her assistant and she were both listening, while furiously making
> phone calls, canceling bookings and rearranging appointments.  The mayor
> shut down the bridges and tunnels, for a couple hours, while the
> investigations were started in Queens, so many people were stranded, unable
> to come into the city.  Their faces were quite different from the ones I saw
> on the subway.  Theirs were tense, quiet, worried, unsure.  Oh god, not
> again, was what they seemed to be saying.
>
> I next went to another agent, and as I crossed town so many sirens were
> rushing by, so many fire trucks, so many police cars and emergency vehicles;
> overhead I heard helicopters.  I knew they were all headed to the bridges to
> where the plane crashed outside of JFK International Airport in Queens.  The
> streets were very quiet, mostly because it was a holiday, but this was all
> too much like the 11th.  Delivery vans along the side streets had their
> radios blaring, and small groups of people gathered around them on the
> sidewalk, exchanging information and filling in those who paused in their
> morning rush and were just finding out.
>
> Carmen, my tv agent, greeted me at the door, her face told me that she knew.
> She had been watching tv in her boss's office, but took me to another part
> of the agency so we could talk.  I stayed for some time, I think we both
> needed the company at the moment.  As I was leaving, she said "call me if
> anything happens.. I just can't bear to watch it on TV."
>
> The investigation is just beginning, so who knows if it is even minutely
> terrorist related, or purely a freak accident, engine failure or something.
>
> Here we are, 2 months after.  We have moved on with our lives, we have
> picked up the wreckage here and tried to get on with life as we knew it.
> But, I urge you all to realize, to remember, the collapse of the Twin Towers
> and the destruction of our city is still very much a reality to us.  It is
> not the past, it is the present, we are still living it, we live it every
> day.  It is not an idea, which I think for the rest of the country and the
> world, it is.  It must be so hard for those outside the city or those who do
> not know this city to grasp what we are going through.
>
> So many people called and emailed their friends and family in New York on
> September 11th, to ask if they were OK.  It has been two months, and those
> calls have subsided.  No one has asked of late, save for a few people, "How
> are you NOW?"  The answer I think is above.  We are OK, but still shaken,
> still recovering, still healing, still groping for answers to all of our
> still unanswered questions.
>
> Do me a favor.  If you have friends or family here, please call them.  Ask
> them if they are OK, even if they live no where near Queens, even if a month
> ago they were fine, just fine.
>
> (you don't have to call me, I just spewed my guts to you.  I have to go
> watch the news now and won't answer my phone anyhow - not that I answer my
> phone at all anyway, but you know what I mean.  Email is OK. Email Good.)
>
> Ok.  All that said, the below is something I wrote last night.  Isn't it
> ironic - a little TOO ironic.  Don't you think?
>
> I still believe what I wrote, even though for the moment I feel like I'm
> back at square one.  I won't be heading downtown anymore today.  I'll let
> you know if anything else happens.
>
> Love,
>
> Sandy
>
> ************
>
> Last week I ran into my neighbor John.  He is the first person I saw after
> watching the Twin Towers collapse on the morning of September 11th, the one
> I walked downtown to 9th Street with that day.
>
> John told me (again, as he had the other two times I ran into him) how much
> he appreciated doing what we did on that day, having the courage to walk
> downtown, to talk to people, to take pictures of the history that was
> happening.  He said he wouldn't have done it by himself.  While a lot of
> people walked (or ran) uptown, going away from the site of the disaster, we
> walked towards it, doing the opposite of what everyone else was doing,
> against all that seemed rational or safe or right.  In my own head, I felt
> like that was the only choice.  But having a "choice" means there must be an
> alternative, which I guess I didn't consider at the time.
>
> There are always alternatives, though, always opposites, one cannot exist
> without the other.  How on the most beautiful day, the most horrible thing
> could happen.  How the light could turn to a blackened dark cloud in a
> matter of moments.  How so much life could turn into so much death within an
> hour.  How "rude" New Yorkers could suddenly become so caring.  How so many
> apparently strong and proud people have been scared to death, afraid for
> their lives, their city, and their country.
>
> People have asked me if I am afraid, if I want to leave the city.  Am I
> afraid?  Yes, a little.  Do I want to leave?  Good god, by all means, no!
> There is no where I would rather be!  I have never felt so, for lack of a
> better phrase, "not alone" in this city, for the first time I have something
> in common with every other single person who was here on Septmeber 11th, and
> we will always have that in common.  There is a strange and wonderful
> comfort in this.  I have never seen so much love from my fellow citizens,
> most of whom are complete strangers.  I have never felt so alive,I so
> wanting to savor every moment and take it all in, partly because now I know
> for a fact that nothing lasts forever, partly because I feel guilty that I
> have not taken advantage of this great city that I've been living off of for
> so many years, taking and taking but never really appreciating all that it
> has to offer by way of it's culture, it's diversity, it's people.
