From Up There

As we drove into the city last night after a weekend in High Falls, Ripley asleep on my lap and the Loved One at the wheel, I looked out over the night sky and said, "I hate that I dread coming back to the city."

When did that happen? When did love turn to fear/anxiety/defeat? I would never say 'hate.' I couldn't hate this island at the end of the world. It's made me who I am today. And though often frustrated, scared, overemotional, anxious, defeated and still hopeful, I like who I am. But the city is bringing me down.

I try to remember the way I felt on the family bus trips, straining my eyes for the first glimpse of the skyline.

I even try to remember the first time I came in after 9/11. To be absent from the city for that event broke my heart. Although I was mere miles away in New Brunswick, I felt I should be here. Be home. And although I didn't know what it could possibly mean, I felt that I should be helping somehow. Of course, for the first few days after it was all but impossible to get in to the city. Present Ex finally managed to catch a train out and join me in New Jersey. We went through a day or so on the phone as his roommate was in one of the towers and went unheard from for hours. In my memory, it feels more like days. Finally, the roommate was able to call. He had survived. We breathed a collective sigh of relief.

I also remember that day getting my father on the phone. We had left Movement Class (that's another story) and went to a friend's house to watch the events unfolding. On my way to school that day I had heard on the radio that a plane had flown into to the Towers but theorizing it was only a single engine aircraft. Someone came in to class with the bad news and we rushed into our clothes and to the nearest house. People broke off into groups. People tried to make calls. People smoked. Crazy Director refused to watch, even though we were in his house, and opted to clean the place from top to bottom. I sat for a while huddled in my friends bedroom trying to make certain everyone was alright.

Finally getting my dad on the phone, he broke into tears. He works in a highly classified government building but the government would not clear them for evacuation. Dad just kept saying over and over, "We're sitting ducks. We're sitting ducks." At this point, we knew about the Pentagon. We knew it was a terrorist attack. We did not know what to expect next. So crying hysterically on the phone I tried to convince Dad to just leave. While on the phone with him, they were given clearance to do so.

A few days later, I took the train in to the city. I didn't want to drive for fear of my reaction upon seeing the empty space where the Towers had once stood.

I was a frequent visitor to the Towers when I first moved here. I would often go to the top just because I couldn't get enough of the view from up there. I would find any excuse to go, taking visiting friends along with me. If I happened to find myself at the TKTS booth in the south tower. Mostly I would go by myself. First looking down from the highest floor through the windows and then on to the Observation Deck. From up there, it was like I owned the city. And, at 17-years-old, I did. It was a city filled with possibility. And I was on top of it.

As the New Jersey transit train crept its way from Edison to NYC, it was mostly quiet especially for a Saturday morning. It was cloudier than it had been the past few days. The threat of rain hung in the air. The small towns eventually gave way to marsh and meadowlands, railroad tracks converging from all over the state to, finally, enter the long tunnel to Penn Station. And as the train left Newark I held my breath for the close up view. How do you describe emptiness? What was once there, was gone. The smoke had cleared and, from all these miles away, was a hole in the sky.

I gasped.

But I didn't cry.

I stared. I couldn't not. And the few other people on the train with me did the same. No one pretended to not be looking. It was devastating. And as I looked out at the empty space until our train disappeared in to the tunnel. I tried to brace myself for what the city would look like, what it would feel like when I stepped out into it.

The long hallway from the train to the street was filled with posters and flyers, pictures of people missing since the attack. I looked but I didn't take in. It was too much. To stare at each individual face would have been too overwhelming, too personal. The pictured stretched out like an endless collage. And all I could comprehend was the enormity of the situation. When I stepped out, into the grey light of the city, the first thing I saw was a man at a table hocking picture postcards of the Towers burning. My gut instinct, like Jesus in the marketplace, was to flip his table over and push him wailing rock opera at the top of my lungs. How could he be turning a profit off of this tragedy? America. I swallowed it and walked away.

I don't remember what else I did that day besides a lot of walking. I wanted to see the places and things that were still there, still mine. I wanted to sit in the now-defunt, beautifully asymmetrical and run-down Washington Square Park -- how could someone approve spending millions of dollars to ALIGN the fountain and the arch?! When has the Village ever been about symmetry?

I miss the way I felt about the city then. And when I started coming here. I don't own it any more. It owns me. And I think, perhaps, having a job I care about would make a difference. Having something to do every day that has an effect on the way people think, see things, react, treat one another MEANS something. I'm still foolish enough to believe that creating theatre is a way of doing that.

I remember what the view was like from up there and I wish I could recapture it.