The Springtime of My Years

Twelve days ago, I was told I have lung cancer.

That’s a hell of a way to start a new post, let alone one that’s been sitting around in my head for even longer than the official word from my doctors but it’s easier to come to the point of this post rather than go for all the flowery prose (although I’m sure some will creep in here somewhere later on). I’m having test after test done, being poked and prodded; biopsied and anesthetized. I don’t know how much blood they’ve taken from me in the past month alone. I’ve been to specialists, been to hospitals, been everywhere except where I really want to be which is on a beach in the Keys somewhere with a couple of college buddies raising hell for old time’s sake. I’m certainly not about to write “one last go” at it, because quite frankly…I’m not dying, I’M LIVING.

I absolutely, positively refuse to die…not yet, not now and certainly not at almost age 51 as my birthday is this coming Wednesday. I want nothing more than to see my kids graduate from college, and walk at least one of them down the aisle. And if I am supremely lucky, hold my grandchild in my arms. I figure that’s about 15 years; 10 years plus interest. The least the Universe could do is pay me back for the past ten years of misery: one incredible thing after another, starting with 9/11 and then a battle with the bottle followed up closely by tremendous back problems that put me on daily painkillers. Then my marriage takes a bit of a nosedive, and now this. It’s honestly been just like Commander Ivonova said in “Babylon 5”, “…thoroughly paying off karma at a vastly accelerated rate”. I have to think that there is something very wrong with this picture; that everything I did in my past lifetimes is coming back to haunt me in this one. Either that, or I was a REALLY nasty bastard in the life just preceding this one. You couldn’t write an “All My Children” script like this if you wanted to (especially now that it’s been cancelled. I’m still in awe over that decision). So the bottom line is this, you are probably wondering: how long did they tell you? How long?

Well, how long do YOU have to live? Do YOU know? Well, neither do I; it’s just as much as it was 3 months ago with me. One day at a time and one moment at a time as much as humanly possible and not knowing when the end is coming. Well, the end in this life, anyway. There’s probably other journeys I have yet to take as I have been a less than perfect soul this life and that is for sure, but now it’s tempered with one thing most people don’t have when you are not diagnosed with something like this: PERSPECTIVE. After the initial shock wore off (well, the first wave which lasted a few hours…then more days, and then finally some realization of the facts) I realized that almost immediately the way I look at things changed. I began to take everything in. I began to look at the moments between the moments…because they are there if you look. They are just hidden enough that when you get that idea or realize something, that is when you have found a moment between a moment. But now I see them all. They are all hanging in front of me like equations drawn on a sheet of glass. You begin to realize that “x” is no longer as important as it once was, and “y” now is definitely a better way of doing things. You begin to realize that all the crap we allow ourselves to get excited and high strung about (and for me, this was in fact my very existence) is NOTHING. It means NOTHING unless it alters for worse your life or the lives of those around you. It means that STOP sign that you have cursed for 20 years because you never make a left turn easily suddenly is a place to reflect a while as traffic goes by. It means that you may become a little quieter to folks than you normally are…and that’s OK, because you really have to think about not only what has just happened to you with the illness but what you are going to do with this sudden shift in perspective.

It’s like you’ve been shifted into a Parallel Universe…everything looks the same, but things are slightly altered. Almost imperceptible at first, but then they become things that suddenly take on new meaning. What was once a mundane task now becomes a moment to commune under the stars as you throw away the trash like you never have before. People look differently at you too. You can tell in their eyes; it’s almost as if they absolutely positively fear you because you have suddenly become death incarnate to them. They know that sooner or later there’s going to be a funeral and service and wake, and tears. And that’s OK, because your friends and family have to grieve with you through this, but it’s not grieving on my part because like I said before…it’s not yet my time. I have work left to do here, and I honestly don’t have an idea of what that is…just the same as I didn’t three months ago. Then again, I have a much better perspective now, so perhaps I might be given that insight into what I need to do before I slip into the Long Night; with any luck a good 15 years down the road. My concern is for my family. I’ve pretty much accepted death as a doorway to somewhere else. Perhaps that’s just comfort to me and there really IS nothing after this life (please, I hope you hard core Atheists are wrong, LOL) but I highly doubt it. For I have seen things in my lifetime that made me understand that there is more to the world and the universe that we see and that which we do not see. I KNOW death is a means of going to join with the rest of the Universe for a while and rest. Your soul gets some time to examine your lifetimes and decide its next course of action. The only time this is taken from you is when you have achieved Oneness with the Universe; you will have become part of the Creator/Creation/Sentient Being which is the very Universe we live in and are a part of. How do I know? Just my forming an opinion over half a century of seeing myself compared to the rest of my fellow-man and reading about the ancients and what they believed. I’ve read up on a lot of Theology and Existentialism. I’ve taken a bit from here and a bit from there to form an opinion.

That is why I am a Deist. I believe in a higher power, but I highly doubt it listens to me and me alone (if at all). Let’s be real: an omnipotent being capable of creation and destruction listening to one sentient in a billion billion billion times 10 to the billionth power of other sentients in the entire Universe. Sorry, no direct channel here with the Universe…except when the Universe needs an answer, and it sometimes uses us to get that answer for it. You see, the Universe asks itself the same questions we do, but on a much grander scale; and while we have resources and philosophies to fall back on, so does the Universe. It relies on us for the answers as much as we rely on it. Perhaps my situation is one where the Universe needs a sense of my perspective by giving me a glimpse into some things that I haven’t had before. But ultimately, there is something at work out there…something that is not evil, nor good, nor anything in between. It just is…and it it is all and it is in everything and it is you and it is me. And the sooner we realize that we are all connected ultimately to each other and to the Universe as a whole, perhaps the Universe itself can move on to bigger and better things. It’s all relative; it’s all infinite. And like I said, those equations in front of me? They can be pretty handy sometimes.

In a few days it will be the first day of spring; in fact, I’m having the pleasure of having a biopsy on my lymph nodes to make sure it hasn’t spread there yet (one time I really hope nothing grows in spring). But I picked that day for a reason: because it is a day of renewal. It is about celebrating the end of a winter and the darkness of things and into the warm sunshine and brilliance and fullness of life revitalizing itself. That is why I picked that day because as I said earlier, I’m not dying. I am living. And hope does indeed spring eternal at least for me. I have to hope. I have to believe. I have to stay positive and never forget that life is reborn and renewed on that day. And that will be the start of the Springtime of my years, not the winter of my discontent. I still have two Seasons of Life ahead of me…and in the cosmic scheme of things, I’m figuring that’s about 15 years.

At the very least.

And so it begins…

“We are born capable of greatness. It’s when we allow ourselves to become discouraged, to see ourselves as failures, when we fail to recognize our inherent nobility, that we grow small, and diminish, and ultimately sacrifice our dreams on the altar of more realistic expectations of ourselves.

When that happens, we forget who we are, what we are here for, and what we want to achieve, knowledge that is always within us…until we choose not to remember it any longer because the memory pains us, and because it is easier to settle for less than our dreams demand of us.

Children sing and dance spontaneously, tell stories without fear, reveal their thoughts without inhibition, and reach for what logic tells us should be unattainable. That is who and what we are in our most elemental form. We do, we explore, we ask questions; we pursue our heart’s desires, we dream of achieving greatness. But as time passes, we learn fear, we learn to second-guess ourselves, and we learn to suspect our abilities and our desires. We are told that some people tell stories, some people dance, and some people sing, but these things are not for everyone. When we try to express our innermost thoughts, we are told to be quiet, that no one wants to hear what it is we have to say, and that even if they did want to hear it, what we say has no innate value. When we lose the spark of spontaneity that was born inside us, which is our greatest gift, we progressively eliminate the possibility of finding joy and purpose, and inch by inch, our dreams slip away from us.

If we are to be who we are, and what we are; if we are to accomplish great things, then we must learn the heart’s most essential rule: NEVER SURRENDER DREAMS.”

-J. Michael Straczinski

A Blessing Of Tears

Tonight I cried about it.

It’s taken me this long, but it hit me full force and from out of the blue. The realization that in a couple of weeks you may very well be told that you are dying or very ill and need an operation is not exactly a picnic. It really took me by surprise because I was holding back everything so well, so sooner or later, I guess the damn had to burst. I wasn’t expecting the raw emotion that came out of me, this absolute profound sense of sadness that made be think of everyone I knew who passed away, flashed by in a moment. Ironically on a day where love is celebrated, my loving aunt passed away 11 years ago. Somehow I think she was here with me; I could feel another presence. I usually know who they are too…sometimes, it sucks being gifted that way and other times it’s a blessing. And now I can almost understand the title of this post better as it’s the title of an album from one of my favorite musicians’ (Robert Fripp) pieces of his extensive body of work. I always thought the title was beautiful for some reason, and now it just made sense.