>
> Finding out even our tallest, proudest building are fellable was devestating
> to me.  Since the 11th I've been looking at the buildings in this city more
> than ever before.  Wondering who built them, when were they built, if there
> was another building on the site before the one I'm looking at.  I've been
> itching to get up to the top of the Empire State Building again.
> Unfortunately my timing has been poor - every time I go the line stretches
> all the way down 5th Avenue around 33rd street down the block. Guess I'm not
> the only one who's not afraid, who's desparate to see what's still there to
> see of our city.  And there's plenty of it to see.
>
> I've also been going to more concerts here in the city since the 11th; the
> New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the Isaac Stern Memorial
> Concert at Carnegie Hall.  In all of my years as a student and a
> professional musician, never has music been so beautiful and had more
> meaning to me.
>
> One of the operas I saw at the Met was Madame Butterfly.  I had forgotten
> that the tenor, at one point raises his glass to the audience and sings
> "America!  America!" and throughout the entire opera one of the leitmotifs
> is the opening notes of our national anthem.  Every time it was played my
> heart raced and my eyes welled up.  Not because I'm particularly patriotic
> (except for that time in 1980 when the United States won the gold medel in
> ice hockey at Lake Placid, but that's another story), but because every time
> I hear the National Anthem or God Bless America - even "New York, New York",
> "In A New York Minute" or "New York State of Mind" - I think of the 11th and
> what happened, I think of all of those lives that were lost and all the
> families that have suffered.  How our city has suffered.  I remember how I
> felt those first few days watching the events replayed over and over on TV,
> when seeing the remains of the Twin Towers, how my chest collapsed like
> someone punched me, and I gasped and sobbed and sobbed, not knowing what
> else to do.
>
> I also saw La Boheme at the Met.  I know this opera fairly well, the music
> anyways.  At the end of the opera, in the final scene, the lovers are
> reunited, and Mimi dies (sorry if you haven't seen it, but hey, it's opera,
> someone HAS to die) while her lover Rodolfo has stepped away, thinking she
> is just resting.  At the very end, when Rodolfo discovers she has died, the
> orchestra plays a chord.  I do not know how many times I have heard this
> chord, but every time I hear it my chest just collapses, and I gasp at the
> sheer beauty and power that this one chord has, that Puccini knew this and
> orchestrated it just so;  when you hear an orchestra like the Met Opera
> Orchestra play it, it becomes that much more beautiful.  At this point I
> usually start bawling, because, well, she's dead  and it's all very "tragic"
> - but this time I forgot to cry, because I was so shocked that the response
> I just described, my chest  collapsing, was exactly the same way I felt when
> watching the planes crash into the towers over and over again and watching
> the towers crumble, when seeing those poor people cry out for help, when
> seeing the ruins of lower Manhattan, when seeing all of those missing
> persons photos all over the city.
>
> I was amazed that two things, so utterly opposite, one of haneous death and
> destruction and fear, and one of beauty and love and music, could invoke the
> same response in my physical being.
>
> I also realized that all of this beauty, in music, in the architechture of
> the buildings that make up my city, in people and humanity - it was there
> all along.  To see it and feel it like I have recently, however, could not
> have been possible without seeing what I saw on September 11th.  Not that I
> am glad it happened, of course I am not.  But I am studying the detail on
> the Empire State Building more closely than ever before.  I am listening to
> music with new ears.  I have realized that you cannot and should not EVER
> take anyone or anything for granted, because nothing lasts forever.
>
> Everything, even our tallest, proudest buildings, at some point will die.
>
> So you ask, am I afraid? Yes, a little - but if we choose to let fear and
> paranoia take over our lives, if we run away from the unknown, it will lead
> us down a spiral that will only end in depression, disappoinment, regret,
> and eventually death.
>
> The other option also ends in death, but if the path is lined with hope,
> with ambition, with the courage to try new things, to take chances - with
> the knowledge that there IS an opposite to the horror and fear, and knowing
> that as horrible as things can be and were, that if something equally and
> powerfully as beautiful is there waiting to be discovered - then the choice
> is a no-brainer.  Who knows what may happen, who knows what new things you
> will see and feel, who knows who you may encounter.  Maybe it will be
> someone who will also want to walk downtown too, when everyone seems to be
> going the other way.  I hope it is.
>
> Stay safe,
>
> Love,
>
> Sandy
>
*******************************************************************************