I feel condemned to retell this tale. It runs far too long. Famous
Reporter, Ralph Wessman's publication in Tasmania, already printed
some of it. But my Ancient Mariner routine gets real old. So does
"For I only am escaped to tell thee," because a lot more people got
out than didn't.

I am sitting this morning at breakfast reading the Newark
Star-Ledger, and some items strike my attention:

1. The FBI and local police are increasingly interested in what we
borrow from public libraries--this provision of the Patriot Act is
supposed to go away unless it's renewed. I don't think it's going away.
2. Americans, at least New Jerseyans, feel less secure now that they
did four years ago today. Surely this is wrapped in the Katrina
disaster on top of a disaster, but they feel the government is
incapable of protecting the citizenry or helping them recover.
3. Oh yeah, and Texas beat Ohio State.

Where was I?

At the time, September 2001, I was living at the Jersey Shore. I
arose at 5 AM each morning and took the 6:46 express from Long Branch
to Hoboken. At Hoboken I transferred to the PATH (Port Authority
Trans-Hudson) train and got off at Christopher Street, the first stop
in Manhattan. This as the so-called West Village. I walked behind
the exquisite Episcopal church St. Luke in the Fields and crossed one
block to Washington Street. My building, 570 Washington, was at the
foot of W. Houston Street. It once housed a commuter rail station,
and supposedly train tracks were still buried in the floors.

Much of New York is a palimpsest.

I was a technical writer, employed on contract. I was working in the
investment bank back-office of a firm (not to use its name) founded
by James Merrill's father, among others. I worked there from
December 19, 2000 until November 30, 2001. I was hired to gather
information and to write disaster recovery procedures for
mainframe-based applications.

The job paid fabulously but was brain-damaging. I shopped online,
read, noodled on mailing lists, applied to a training program to
learn to do psychoanalysis and almost got in (proving they were
almost crazy but not quite), and occasionally got real work to do. I
left at 4:30, took the 5:09 train to Long Branch, listened to music
and read, or slept. In June 2001 I had a cancer scare. 'Nothing to
get hung about."

I spent the latter part of the summer fighting my annual near-nervous
breakdown, complete with rapid-cycling that even Lance Armstrong
would envy, but by early September was feeling much better. I'd
started smoking again. This was actually fortunate.

On Tuesday September 11 I took the train to work as usual. The day
was like today: cool morning, gorgeous sunshine. Because the train
ran late and I had no control over the signals in Newark, I didn't
get off the PATH train until late and I didn't get to the doors of my
firm until 8:45, 15 minutes late. I looked up as I always did (no
dramatic effect here) and the North Tower of the World Trade Center
was shining in the sunlight, as ever. We were about 1/2 mile due
north of the buildings.

Sidelight time: until the 1960s, the WTC site had been in part the
Washington Market on Washington Street, of course. If you read a
wonderful novel of the Civil War by Peter Quinn, Banished Children of
Eve, you will see what the old Washington Market was like:
greengrocers, butchers, other tradesmen. By the time my father took
me there in the early 1950s it had moved under a huge roof but still
was the Washington Market. It reeked of fish, dead animals,
veggies. When I saw the the outdoor butcher shop in Girl With A
Pearl Earring, I had a sensory recall. Dead stuff. Pigs'
heads. Tongues. Blood. Nasty stuff.

The market was torn down, plowed under, and the Trade Center went up
where it stood. A place of vigorous commerce and of death. And now
I am straining for effects I didn't need, except to say again that
New York is a kind of palimpsest.

Probably while I was going up the one floor to my desk, the first
plane hit the North Tower. Someone who had on either the radio or
CNN said "Holy shit, someone just flew a plane into the Trade
Center." I figured some jerk too drunk or coked-up to drive
mishandled his Cessna. A localized tragedy that would be a big deal
on the evening news, but nothing more.

A little after 9 AM the same guy said "Someone just flew a plane into
the other tower, it was a 767." Deductive reasoning, hey,
Sherlock...if the second plane was a 767, what was the first?

I went outside. I was not alone. A crowd watched Tower No. 1 on
fire. It had what had to be a 40-story gash in its side and flames
and smoke were pouring out. People were crying. Some were crossing
themselves and/or praying aloud. It didn't seem quite
believable. The company employee who worked with me on the disaster
recovery stuff said "Maybe they'll need us inside." We went in.

Nobody called.

The phones were a mess. I managed to get through to my girlfriend,
who worked in Long Branch. Someone had seen it on a news service she
she knew. I told her I was okay but probably would get stuck in
Manhattan because I assumed They would close access to the island.

I called my older son, who was in a broadcasting Master's program in
Boston. He hadn't heard. I laughed: 'Hey newshound, put your TV
on." He did, and a few seconds later said '"Oh my God, what the hell
is this??" I whispered "It's the start of World War III, that's my
guess." I'm gonna try your brother. If you talk to your mother [my
ex], let her know not to expect any insurance money yet."

I got an email message from said younger son "Dad I just turned on
the TV. Are you okay? What the fuck is going on?" Miraculously I
got an outside line on the first try. Ben was in his dorm room at
Goucher. I told him what was going on, what I understood, that I'd
probably be marooned overnight but I'd be okay. The odd part is I
actually believed that.