Sometimes we need our tears to give us the relief and release of the unedited emotion that’s been in check inside of us for so long. I’m more emotional than most guys; I always have been. I’m usually the guy who’s yelling at a ballgame or when I get a good laugh going, I’ll crack up a room just from that. There are other things I keep buried deep down, and it’s these things that sometimes come out as extreme anger. That’s the nature of being bi-polar as well as a recovering alcoholic. And for a guy with PTSD, I’m handling all of this remarkably well. Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I think I am. I always thought that had this happened to me, I’d handle it exactly the way I did tonight…with pure unmitigated sorrow. I wasn’t angry. I had no bitterness. I was almost bargaining with the Universe that if there is a chance for a second half of my life…a second chance to do something, I swear I’m going to make it count. I was put on this Earth to do something meaningful. I was not put here to die at a very young age (although my kids consider me “old” at 50. Bushitt…50 ain’t old, and I have no intention of going anywhere. Except to Paris. I’ve never been there, or Moscow in June. I’d even love to spend New Years Eve there, because that is the highlight of the Russian Holiday Season. I’d love to go on a vacation to Disney (either one, although my best friend lives in San Diego and my wife has family there and in LA) with the kids…before they get to be beyond being kids. I’m not going anywhere except to both my daughters’ graduations and weddings, and I plan on being there when my first grandchild is born.

Things suddenly were put into focus: don’t procrastinate. Get this done with. Find out what the hell is wrong. Subconsciously, I must be delaying things because I’m not making time for blood work (I’m only a day or two behind schedule there; a needed test set me back a day) for this last of three tests that is the scariest and the most risky. There’s a shot my lung could collapse when they take a sample they need, but I’m going to will my body into making sure that does not happen. I’m scared…who the hell wouldn’t be with a potential cancer diagnosis? What’s more I’m even angrier at myself because try as I might I still can’t quit these damned cigarettes, e-cigarettes are not helping as I’m falling back on the real thing that got me in trouble in the first place. That and 9/11 (and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise; 50 year old men despite having smoked for 35 years do not die of lung cancer at a relatively young age of 50. I won’t go into my rage about that one, because that would produce the opposite of why I started writing this in the first place).

It was a cleansing of the soul. I needed that cry alone, and yet I felt a spiritual arm around me hugging me. What the worst part about all of this is has become my thoughts on my children. What becomes of them. Of course they’ll have their mother and other family to take care of them. God only knows how much I love those two girls. I see home videos when they were younger and there were my two little girls, the ones you always keep in the back of your mind as a favorite picture; one that you always carry no matter how old they get. I often wondered why my Dad had a picture of me from 5th grade in his office as I lumbered in there with long hair, beard, and ripped jeans back in my college days. I asked him once why he never took that down and updated it. He told me something along the lines of “I always liked that picture of you, and you weren’t such a fool back then. Besides, you’ll understand when you have kids”. Well Dad, I do. It took 30 years, but I do.

And tonight my soul was cleansed by a blessing of tears.

Time Carries Away…

“History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.” – John F. Kennedy 

You never think twice any time you’re doing something routine.  It becomes second nature, your brain goes on autopilot, and rote is an understatement.  It seems as if you operate at a completely subconscious level, and things become very much like autonomic reflexes in the body: things that just happen because that’s the way they are supposed to.  When you have to commute and go to a job on a daily basis, you are very much in this mode.  Go to train station, get coffee and newspaper, read and drink while on the train, change trains, pull into destination station, ride up escalators, walk two blocks, get in elevator, go to desk and turn on computer.  That is very much how my life operated for years; you never expect anything different outside of those parameters except for the delay on the railroad or the store not having your favorite blend of coffee and they’re out of your usual morning paper.  Nothing major is ever expected, and nothing ever did happen to disrupt that pattern for me for 8 years.

One day everything carried along as it should have, until the last part of that routine: pull into destination station, ride up escalators, and then find yourself in the middle of the biggest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor almost 50 years earlier.  Somehow, it makes not having your favorite coffee or newspaper become irrelevant very quickly.

For the next several hours I tried to get home to my wife and two children, the youngest of whom was only 1 day shy of a month old.  In a way, I’m still trying to get “Home” after 10 years, because from that day onward my life was never the same again.  The comfortable confines of my home would become alien to me over the years, my friends and family would become strangers, and as I lost myself in a haze of booze and ever growing PTSD I don’t think I could ever define what “Home” meant to me anymore, except as a place on a baseball field.  Home couldn’t be where the heart was for me because I had no heart left after a while…so I became a Bedouin of the soul lost in the empty spaces between existence and existentialism.  I was a man without a home and rapidly was becoming a man without a country as my beloved Republic took on the shape of a Police State with each passing law and each passing year.  The very core of my being was destroyed and dismantled; delineated and deleted.  Nightmares filled my every sleeping hour and I would awake screaming.  My waking hours were spent drinking and trying to dull not only the pain of that day, but very much unknown to me at the time a very bad case of undiagnosed Bi-Polar Disorder.  The man who I had become ceased to exist after a while; the lifeless eyes in the mirror that stared back at me reflected eternal nothingness; two black holes at the center of a heartless universe. 

And then I woke up…

Oh, how I wish that were true in the sense that the last ten years have been one long and very bad dream, but that is not the case.  I did wake up and sober up; I got my act together and became a better and more involved father to my children.  I was laid off from my job, but now I had the most challenging one of all as stay at home dad (or “Domestic Warrior” if you like) with no pay but all the benefits of bringing two lovely souls into the world. 

There is always a price one pays for the trade-off of regaining your soul, and in my case it was the disintegration of my marriage.  The one thing that was the strongest was the bond between my wife and I, and that was the price exacted from me for regaining my life.  The Universe demands some tough choices from us, and sometimes it acts with such deliberate callousness that is hard to fathom, but it is always for a reason.  The hard part is figuring out just what the reason is. 

What follows is a piece I wrote two days after that horrible but impossibly beautiful sunlit and cloudless Tuesday in September.  I was still reeling from the events of the previous couple of days and needed someway of expressing myself.  I had originally written this to let friends from a “Babylon 5” fan webite know that I was OK and what had happened to me.  It now is part of Survivors recollections and resides in the Library of Congress along with those of my brothers and sisters of that day.  Professors have also used it in their lectures over the years (Brown and Harvard among them and I have always granted requests for its use for educational purposes).   To me it is simply my story of that day; one of thousands who experienced a defining moment in the history of the world and their lives.  Sometimes you seek out history, and other times History seeks you out… 

———Phoenix Uncertain: Originally written on Thursday, September 13, 2001—————-

CATHARSIS I: The Road to Damascus

I need to write all of this down right now, while the smells, sounds, and experiences of the past few days are fresh in my mind. I also need to do this now because I’ve gotten some clarity in the past few hours and I don’t know how long that will last for. I have alternated between disbelief, sorrow, confusion, and anger…and sometimes all of these simultaneously. On Tuesday, the man I was ceased to exist. The light has been extinguished from my eyes. I’ve tried to explain things to my wife and broke down every time. I cannot even begin to explain to my daughter Katie how lucky she is to have her Daddy around, nor can I explain to her why her Daddy screams in his sleep or why he shakes for no reason. I cannot explain to her why every time I head a loud sound or bang, I practically jump out of my skin. All I can do is try and take the medication that keeps me normalized and try and make some sort of sense of the whole thing. Now that I’ve just popped a “happy pill”, I’ve got 8 hours to write this all down, before I descend into my own abyss once again. In the past 72 hours, I have witnessed events that I never thought I would see with my own eyes. What you are seeing on your television is absolutely nothing…and I do mean NOTHING…like it actually was to be there. I keep telling myself that something or someone must have had a greater plan for me, and that is why I am alive today instead of being buried under a ton of rubble. Perhaps that plan just to write this document of my experience to share with others so that they may carry on the memory of those who survived like myself, and the memory of those who were lost. Perhaps it is to share with you that amidst all of the evil, I witnessed some of the finest moments of compassion and humanity that I have ever seen…an affirmation of a belief that I have always held: that we have greatness inside all of us. Perhaps it is about the redemption of my own soul, for like Saul on the way to Damascus, I’m slowly coming to the realization that my life has indeed reached a turning point. I also know that there is no going back to the person I was, and I just have to figure out just who the hell I am now.

