Oh my God
The rest of the day is a series of memories out of order. I leave the give-blood line. Walk across 6th Ave. Back to the school. They are clearing out the lobby to accommodate triage for the nearby hospital. Someone leads a handful of students to administration to use the landline. Cell phones are out of order. The cell towers were on top of the World Trade Center buildings. I call Suzy. There are people crowding the office, waiting to use the phone after me. “Suzy, turn on the news.” It’s early in California. She grumbles. “I’m okay. I need you to call my family.” She turns on the TV. “Oh my God.” I give her my brother’s number, because he can reach the rest of the family. I give her my grandma’s number, because I want her to hear from Suzy directly that I am okay.
Dust
I walk south. I don’t know why or how far. The back door of school is at 6th Avenue and 11th Street. (When they shut down Lower Manhattan the next day, they close it off 12th Street and below.) Shadows of leaves dapple the sidewalk and the people on it. We are stringy. That is, no one is really focuses on anything and we are not walking anywhere in particular. I see someone on the steps of a church. I wonder if that is the place to be right now, I wonder if I should go in. I decide there is too much going on outside in the world to go away from it. I don’t know what I should be doing, but I know I want to be available to it all. I don’t know what is going on and I want to. In a city of strangers I run into Bill. We met at Mia’s place on the Upper East Side. It’s where I’m staying till I find a place to live. He tells me he had to get out of Tribeca. It’s the area of town closest to the rubble, the smoke, the epicenter. There are people walking past us going north, covered in dust. We are standing in the way of foot traffic. He tells me he’ll probably see me tonight at Mia’s. He needs someplace to sleep.
Futile
I am back in the vicinity of school. I see Randall and Tim and Thuy, and maybe a few others. We are aimless, walking, unsure, but begin to look for where to give blood. Over our shoulders we watch the smoke gush into the sky. We wonder if we should be breathing the air. We realize there’s no where to go where that it isn’t. The sun is hot now and we have been walking for a while. We reach the hospital in the East Village. We can contribute. The line is not huge. There is a woman sitting at a small table in front of the sliding doors, and next to her an immense standing banner lists who is not eligible to donate blood. Two people in our party of five make that list for being gay men. We swirl on our own planet of discombobulation and disbelief for a moment, our long walking mission futile, and move on.
Fall
Thuy and I walk toward Uptown. We walk 30 blocks, 40 blocks. Around 50, we get on a bus. It moves more slowly than we walked, traffic inching northward impossible, cars feeding into the avenue from every street. People pressing up the avenue, in droves. I understand the meaning of droves. Once in a while, I see one person walking south, in contrast to the bodies moving northward. Invariably the person is crying, hand on face wiping tears, shoulders pressing forward. The bus is so packed we hardly breathe. Tensions are high. We get off the bus two blocks later having rested long enough to push out, and walk another 20. On the way we talk about class. Theatre. Stage. Experience. The play this might turn into someday, characters walking, walking, walking their way through. How Thuy said she wished she’d never seen the buildings fall. How I thought that if I’d seen them fall, I might believe it.
-to be continued-
(You can read all of the Memory to Light stories in order on the side bar -->)
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Thanks for reading Day 20 of “Memory to Light: 31 Days of Stories, August 11 – September 11, 2011.” It is an exercise in writing about loss, for the purpose of letting grief wake, live, and pass through the system. Grief is transformation. Story is transformation. Our world could use a some wakeful transformation right now. Take a peek at the introductory post for the full story of what we’re up to.
P.S. Names were changed in my story today, in the interest of focusing on the story rather than the identifiable in it.
Join me
Consider this project an online story circle. Read a story that moves you. Write your own on your blog. Link it to the comments below, so we can read your piece. If you don’t have a blog, write your story in the comments.
Let your memories live. Let small corners of your grief breathe. Let your loss be swept into the collective experience of people sharing, witnessing, and letting be.
