2002-01-07 4:39 p.m.
Flashback to the 9-1-1

Coming here didn't seem as difficult today. That may have been because of the snow.

It was unconscious, the melting-away of old hate for this place, contempt...I just nestled into my coat, buttoned the hood on like a kid walking to school on a cold day, and marveled at the white showering around me.

It�s harrowing to remember the dust covering everyone the day the World Trade Center fell. The black guy in a tan suit sitting on the curb on Mercer, wiping away a few pounds of soot from his clothes and glasses. The snow makes me flash back to it all.

I remember the cops ordering us up the street. I don't think they even knew why they were herding us north; they were probably worried about a bomb or keeping a clear path for the rescue workers to get close to the scene.

I remember trying to reach D. It was maddening. None of the calls on my cell would go through. None of the pay phones would work ("all lines are currently busy. Please try your call again later."), and while 'net access was up, marginally, I just tried to read the news. I figured email wouldn't help anyone be calm, as close as I was to everything, and I really needed to touch someone, feel someone�s hand, hear familiar voices.

It feels ridiculous to watch New Yorkers act like the WTC collapse was no big thing: three thousand dead; yeah, it's sad, but they were terrorists, right? I think we, the city, and I in particular, have closed our minds off from the scope of the destruction and the fear the entire day generated.

The comics industry's attempts to empathize (read: cash in) with the victims and heroes of the disaster, though well-intentioned, have come off, for the most part, as hollow and uninformed, as people who weren�t near it, who maybe saw a few newscasts and heard a lot of the aftermath. To recognize the heroes of this tragedy is deserved (and J. Michael Straczynski's Amazing Spider-Man #36 hit home, heavy-handedly, rough but with the right message to take home); but I think to only deify the heroes is to do a disservice to history.

A lot of people were quite content to just get out with their lives. A friend of a friend used barely legitimate credentials to sneak into the Red Cross relief efforts; he felt he had to be there. Most of the people I know weren't anywhere near downtown, but had their own fears to deal with. My brother sat on the roof of our house, watching it happen, until the clouds of dust started to pour over Brooklyn, when he sealed himself inside, for fear of asbestos/lead inhalation. If you keep up with this journal, read the entry just after 9/11 for details of where I was.

It wasn't black and white for anyone, except the people inside the World Trade Center. It was either the light of day, or the light at the end of the tunnel for them.

We're all supposed to feel better now that our white knight, the erstwhile (not) Mr. Bush, has sailed in and given the Afghani people, most of whom were too busy starving or being shot for religious offenses to orchestrate the Al-Qaeda's deeds, a sound thrashing. Yay, U.S. As Bad Religion put it, �the first word in U.S.A. is US!�

I can't think about the Afghanistan bombings and subsequent military campaign without feeling nauseous, helpless, wanting to scream. Every single person here at this law firm was back to business as usual the following Monday. Most of them followed suit as Bush wanted them to, feeling good that Bin Ladin, their monolithic Islamic boogeyman, was being hounded to the ends of the earth. And no one I spoke to questioned anything Bush did after that.

If there's a reason I can�t deal with working in this environment, it's the astounding and accepted ignorance pervading this place. Everyone who should have the common sense to think about their job and make it better, everyone who has the Web access who could watch the news and pass it on, everyone who spends all day looking at the sales in the Post rather than the headlines...blinders on, all day. It makes me feel hopeless. Is this what everyone�s got to say for themselves?

Huh. And I'm the one who wants to "do theater." I make myself sick sometimes, thinking of making art about nothing when the world�s so fucked.

Roomie Rachel read my tarot yesterday, and the big card that came up (this is the Sacred Path deck I'm talking about, or something) was Smoke Signals � Intent. She said that it points to what I need right now, to remember to keep myself on my path. She also said: that I need to keep a sense of humor about me right now; that in whatever new venture I put myself into, I'll always walk away from my work with new skills and ideas; that I have to figure out my destination, my immediate goals, before I'll get anywhere; and that I have to remember my ancestors (meaning whoever's fed me along the way) as I move on down the road.

And all these elements in front of me: theater, politics, Web, radio, outrage, middle-class upbringing, fiction writing, science fiction, futurism (which is distinguish from SF) ... am I pointing myself forward to become another Orwell, another Bradbury, another Straczynski ... or something else?

I don't buy Grant Morrison's attitude towards educating people, favoring memetics layered inside pop culture�it's lazy and it's barely productive. The ideas are obscured by the infinite layers of 'you should have read this book or that' and making it amazing eye candy. D. couldn't give a shit about educating people; any wonder why Grant's his idol? They're both fashionable, eyes on the times and on the future, but without an eye towards affecting it, only having their pulse on the Next Big Thing. A waste of insight and energy.

That's the attitude of Judaism, I think: what's the point of teaching your beliefs to other people if they die with that generation? Is it the mitzvah of teaching, the gift of enlightenment, or is it just self-gratification and self-delusion to think that you're making a difference? Should one try to reach masses, or just teach one or two true students?

Even beyond education, which burns at me, the biggest things that's moving me, as S. found out this weekend, is fear — fear of greed upsetting the entire apple cart, with the rich few grabbing at the branches above for safety, and everyone else being buried in the avalanche.

I'm afraid of losing what I have, and I'm afraid of failing at what I'm trying to do, by producing a book that won�t appeal to more than the people who have and will stay with money.

A little voice inside keeps saying to me:

Stop letting the fear eat at you and paralyze you. Stop letting the fear make you stop feeding yourself. Keep writing. The words will come.