CATHARSIS II: Abnormal Normality

TUESDAY, September 11th, 2001: 7:22 AM, Little Silver Train Station, NJ
Kissed my wife and daughters good bye as they dropped me off at the station. Took my coffee, laptop, and briefcase…bought a copy of the NY Daily News. Thankfully since the NY Giants/Denver Broncos game ended late, I don’t have to read about how my team was defeated. Read through the paper all the while sipping my coffee on the one hour ride to Newark NJ, where I will catch the PATH Train (a subway between NJ and NY) to the World Trade Center, just 3 blocks from my office at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza.

8:20 AM, Penn Station, Newark, NJ
Board the PATH train…and actually found a seat! I consider this a good omen for the rest of the day, especially as I was lugging around a very heavy laptop PC in addition to my regular briefcase. It was for this reason that I decided NOT to listen to my CD Player today…it would be just too awkward carrying around a CD player strapped to my waist as well as a laptop and briefcase. I close my eyes to catch a few winks on the 22-minute ride into Manhattan. 8:42 AM, World Trade Center, New York, NY Leave PATH train for the ride 6 stories up a series of escalators to the street level. I decide that my laptop is sitting awkwardly on my shoulder, and that I would fix it when I reached the top of the escalators.

8:45 AM, WTC Path Square (located in the center of the WTC Complex, 1 story Below Ground, where there’s a Shopping Mall)
Reach the top of the escalator, and begin to fix my laptop. As soon as I get myself situated…something happens…a sound…something different. Sounds like a crash at first…then a low rumble…then a “whoosh” throughout the complex. People are starting to run, and once others see people running, they too scramble for the exits. At this point, I think it’s a good time to get the hell out of there, and start to run toward the exits as well. Someone, in his or her haste to get out, knocks me over. I’m falling face first toward a plate glass window in one of the shops. Somehow, I manage to contort my body so that I land on my left knee pretty hard, but my face hits the floor. I’m dazed…compose myself for a minute…and realize I have to get out no matter what just happened. My knee is killing me, but the endorphins take over, and that pain is quickly gone. I feel something warm on my chin, and realize that it’s blood. My fall knocked one of my front teeth into my lip, putting a nice gash in it. I wipe some blood away, and follow another crowd into the lower level of the Border’s bookstore, which also has an exit to the streets…it’s much less crowded, and a calmer exodus of people. I reach the street and exit into the air. There is a burning smell…I’d never smelled anything like it. There are thousands of papers falling from the sky in a quiet procession of calm amidst the chaos. A paper rain, much like one of those party favors that you might have had when you were a kid…you know, the fake champagne bottles filled with confetti. I start to walk across Church Street. I can see smoke, but because I’m so close to the tower, I can’t really see anything. I begin to walk westward toward Broadway past St Paul’s Chapel. As I walk, people are looking up at the North Tower, then looking back down at my blood stained face. I see their eyes are filled with confusion. When I reach the corner of Broadway and look up I can finally see what happened. There, at the top of a building that is approximately ¼ of a mile long is a HUGE hole…several stories in length…plumes of smoke and flame billowing higher into the air. I can only stand there, watching in disbelief as I realize that what we had all feared had probably taken place: a bomb had gone off in the World Trade Center.

CATHARSIS III: Another Ulysses

APPROX. 9:00 AM, Broadway
It’s funny how the mind operates. You know, kind of like when you see a magic trick, you can’t believe what you saw…or when your team makes a triple play…or when you witness a birth. You know you’re seeing something, but your mind sends signals that it’s just not possible, but there it is. From out of the Tower, I’m seeing debris fall…but it’s coming in very irregular intervals. Usually, debris falls in a pattern as a structure is weakened, and at the same rate of descent. This debris was sporadic, and it wasn’t just falling in a straight line from the Tower…it was arcing. I saw it happen once, twice…but on the third time, I saw what I thought was debris MOVE, I thought I saw arms move…and I realized that debris cannot move, nor could it have arms. I had just seen people throw themselves from the North Tower to escape the consuming flames. I began to shake, began to shout “No F***ing way!” and “Oh my God” at the top of my lungs. Someone came over to me and put their hand on my shoulder and asked me if I was all right. I think I said something to the effect I was, but they offered me a bottle of water and some tissues to wipe the blood off my face. I accepted and I asked if they had seen the explosion…and that’s when they told me it was a plane that had crashed into the North Tower. They also told me it was an airliner. The brain couldn’t register that one really…except for the fact that I thought it was a terrible accident, and thank God it wasn’t a bomb. Another person in the crowd came up to me and asked if I needed help getting to where I was going. I realized that my hands were trembling and couldn’t hold either the tissues or water steady and my knees felt weak. Brain kicks in again: yeah, take this guy up on his offer. It turned out he worked for my company but at another location. We began to walk toward my building, and I notice some debris along the way. About a block from my office, right in front of the Federal Reserve Building I see some debris that catches my eye: some tacky looking upholstery that looks like it came from an airline headrest. It was then that I saw a seat cushion and an armrest…THANKFULLY empty.

APROX 9:12 AM, 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza
I walk one block further south to my building, and reach the Plaza. Just as I’m about to turn to enter my building, I hear the whine of jet engines. I look down the block at the South Tower, and see a fireball engulfing the building, showering flaming debris across the skyline, arcing outward and in my general direction. There is a low, rumbling sound, very much like what I had heard earlier…a sound that grew as the flames spread and debris rained down upon Manhattan. The crowd begins to run frantically toward the east, away from the falling debris. I overhear someone say that it was another jet that collided into the South Tower. It was then I realized that this was no accident, that my greatest fears were realized: we were under attack. It was at that moment, I knew that I had to somehow survive this…get the hell out of there…and get home to my family. I had just become a modern day Ulysses.

CATHARSIS IV:The Silence before the ROAR

APPROX 9:20 AM, 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza
I’m pretty superstitious. I usually sit in the same seat for a baseball or football game if my team is winning. I never pick up a penny “tails up”, and I don’t walk under ladders. In some convoluted manner, the Universe played a trick on me, for I work on the 13th floor of my building. It never bothered me before, but on a day like Tuesday, there was just no way I was going to go up into my office…so I decided to go downstairs to the Branch to use the phone to call my wife to let her know I was OK. (A footnote here and an important one because it’s going to come into play later: The Branch is an underground structure, kind of like a rectangular “donut”. It is just below the Plaza, with a circular glass enclosure in its center containing a fountain. There is an opening at the top of this enclosure to the Plaza to let light in. From the Plaza level, there is a circular wall that allows viewing of the fountain from the Plaza, and it’s quite beautiful when viewed from inside the branch at the level of the fountain.)

Just before entering the Branch, I meet up with a co-worker who sees me and is pretty amazed at my condition at this point…I can only imagine: A deer in the headlights look accompanied by a bloody face. I try and tell him what’s happened so far. It turns out, he’s not going to his floor either…and he helps me into the Branch. Needless to say, the Branch had been closed to all but employees with ID. I also know the Branch Manager, Assistant Branch Manager and many of the staff well because I’ve worked with them directly when I was in the Branches myself. I got in there; they sat me down and got me some first aid as well as some water. I called my wife, told her I was OK and told her of what I was going to do next: try and take the Staten Island Ferry and get to either my parents or my in-laws and have them drive me home. I just wanted to get the hell off Manhattan as soon as possible, especially with the thought that there were two ¼ mile buildings a few blocks away that had the possibility of collapsing. I called my parents and told them of my intentions as well. Needless to say, I’m pretty shaken up at this point. I decide to sit a few minutes to try and relax, collect my thoughts, and move on. A woman named Maxine (who I’ve never met before) sat with me and comforted me. She also spoke with my wife during my phone call and said she was taking care of me. God Bless her…she was a BIG help. We turned on the radio to listen to the news, to see exactly what had happened, and it was just as we feared: two jet liners were hijacked and were rammed into the World Trade Center…and one other thing that hit us all like a ton of bricks…the Pentagon was also attacked the same way. Nothing was the same anymore.