Now, I had hurt this kid. I moved out on his mother--and on
him--while he was still in high school, 2 days after he turned
16. He had been surly and pissed at me for years. The rebuilding
process had been painstaking and slow. Just as I was about to say
goodbye, he said "Daddy, I love you." I gasped. "I love you too" I
said. I hung up, put my head down, and began to sob. All the anger
in me was gone. I didn't know where I was sleeping that night and I
felt I'd been given the greatest gift in the world.

I head the Towers were gone. Outside there was smoke and fire. I
was numb. It reminded me of what I'd read about Sodom. Only there
were no massed sinners here unless you buy into Pat Robertson's crap
or Rev. Fred Phelps' vile comments about this being the judgment of
God on us for tolerating a "fag" nation.

At 11:45 the police ordered us out. Walk north, they said. North
only. I landed on Hudson Street and started walking like an
automaton up Hudson into 8th Avenue. I noticed almost nothing. I
wasn't hungry or thirsty, I just wanted to go home. And if that
wasn't going to work out, it was still a warm night to sleep in the
park, there were churches with benches, there were shelters. I was
oddly at peace.

When I got to Penn Station at 32nd Street the only trains leaving
were going to Long Island on a very limited schedule. I found a
church belonging to the Capuchin Franciscan monks. What was in my
face? I said "Hello, Father" and the priest outside said "You've
seen something." I told him what I'd seen I told him I could not
assemble my thoughts and was probably in mild shock. He asked me "Is
there anything you can take away from what you saw?" Part of me
wanted to say "Kill the towelhead bastards who did this, rape and
murder their wives, torture and kill their children, cats, and dogs,
and sow their land with salt." That was how I'd felt earlier. It
was gone, replaced by gratitude for my children and if not by
forgiveness then a sense of all this as beyond my comprehension. I
said to the priest "All the things we make for ourselves can be taken
away in a split second, the people matter but the 'stuff' doesn't
matter." I thought I was bullshitting the guy but sometime later I
realized I'd been digging into myself for a cool answer to give a
Catholic priest and was finding my own truth instead.

I sat through the remainder of the Mass inside, went out and across
the street, and discovered that the gates to Penn Station were just
being rolled up. The first train out would be the 2:52 local to Long
Branch. I got on it, and then was annoyed because it ran late and
slow. Amazing. Forty minutes late, I stepped onto the platform in
Long Branch and a man rushed past me into the arms of a woman waiting
for him. He spoke the most important two words I've ever heard: "I'm
alive!" I drove about a mile to my girlfriend's business and got my
own share of hugs and tears.

I was okay Wednesday but Thursday morning I woke up crying. I don't
remember what I'd dreamed of but it surely was horrible.

There was no disaster recovery plan ever written out. It lived in
people's heads. I knew right then I was dead. The Monday after
Thanksgiving I was told I was through on Friday. The 9/11 hit to the
firm's investments and clients, plus the overall hideous economy,
finished off a lot of people.

For several months thereafter every trip to the city brought panic
attacks and faux heart problems. They gradually faded. I would work
in New York again if I could. I doubt I can.

Poetry saved my head in the days following the attacks. There are
four poems on my website about 9/11 and the aftermath. This one is
my favorite:

DAYS OF AWE (SEPTEMBER 25, 2001)

The legends of resilience
that have clung forever to the City
have something to them after all.
On Hudson Street, on Christopher and Bleecker,
the Primary Day poll-watchers sit bored,
eat pizza, while residents ignore them,
get on with life, tunnel through private ruins
to find pockets of air amidst the smolder.

Every day brings new rumors:
asbestos in the air, anthrax in the water,
smallpox martyrs afoot in Penn Station.
They'll turn Newark into 18th century London.
I shrug, am crestfallen.
The no-fee ATM is still out of order,
the woman I fantasize over on Bedford Street
has a girlfriend. Count my blessings:
there is still a paycheck.

Two weeks ago the Mayor at last ascended
his mountain. At the Opera House on Saturday,
a crowd that used to howl him down now cheered
this new St. Paul, servant of the times,
with his Epistle to the New Yorkers,
his proclamation of The Risen City.
We sat in that same crowd, and
despite memories of his unbending style,
tears welled when he spoke of sacrifice and courage.

But Dylan had rung in my head: "Don't follow leaders,
watch your parking meters," so we'd left the car
in Jersey, took the train up from the Shore.

My longings are not immortal. They are for an end
to this film noir where the Hero is a swine
who's klutzed his way into the truffle patch.

Tragedy is neater. Opera restores the normal
through the hypernormal.
It levels the world again.

Domingo, tormented Moor of Venice, witnesses for us
the collapse of worlds, locks himself with us
in a grief beyond a grief, stands for one night
on the seesaw of the world and helps us tilt back
what seemed to be unholy broken.

KTW/10-5-01

(The Days of Awe, or Yamim Noraim, are the ten days between
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in the Jewish calendar. They are
a time for prayer and repentance.)