CATHARSIS V: No World Order

APPROX 10:15 AM 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza
Some people talk about a “New World Order”. At this point in my life, there was definitely a New World, but anything but order. I had finally calmed down, and was about to make my way toward the Staten Island Ferry when the unthinkable happened: That ROAR happened again…that ungodly Roar that still was imprinted in my head from the last few hours… …And then I saw the debris and smoke fill the glass enclosure around the fountain. The ground shook, and we all began to rush toward the escalators that would take us to the vault sub-basements in the Plaza. We arrived down there followed by a cloud of smoke and dust…we made our way through passages that led to the underground cafeteria where security told us to go. My first thought was that my building was attacked, but something completely unexpected happened. We had just found out that one of the icons of the New York Skyline, one of the World Trade Towers had crumbled to dust…and that rubble had spread across Lower Manhattan, washing across the Plaza. We were told to stay put…it was safer here, and there was NO visibility AT ALL outside. More people started to file into the cafeteria…all of them covered in dust…stark white ghosts with terrorized eyes peering from the rubble that had been strewn onto their bodies. Among them were two people who worked in my department. I rushed up and the three of us hugged and held onto each other. We got a table in the cafeteria; got some of the water and wet rags they were handing out to help us breathe. …And we sat…for two hours…and waited for news of when we could leave the building. In the meantime, there was another dull roar in the distance…THAT ROAR… …And the other Tower had fallen. …And God only knew what the rest of the world outside looked like.

CATHARSIS VI: A Hole in the Sky

APPROX Noon, 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza
Now I know what my cat feels like when I let him out of his carrier after we bring him back from the vet. He always wants to get the hell out, and yet he steps out gingerly, unsure of what he can expect. I kind of felt that way as I exited our building after we were told to head toward the East River. I also felt like a B-Movie actor on one of those bad 50’s “Day After…” movies, the ones usually used for cannon fodder on “Mystery Science Theater 3000”. There was dust everywhere, and it looked like it was snowing in September. There had to be two inches of dust and debris on the streets as CJ (one of those guys I mentioned earlier who worked with me) and I made tracks for the South Street Seaport. We’re wandering around, towels around our faces like some post-apocalyptic version of TE Lawrence and The Shadow trekking across the Nafud, or Paul and Jessica across Arakis in “Dune”. We looked back where the Twin Towers had been…the same two towers CJ and I came through every day from the PATH (she’s from North NJ)…the same two towers that had dominated the skyline since we were children (we’re both 40, born a month apart). There was nothing. Absolutely nothing…except for a huge black cloud where those beautiful towers once stood gleaming in the sunshine. It was as if you used a photo program on your PC, highlighted the Towers, deleted the image and filled the blank area with smoke. It hurt to breathe (and I’m a smoker, so I can just IMAGINE what a non-smoker would have felt). The dust stung your eyes and skin. It was raining dust…a horrible snowfall on a late summer day…a snowfall that contained pieces of building, asbestos, paper, jet fuel, and God only know what else. I was reminded of Good Friday for some reason… We finally got to the River, and began to follow the exodus uptown toward God knows where. All CJ and I knew was that we had heard there were ferries still running to NJ (the SI Ferry was shut down at this point, so my first plan was abandoned) and we had to catch one. The air was clear, and I decided I REALLY needed a cigarette at this point (NOTE: A martini was my first choice, but the bars were closed). I offered one to CJ…who hasn’t had a cig in 10 years…she took it, we lit up and moved on.

CATHARSIS VII: Dorothy and The Scarecrow

EAST RIVER ESPLANADE: Approx. 12:30 PM
I’m thoroughly convinced that The Universe has a sense of humor. CJ and I stop and look out at the river just below the Brooklyn Bridge. We can see hundreds of people walking across the Bridge to Brooklyn, the same for the Manhattan Bridge in the distance. It’s actually a beautiful day; there are no clouds in the sky…there are people just sitting on benches on the esplanade looking out at the water…some are fishing…some are making out. Order amidst chaos. We had just come from chaos into one moment of perfect beauty. I think to myself that this is really a beautiful day, and I imagine myself at the Shore or in my backyard with my kids…and then it hits me… …No beach to walk on unless I get home. No backyard and no kids and wife unless I get home…and God only knows what else happens on this day. Snap back to reality…we’ve got to get home. CJ and I meet a Police officer who says ferries are leaving from Pier 11 for NJ and directs us Uptown. Just a slight problem…Pier 11 is just South of us a few blocks, so CJ and I are headed in the wrong direction. Like I said, the Universe has a sense of humor…

SOMEWHERE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE: Approx., 1:00 PM
CJ and I have walked for a while. I’m still carrying the laptop and briefcase, and I really can’t feel the pain in my knee yet, but at least my lip has stopped bleeding. Needless to say, both my shoulders are killing me. We walk around trying to find Pier 11, just Dorothy and the Scarecrow trying to find Oz. We walk through neighborhoods that we would never walk through regularly, and people are coming up to us and asking if we are OK (we’re covered in dust at this point). They give us water and comfort. We see others helping people…a woman in a wheelchair giving directions and a bottle of water to two people…four people hugging in the middle of a street glad to find each other…Police Officers with their arms around people offering them comfort as well as direction. I realize at this point what my Dad always said about the blackout of 1964 (he was trapped in the subway) that New Yorkers are people who put all differences aside when in a crisis. We finally find a cop who points us in the right direction…we head back downtown.

CATHARSIS VIII: Just Click Your Heels Three Times…

PIER 11, New York, NY: Approx. 2:00 PM
We found OZ. No emerald city here, just a bunch of ferries that were going back to New Jersey. CJ and I parted company here. She headed back to Jersey City and one of the few remaining trains that were running out of Hoboken. I got on a high-speed ferry bound for the Highlands on the Jersey Shore, about 10 miles northeast from my house. I decided I’d worry about how to get home from there…I’d walk if I had to. The Police search our bags before we get on… The ferry is VERY comfortable, complete with bar that is, unfortunately closed…it costs approx. $18 each way, about twice my cost for the trains (which were NOT running at this time), but they were ferrying everyone at no cost. They gave us water, and there were two clergymen on the boat, a Catholic Priest and a Minister, both Chaplains of the Highlands Fire Department. A call comes over the loudspeaker asking for 50 volunteers to take the next boat. People get up and leave, willingly with no problems. I see the Priest and yell out, “Father, are you riding this boat?” He says yes. I decide to stay.

NY HARBOR, Approx. 2:20 PM
The boat leaves, and the Scarecrow decides to look back at the Emerald City. The Towers are gone. The Black Void is still there. The Scarecrow loses what Brains he had left and breaks down. Like the Towers, I’ve just crumbled into a pile of rubble.

IN TRANSIT THROUGH NY HARBOR AND THE ATLANTIC: The Minister sees me and comes over to talk. He was in Viet Nam for two tours of duty. I tell him what I’m feeling, and he tells me what happened to him. He’s describing what I’m feeling to a “T”. I’m amazed that someone else can describe what I feel…and realize just how fragile we really are as humans…and I also realize at this point, I’m not the same person who woke up that morning. We both pray publicly. It is my first time praying in public since I was 14. Like I said, the Universe has one hell of a sense of humor.

CATHARSIS IX: …And Say ‘There’s No Place Like Home’

HIGHLANDS, New Jersey Approx. 3:00 PM
We arrive in New Jersey The Minister walks me off the boat and asks if he can do anything else, and I tell him he did more for me than anyone in a very long time. I follow the crowd off the gangplank. We are told that we will have to present ID. We are also told that if we are covered in dust we will have to be decontaminated. I am told to go to the “left” line. My belongings are put in a bag; my laptop and briefcase are scrubbed by men in isolation suits by hand. I am told to stand forward a man with a fire hose that then proceeds to spray water on me from head to toe. As he is doing this, I can see the NYC skyline in the background. What two gleaming towers, had once dominated, was now dominated by a huge cloud of smoke and a gaping hole where the towers should be. I was told to turn around so they can spray my front. They do so…and I have been baptized into the New World. I’m handed my belongings, and a Police Officer takes my statement as he was informed that I was in the WTC when the first plane hits. It’s the second time that day that I’ve told my story…but this time more emotions are coming out…and I find I cannot look anyone in the eyes when I talk to them… I’m directed toward a bunch of vans, busses, and private cars where I’m told that someone would drive me home. I walk slowly, drenched…laptop and briefcase still present…away from the water and toward a parking lot. All I can do is stare straight ahead and make no eye contact with anyone. I feel like I’m there (here) but somewhere else. A woman named Doreen asks me where I’m going, and I tell her. She says she volunteered to give rides to people, and really has nothing to do…mainly because she was just laid off from Nike the day before. She offers me her cell phone to call my wife…it’s the first time we’ve spoken my phone call in the morning. I tell her I’m coming home in a few minutes. Doreen assures her I’m shaken, but OK. We drive off to my home.

CATHARSIS X: Who Says You Can’t Go Home Again?

We arrive at my house…and I run to my wife (holding our month-old daughter) and my 4 year old daughter, Katie. Everything comes back to me in a big rush…I break down. We all thank Doreen, and I give her a big hug goodbye. In the next few hours, I try and explain things to my wife…and some of them I can…most of them I cannot. We call my doctor who tells me to go to the ER at the Local Hospital for a chest x-ray and some tests…apparently the stuff I was exposed to may have contained asbestos…and God only knows what else. While getting tested, they had me speak to a Psychologist…just like others who were coming in. I told my story the best I could, and she was a HUGE help for my family and me. I needed to talk and I did…and I realized that there is a lot I still have to deal with.

CHARTHIS XI: Phoenix Uncertain

I’m hanging in there as best as I can…and for the past five hours, I’ve been spilling my guts out for those of you I know, and those of you I do not. This has been my story, and there are thousands of others such as I. I mentioned before that I am not the same person I was when I woke up on Tuesday. Quite frankly, I’m not sure who the hell I am anymore…but these things I do know: *I am a Father of two beautiful girls *I am a loving husband of, quite simply, the most amazing woman on the planet AND THOSE THINGS ARE THE ONLY THINGS THAT ARE MY LIFE! Please…just take the time to hug your kids, wife, partner, loved ones…NEVER take them for granted! Hold on to your friends and keep them close…chances are that this has touched us all in one way or another.

We have all been transformed in one way or another by this event. We are all filled with a plethora of emotions…I certainly know I am.

Let us work together to seek justice for those who have been killed or injured. Let us offer a hand to those who need it, whether or not they have been there first hand. Let us all show the strength of humanity and compassion that we are all capable of. Let us rebuild our city, our nation, and our fragile planet.

Let us go forward with one voice that says we shall never allow this to ever happen again.

God Bless You, Your Families, The United States Of America, and our Beloved Planet.

Kenneth Austin Walsh- BORN: Mar 14, 1961 DIED: Sept 11, 2001 REBORN: Sept 11, 2001

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I can look back at 9/11 and understand part of the Universe’s reason behind making me go through what I had (outside of some very nasty karma I must have generated in a previous lifetime): the person I could have become after I had graduated college and before I became firmly entrenched in the grips of Corporate America was allowed to take root again over the past few years the one who had the inquisitive soul and spiritual nature was allowed back into me once again.  I am still exploring what for me is still foreign territory yet so familiar.   I’m writing a book about the past ten years of my life (I’ve been doing that for years, but now I have a new sense of purpose with which to do so: I have more pieces of the puzzle and those happen to be the ones I need to write what I have to)…and I am also writing about what has been revealed to me through grace and redemption, and what I see as being necessary for our race to achieve its rightful place in the universe: Human Beings being Human; not as we have done most recently and been incredibly shortsighted spiritually challenged creatures who cannot live in harmony with the Planet let alone with each other.

Someone had read something I posted in a political discussion on Facebook and wrote back, “This is why you were born: to be Witness and Warrior”.  That kind of blew me away because perhaps that is my purpose in life; after going through so much and understanding coming from my own experience medical condition, perhaps I can now go on to fulfill whatever I was placed here to do.  After all, there has to be a purpose, because I should have been dead many times over already in my life.  Perhaps some things that I thought were permanent in my life were only transitory to get me to where I am now.  Perhaps even though I love and long for those parts of my life, I have to leave them behind in order to fulfill my purpose, which I am gradually believing to be to somehow help this planet and those who live on it live in harmony with each other…and it doesn’t have to be a great big role in the grand scheme of things either.  Perhaps it is just as simple as a one off book and raising my two girls to become on their own the agents of change that I could not become…or to exceed my own efforts and go on to even greater things themselves.  I always joke with my oldest daughter Kate how I’ll be holding the Bible as she is sworn in as this country’s first woman Chief Justice of the Supreme Court…I’ll be 92 and in a wheelchair and my grandchildren will be holding the book under my shaking hands as I see her sworn in.  Then I’ll drop dead at the reception.  Or perhaps my daughter Grace will thank me in her speech after winning her Tony Award for best actress in a play…perhaps even one I wrote a decade or two earlier with that part in mind for her eventually. 

Or perhaps History will once again come calling and take me along, swept by the tide that I cannot swim against and I will find myself in the position I used to find myself in quite frequently in my youth: as a fighter for the oppressed with righteous indignation at those that dare to tear down the human spirit and the human road toward greatness.  I am not only good with a word, I am good at a speech…I just have to get past this little thing called PTSD that prevents me from being in large gatherings…. but perhaps the Warrior will find a way to do that.

I used to have a lot of Survivor’s Guilt, and I still do from time to time.  I have a lot of regrets, but I regret nothing at the same time.  It has brought me to this point in time; this moment where I now write these words confident in the fact that The Universe always unfolds, as it should.  I am a very different person now than I was 10 years ago and in many ways a better person.  I have had my convictions tested and I have won almost every time, especially when it comes to morality.  In the face of the ultimate betrayal, I still maintain my own sense of self worth and a core principle: when you take an oath, you honor it.  Good men and women keep their word; it is their bond.  There is no crime in admitting that you cannot give your word; the crime is in giving it and reneging on it.  That is the greatest crime of all.

Because whoever you are, wherever you may be; if you cannot stay true to yourself then you cannot stay true to others.  The First Responders on 9/11 were true to themselves; the guy just going to work who survived then and is now dying because of the toxins in the air was true to himself; the mother watching on TV and was horrified at what she was watching in horror at the site of those beautiful towers on that day was true to herself wondering where her husband was in that rubble all the while holding her children close by.  Our soldiers are always true to themselves.  They are the truest of all, because those warriors have sworn to protect us, at the peril and sacrifice of their own life to heed the calling of the life of a soldier.  They or we may not agree with a mission’s purpose, but they have a responsibility…they have taken an oath and they must fulfill it.

Just as I must now be true and write my account at length in a book along with what I believe in now.  Just as I will be true and raise my daughters no matter what the cost; my life for theirs, always.  And I will accept and embrace the change that is coming to us all but unlike that uncertain phoenix of ten years ago; this phoenix has a purpose now.

And I am flying upon the winds that will carry me forever onward toward my destiny…like it or not, it is what I am and what I am here to do.  For I am indeed Witness and Warrior…and I will accept the role I can now undertake with the full understanding of what I must do even at the cost of my own life.  For I would much rather live my life with a purpose than live it with none at all…because that is not life.  That is existence. 

I am alive…and I am thankful and I embrace that…and I am scared to death at the prospect at the same time.

“For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy

“Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.” – Harlan Ellison    

This piece is for…

My daughters Kathryn Rose and Grace Anne: you are and always will be the center of my Universe and my love.  I tried my best in those early years, and I will try harder to be the father you can be proud of

My dear friend Amy: who first showed me that love was possible in an empty heart and magic is real

My best friend TC, who has always been there closer than a brother to me; the embodiment of friendship

My dear friend Rose: you are the sister I never had and half of my soul.  One of these lifetimes you and I will get it right…

My late Uncle Frank: who taught me about humanity and what it is to be human…I miss your life so much I cannot tell you…

For all of you who became my friends on Facebook: we started out as strangers, and now we are travelers together (like it or not, LOL).  Thanks for reaching out to me and allowing me to ask you for your friendship and guidance…

For Pamela: who walks on a path that I once did uncertain of a destination. Don’t worry, the Universe will show you the way and guide and protect you…and thank you for bringing me to where I had to go without even knowing that you had done so.  You are a very special person, and some lucky guy will find themselves with a wonderful and beautiful woman inside and out…and an incredibly determined one at that!  (Don’t mess with Texas, LOL)

My brother Steve: walk on the path, brother…you are close, so very close…but need to see the forest through the trees.  You must give up what you don’t really need in order to get what you do…

And finally to my wife Tess, who saved my sorry ass for you guys to read my words and be a father to my children.  And change my life in ways that I cannot even begin to put into words.  Like it or not, I still love you.  I’ll still walk with you if you will have me.

All That Was, and All That Is

This is the start of a week of annual hell for me.  It usually starts with little things in August, like the way the sun is at a certain angle, or the way a sky looks on a perfect say.  A particular shade of blue.  Then comes the disruption of a low flying airliner if they shift air traffic (not normally over our town at all) and I get subjected to a lot of planes.  Sometimes I get more sensitive to sounds than I normally am already, but loud noises will make me crawl out of my skin.  And then the depression starts in earnest around the first of September.  Then I know I have 11 more days of a gradual feeling of extreme unease, that is sometimes met with complete calm on the 11^th or panic.  It’s either serenity or terror.  It’s varied wildly over the past 10 years.

The best and most rewarding one of these horrid anniversaries was finally speaking with my first love on this particular day.  We had gotten in contact through Facebook, and we had been writing for a few months.  We kind of left things hanging the last time we saw each other in 1988, very unresolved.  There were things on her end that needed closure as well as mine.  But that particular September 11^th was the first one that my wife wasn’t home; she had to be in work.  She ALWAYS took off on the 11^th, except for this one very rainy day.  And in the morning of that dark and rainy day, the phone rang, and it was my friend…very unexpected and calling me to see how I was feeling.

We talked for close to two hours that day (because if you think things get going and don’t stop once I start chatting away, you should see what happens when the two of us talk or were in the same room when we were at college together, LOL).  We played catch up on how our lives went, a lot of “what ifs”, some closure, and a whole lot about our kids.  Boy, could we talk about our kids and how much we loved them, what they were doing in school or music lessons.  Inevitably, we still write or talk about the kids mostly, but once in a while another “what if” creeps in and we talk about that a little more.  We always talk about where we are now, and perhaps lend support when needed, or encouragement, but that day was the first time we had spoken in well over twenty years.  And it was something I desperately needed.  Not that either one of us had any designs on meeting up somewhere or anything like that (no matter how good or bad our lives are we are both very moral people)…that was never the case at all.  Even in any letter we wrote previous (or subsequent) to this.  But to finally hear her voice after twenty years made my heart skip a notch or two, I will be honest about that.  You never ever forget the first person outside your family or friends that you first fell in love with on your own.  The first person you truly and honestly could make a conscious and adult decision (even at age 19 in my case) that something inside that is you relates to something inside of someone else on a higher level.  I don’t think there is a person alive today who can say otherwise.  (I know the exact moment too: we were in the campus bar having a bar hanging out and Steven Stills’ “Love The One You’re With” came on the stereo.  I still can’t listen to that song without thinking about her).  And I can still hear the embodiment of all that she was and all that she is in that voice…and it’s such a unique voice that as a writer I am lost for words to describe its beauty.

She’s probably reading this now, and I cannot even begin to tell her how much that first phone call meant.  We were back in each other’s lives, on the periphery, very much as friends (always, always as good friends!)…but in our own little worlds once more.  And on a day when my wife wasn’t there (and me being blissfully ignorant about the extent- but very much aware- of the damage I had caused in my marriage at the time), there was someone on the line who was there when I needed her more than at any time I ever did in my life.  And not only that, got a chance to answer some questions and ask a few and get some answers of my own

And a day that is usually reserved for sadness became one of great joy and beauty.

On a day where I was usually in a funk (and the weather wasn’t helping matters on that particular 11^th), I got a chance to close some gaps in my life, and close a few in hers.  And moreover, I got to get back in touch with her as a friend, but always operating on a level outside of friend that is definitely not a lover, but a friend that is more than a friend; a kindred soul who walked with me in my youth and most influential years of my life for a time; someone who shared souls with me.  Now, we’re in each other’s lives again, and I am incredibly appreciative to the Universe, Gods, or whatever for seeing that fit to happen.  I don’t quite think I have ever told her how much that alone has meant to me.  I think she knows it though.  She has to…we were always two of a kind…off in conversation that only we understood and no one else listening could even fathom if they eavesdropped.  (Too bad; they might have learned a thing or two).  If we spoke more these days as opposed to writing, it would still be the same.  But on that particular day that is when we were allowed to be on the same trail once again, not necessarily together and not necessarily apart.

And for a few hours, I was allowed to become who I was as a youth before my soul became corrupted by Corporate America and any hopes of a spiritual or academic path vanished (and what I was like before September 11^th but older and hopefully a bit wiser).  I was allowed to walk this path with her once again.  Two old friends playing twenty years of catch up in two hours, gradually asking questions that needed answers as things went on, and one moment of forgiveness on my part that wasn’t even necessary.  I could never ever hold a grudge against her; she is one of the few people in my life outside of my daughters that I can say that about.  But the question I had asked had the answer just as I expected and I was relieved at that.  Two young and scared kids totally into something that was always intense no matter how many times we were in or out of our lives over an eight-year period.  It was like nothing before or since for either of us; beautiful and frightening at the same time.  It was always inexplicable magic; phenomena and the two of us.  The Universe moved for us, always…it was as if we were destined to be together and apart at the same time…and that is exactly what happened for a very long time.  Together and apart, but never alone because we always knew that as long as the other was out there somewhere in this crazy world that magic was not a thing of dreams, but real.  And we can both testify to that.

We’ve talked several times since that first phone call.  Our kids are always a prime subject as I previously said; we’re both extremely protective and aware of our role in shaping their young souls into something unique that perhaps they will find the key on their own (which is how it is supposed to be done) and unlock their own magic.  And they too will find what we had for one brief and shining moment in time with each other…pure and undying love and understanding.  It’s something that is completely, totally, and without question a sharing of their soul with another human being that they choose.

And while we did not choose each other for marriage and lost contact for a long time, we attained a level of understanding of another few in this world can ever obtain or imagine.  We certainly found what clicked with our current partners, as they are the mother or father or our respective children.  We have very different lives, but we have very similar ones (usually as chief cook, psychologist, and chauffeur to the kids).  Her husband works a good job, as does my wife; and we’re the keepers of the fort, she has a part time job and I’m on Disability and writing a novel, and more importantly we are both the shaper of souls.  I think we took from each other what was necessary to become a parent and then realize that can be and should be shared with our kids somehow when the time was right.  I usually find myself doing it and not telling them so (because they would never listen to me, LOL)…but I do indeed tell them magic is real and that all things are possible…

…even talking with the first love of your life on what is always the worst day of the year for you and getting closure, support, and a new start on how our lives are now and how we remain friends on a LOT of levels these days…but always, always, always, on that special level we had (and still have) but in much more experienced place right now.  We are where we are for a reason; but I am so grateful she is back in my life in any fashion because she is one of the most incredible, wonderful, and beautiful souls I have ever encountered on this unforgiving world.

She is also a great person to fall asleep on the subway with…we got a lovely tour of Pelham Bay Park that night/early morning, LOL.  It’s also the moment that changed our lives and moved us in the direction we are at now; the places we are at in our lives.  Like it or not, things might have been a bit different if we had listened to Petula Clark’ and not sleep in the subway.  But I know she wouldn’t change a thing nor would I…because it is where we belong at this place and at this moment in time.

And we are still allowed to be in each other’s lives, and that is one of the most positive and beautiful things in my life, and this time I hope we never leave each other again.  Thank you old friend for all the fond memories you evoke in me, your guidance and friendship, and allowing me to remember what I was like and who I really am.

And thank you for a phone call that saved me on a day where I was so very lost, but I found you once again.

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel’s end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!’
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider lov’d not speed being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.

-William Shakespeare Sonnet 50

Speed Karma

“I am thoroughly convinced that I am paying off karma at a vastly accelerated rate.” – Cdr Susan Ivonova from “Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczinski, writer

Ok, here’s where my life takes one of its absolutely incredible twists and turns; where the roller coaster goes flying off the rails or where the thing that could never possibly happen in a million years does.  And it happens to YOU.  Come to think of it, stuff like this always seemed to happen to me throughout my life anyway.  Perfect example: Back in 1980, I wanted to see one of my favorite musicians, Bill Bruford, and his jazz fusion group that were playing at the late lamented Bottom Line in Greenwich Village.  I had planned on going to either the early or late show…no difference to me; and I was walking with my then girlfriend from the subway toward the nightclub just about a two block walk from the subway station.  As we exit the stairwell, the guy in a mad dash zips past us on roller blades, almost knocking my girlfriend to the ground (the is was era of girls wearing pumps for everything and every outfit; so she almost broke her neck tripping.  Caught her just in time).  Being a Staten Island guy at the time (yeah, I grew up there but I was born and raised for 5 years in Brooklyn..so that’s my hometown, not that horrid place), I shouted some choice epithets in his general direction, made sure Caroline was OK, and we continued on our way.  One go no less than one more block and this guys cuts us off again, and I’m ready to take his head off at this point because he was dangerously Blading through the streets on what was a beautiful and unusually cool August day.  Again, i hurled some choice words his way, and he disappears.

A few minutes later we get to the Box Office, and as we get there, I see Rollerboy jetting off into the distance (probably having bought tickets for Tom Petty or The Village People).  I nicely ask the gentleman for two tickets to see Bruford that evening, either show will do fine.  I was then informed that Rollerboy had just bought out the last 8 tickets for BOTH shows.  With no show to go to, we then spent the better part of the afternoon drinking and the better part of the evening engaged in more pleasurable pursuits (you can do this when you’re 19).  But what were the odds of that happening?  A guy on rollerblades beating me out for the last tickets to the show I wanted to see…and while Bruford was popular among jazz-rock and progressive rock aficionados, it wasn’t the hot ticket that night.  I mean, beat me out on foot…beat me out running to the box office…but beat me on the way there on ROLLERBLADES?  That could only happen to me.

Same thing twenty one years later when I was caught in the WTC during the 9/11 attacks.  Then this past week, the East Coast gets hit with an EARTHQUAKE.  A fucking earthquake!  5.8 Richter that had people in California laughing at us because they have those for breakfast every morning.  Oh, and this happened just shortly before my consult with my cardiologist…nice timing, huh?  And now comes the piece de resistance: the hurricane of this young century and one of the worst ever seen in over 100 years heading our way.  So let’s do the math together: Earthquake, hurricane, and the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 all happening with a couple of weeks of each other.  I’m always a bit of a basket case this time of year anyway because of the 9/11 remembrances.  And of course this year will be bigger than all of them.

Can you say “xanax”?  Sure you can…I like the way you say “xanax” (Could you imagine Mister Rogers saying that?  Oh, that would be hilarious).  This only goes to prove that it’s 3 am, I’m delirious, nervous, and am getting ready for a lot of unpleasant things I have to do tomorrow.  I just thought a bit of humor before I eventually have to go silent because we will most assuredly lose power (and that should be even more fun!) might put a smile on someone’s face in the crosshairs of this monster called Irene.  So I guess I am going to be joined as one with the universe faster than I anticipated, because of all the crazy things that are happening to me lately.  But all I keep asking myself is what the hell did I do in a former life to deserve this?  Most especially, this hurricane called Irene…

She should be called Irony.

“Goodnight, Irene…Irene Goodnight!” – popular song from the Dark Ages, LOL.

An Observer Of The Human Condition

Today I received my signed copy of “Brain Movies” by Harlan Ellison (also signed by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczinski) in the mail, and I couldn’t have been more ecstatic.  Here was a collection of ORIGINAL  scripts, scanned from the original documents written on Harlan’s old Olympia Typewriter (he still uses an Olympia Electric for his work), with all the notations, deletions, notes in the margin.  It was a brilliant look into the creative process of the world’s most awarded writer (and hands down my favorite author of all time and my personal hero).  It was a look into what makes a writer great, and what makes the man tick…and what makes him tock.  It was a full and beautiful view of some of the best scripts ever written for “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, and two from “The Outer Limits” (among others).  It was my own personal gold…it was something that gave this humble writer a few short moments of joy in his day and in his life.

As I was looking at what were some rather interesting videos of Harlan on You Tube, the thought occurred to me that the very reason why I connect with him so much is the fact that he is an observer of the human condition.  So am I.  He is one angry at the world son of a bitch, and so am I.  He doesn’t give a damn what people think, where he is or who he’s with, if he has an opinion it’s going to be out there regardless of its appropriateness for the occasion.  That’s me too.  Once when I was watching the great documentary about him called, “Dreams With Sharp Teeth”, Harlan was on a rant and my daughter who was on the computer nearby said, “Dad, he sounds just like you”.  Needless to say, I took that as a badge of honor.  My wife has always said he and I would get along like a house on fire and maybe one of these days I’ll get a chance to meet him where he’s not behind a table and I’m waiting as a fan to get my head ripped off by him.  Perhaps I can meet him on a street, shake his hand, and simply say that I enjoy his work and walk away.  (As a native New Yorker, that’s kind of how we do things; it’s rare we kiss anyone’s ass unless its Anna Kornikova’s and I’d do a hell of a lot more than kiss her ass, believe me).  Better yet, perhaps one day in the next decade Gods willing he’ll still be alive and I can share a panel discussion with him having my second novel just behind me.  Or maybe we can have a pastrami on rye at Katz’ Deli on the Lower East Side after a bowl of Matzoh Ball soup washed down with a Doctor Brown’s Cream soda.    One of the things that I do is observe what the rest of humanity is doing; it’s foibles and how stupid and wonderful we can be…sometimes simultaneously.

All writers are observers of the human condition.  I don’t like what I see now politically, with the debt ceiling about to cave in on us and we get to say hello to our upstairs neighbor Mr Chang.  I don’t like the fact that I’m stuck in a marriage that is the closest thing to paying off all of your karma in one lifetime that you will ever see.  I love the fact that my kids get great joy out of a stupid insta-pool that we bought for the backyard complete with filter and ladder (4 deep and 15 round).  I love the fact I can float in that thing and fall asleep on a floating bean-bag like device like I did the other day.  I dig that I have 3 very cool cats.  People say I tend to have a pessimistic outlook .  I like to refer to it as “stark realism”; after all, the glass is neither half full nor half empty, it is simply at 50% capacity.  I state it the way it is.  I don’t sugar coat anything.  I’m blunt, but I will admit to holding back and sugar coating when the situation mandates it.  (My daughter however, is a work in progress…).  But I look at things and I write about them.  I’m writing about my life now for Christ’s sake.  I mean, you survive a terrorist attack, alcoholism, acute PTSD, Bi Polar II, and start to get yourself together when your wife suddenly decides that she’s no longer in love with you.  Not only that, she’s acting on her urges.  Now THAT my friends, is a book.  THAT my friends, is the Human Condition…

…and it’s MY Human Condition.  And sometimes it sucks, and sometimes it’s great…but it beats the alternative.  Then again, after completing all of my karma by staying in a failed and loveless marriage…the other side has got to be amazing.  But I still have a lot more work to do here.  So I’ll write, and finally get that damned book finished so I can help someone out there realize that THEY need help.  I’ll write to get my own beliefs and philosophies out there, because no one is going to do it for me.  And I’m going to try and make the second half of my life better than the first, because I deserve a little island of happiness on this sea of storms.  For I am the lookout on the mast, lashed to the ship and yelling down at the helm.  I am the one who is going to save your ass from the rocks looming ahead and my own soul in the process.

For I am an observer of the human condition.

“We walked for some time, and grew to know each other, as best as we’d allow. These are some of the high points. They lack continuity. I don’t apologize. I merely pointed it out, adding with some truth, I feel, that most liaisons lack continuity. We find ourselves in odd places at various times, and for a brief span we link our lives to others and then, our time elapsed, we move apart. Through a haze of pain occasionally, usually through a veil of memory that clings, then passes, sometimes as though we have never touched.”  – Harlan Ellison

Nightmares Dissipated And Hope Renewed

I’ve waited a few days to write this, mainly because I needed to place some things in their proper perspective and not write with the emotion of the moment.  I’ve saved those for Facebook pages and a video of my initial reaction of the incredible news of Osama Bin Laden’s death this past Sunday May 1st.  I needed time to put things into place, slot them into their proper compartments and try and write this with as much emotional detachment as I can, but somehow I know that will be impossible in a few paragraphs and most certainly by the end of this post.

For the past three nights, I’ve slept very soundly and with no nightmares for the first time in a decade.  The sense of palpable relief and that decade long “waiting to exhale moment” hit me like a ton of bricks on Sunday.  At first I broke down upon hearing the news; and I kind of figured that I would.  OBL was a man who I wished dead every moment of every day for nearly a decade.  Say what you will, call me an inhuman bastard, that I don’t practice what I preach…but I am VERY human, and as such having that bastard get a bullet (or range of bullets as they are now saying) to the head is extremely gratifying.  I can’t hide behind any pretense on that simple fact; I’m not going to get up on my Proctor and Ramble soapbox and say that we should never wish anyone dead and OBL is no exception. Well, we SHOULDN’T wish anyone dead…but OLB was always the exception to that rule.  I’m not a believer in the death penalty except in only one case: crimes against humanity; my logic being that if a person could be that powerful as to commit atrocities among so many people on this planet then they could be powerful enough to somehow break out of prison (Napoleon, anyone?) and regain  or attempt to regain their power and do it all over again.  (My preferred method for dealing with murderers is life in solitary with no parole; a living death if you will…much worse than the quick fate we offer them at the hands of the State Executioner.  Plus society is being consistent with it’s own laws).  We have seen this happen with not only Napoleon, but other tyrants throughout history who were deposed and came back to be as strong or stronger after being sprung from their prison by their followers as most assuredly OBL would have been had he been taken alive.  I strongly believe that would have been the case, and we would have had the fish we longed to catch jump back off the boat and into the sea where the odds would have been not in our favor of catching the same fish again.  Quite frankly, as much as I believe everyone deserves a fair trial…he already had his.  He admitted as much in public that he was responsible for committing not only the two attacks on the World Trade Center, but the USS Cole and other attacks.  That is an admission of guilt, which in a court then means you are subject to the judge’s discretion in reading the law and imposing sentence.

There are 3,000 souls who were judge and jury who were screaming “Death!” from the next plane of existence.  There were the families of the dead who said the same thing; and then there were those of us who were witness to one of the worst crimes in Human History whose lives (and that of our own families) were irrevocably changed who wanted this man dead. There was no cries for mercy from anyone that I knew of.  In fact, I always said if I could have been allowed to slit the man’s throat with a scimitar myself I would gladly do it…no matter how much bad karma it cost me.  I have been in Hell for the past ten years: acute PTSD, alcoholism gone unmitigated and even enhanced as a result of 9/11 and a couple of breakdowns along the way, plus a diagnosis of Bipolar II at age 43 which pretty much ended my chances of living normally or having a career in my former field.  My children barely got to know their father’s true self; it would appear from time to time but it was always buried under this cloud and fog of 9/11.  My oldest will be 14 this coming Saturday and she remembers very little (much to my surprise when I asked her) of what I was like before 9/11.  My youngest, born 30 days before the attacks NEVER got a chance to know me as I was…the good part of who I was, anyway.  The guy who was fun, funny, and liked a good time.  The guy who was responsible.  The guy who was a good dad and starting to become a very good one as I started to grow up a bit and settle into my role as father and husband and embrace it more than I ever had previously.  My wife got to see the man she married vanish to be replaced by this other being who she didn’t want to know at all anymore.  Or even be around for that matter.  As much as I suffered over the past ten years, my family suffered even more I think.  There was no refuge for them; there was no peace for me…we were all caught in a prison built brick by brick by my decline with a foundation laid by one Osama Bin Laden.

And now, he is gone…body so trashed by American SEAL’s bullets that not even Don Corlione’s favorite undertaker could fix it.  Sonny looked a hell of a lot better than Osama did, hence no photos being released of the body.  So after they scraped the bastard off the walls and the floor, DNA tested and compared certain records unique to him to ensure his identity, they put what was left of him together and prepared it for a proper burial at sea (where no shrines to martyrdom could be built)…which was more than we could say than he did for 3,000 people who died on 9/11.  No stone was left unturned to ensure proper Muslim burial, and they were placed in that body bag and sent along with the vile creature to the bottom of the Arabian Sea where it shall swim with the fishes and have no one but perhaps Luca Brazzi to chat with.

Somewhere between those bullets being fired and the news breaking on Sunday Night, I was starting to write a post here about unfinished business and promises unfulfilled.  I go about 800 words in when i stopped for some reason…something told me to wait.  A few hours later, my own personal demon was gone.  And somewhere in there part of my soul came back.  Over the past few days, I’ve been finding things funny that I never would have laughed at a week ago…things that are actually funny that is.  In fact, my youngest said something extremely funny yesterday and I laughed deeply and hysterically.  She looked at me and said, “Daddy, I never heard you laugh”.  Imagine that…your child saying that she never heard you do the simplest of emotions to express joy.  “Of course you have, Grace” I said…and she said, “Not like that!”  You know, she was right because in retrospect my laughs were never that hard for a decade.  My joy was never there even when I felt a little bit…it was always forced.  But somehow, I’m getting that back…and it came very naturally and through the simple joke (very clever and Irish wit entwined) thanks to a 9 year old.  I’ve been hugging my kids like crazy the past two days, because I feel like they have not had their father…their REAL father…around them in a very, very long time.  My wife and I still have work to do on a very fractured marriage thanks to the stresses of the past ten years and the non-person I had become.  But slowly and surely, it’s starting to germinate in me like a seed in the spring…and how appropriate that OBL’s end was on Beltane, the Pagan spring festival.  It was also on the first anniversary of my father’s death, a relationship that was always rocky where I had many regrets and in many ways I was starting to become that which I rebelled against and resented.  In the midst of my melancholy and  pensiveness came this incredible news…and somehow some new light was being shed on my own father’s relationship with me because of what he had to go through in the Korean War (which was far more extensive than I ever could have imagined).

Somehow, slowly and surely I plan on taking that which was best in me before 9/11 and try and reconcile it with who I am now.  I’ve had a lot of revelations about myself and my place in this world and the state of humanity  because I’ve had plenty of time to ruminate hid away from the rest of humanity in a darkened basement den…because I was not only afraid of my own shadow, I was afraid of the world…

…and somehow, I am no longer afraid of sunlight.

“We don’t have to live in a world 
Where we give bad names to beautiful things 
We should live in a beautiful world 
We should give beautiful a second chance

And the leaves fall from red to brown 
To be trodden down 
Trodden down 
And the leaves turn green to red to brown 
Fall to the ground 
And get kicked around

You strong enough to be 
Have you the courage to be 
Have you the faith to be 
Honest enough to stay 
Don’t have to be the same 
Don’t have to be this way 
C’mon and sign your name 
You wild enough to remain beautiful? 
Beautiful”

-lyrics by Steve Hogarth  from the song, “Beautiful” by Marillion

Temporal Remberance Amidst The Ashes

I no longer mark the passage of time by New Year’s Day.  Nor do I mark it by my birthday; but rather on this day, September 11th.

On September 11th 2001, I was coming up from the PATH train when the first plane struck the North Tower just as I reached the top of the escalator.  The next few hours would change my life forever, along with everyone else in this nation and in the rest of the world.  For the past nine years, I have struggled with acute Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, alcoholism, bi-polar disorder (which was diagnosed while I was in treatment for PTSD), and a degenerative spinal column.  I have been tested for leukemia.   My children have been affected because they have gone through the past nine years with a father who is still struggling to stay healthy and to find some type of spiritual order amidst the chaos.  My wife has been incredible as a mother and a wife during this time, and I don’t think that anyone has quite addressed how she feels or what she has been going through; much like any of the spouses of those involved in 9/11.  They too are the forgotten ones, along with those who continued to work at their jobs in the Financial District as the steel continued to melt and the air was still filled with the ashes of the dead…months and years later.  While it is proper to acknowledge the sacrifice and heroism of Firefighters, Police Officers, and First Responders…the forgotten are those who were simply going to work one day and had their entire world crumble around them.  They have suffered publicly and privately with a hell that no one could understand unless you were there.

Unless you were there…

There are times when you seek out history, and other times history seeks you out to become a part of its temporal fabric forever.  I was there at the dawning of this new age; an age that I cannot say is either good nor bad.  It simply is.  It is what we are now; what we as a species need to understand is what we will become in the future.  Will we be the voice of reason and love or the voice of hatred and intolerance of the past few weeks?  Do we seek to blame others, or do we look inward and somehow realize that the only way…the ONLY way those 3,000 souls who perished on that day can be honored properly is not with a memorial.  Not with a plaque.  Not with a public ceremony once a year to once again mark the passage of time…but with an understanding of just what truly happened on that horrible day.  It is not about vengeance, it is not about hatred, it is not about conquest of one religion over another.  It is about the Human Race waking up and realizing that we are all truly brothers and sisters, despite the hatred espoused by some.  It is about all of us waking up and realizing that if we don’t have each other, who do we have?

Every year on my blog (here and on previous sites) I post this reproduction of a piece I wrote a few days after the events of that Tuesday.  I was still struggling to make sense out of it…or anything else for that matter.  It has been used by a few professors in their classes (with my permission, of course).  It resides in the Library of Congress as part of the documents that were submitted by people to tell their personal stories of that day.  Every year I put this out there in the hope that another generation will read it and see for themselves just what happened and in the hopes that they may learn from history.  It is also for you who could not possibly understand to be there.  The images on television and in countless documentaries are vivid, but not as vivid as they remain in my own head and my own heart…

———Phoenix Uncertain: Originally written on Thursday, September 13, 2001—————-

CATHARSIS I: The Road to Damascus

I need to write all of this down right now, while the smells, sounds, and experiences of the past few days are fresh in my mind. I also need to do this now because I’ve gotten some clarity in the past few hours and I don’t know how long that will last for. I have alternated between disbelief, sorrow, confusion, and anger…and sometimes all of these simultaneously. On Tuesday, the man I was ceased to exist. The light has been extinguished from my eyes. I’ve tried to explain things to my wife and broke down every time. I cannot even begin to explain to my daughter Katie how lucky she is to have her Daddy around, nor can I explain to her why her Daddy screams in his sleep or why he shakes for no reason. I cannot explain to her why every time I head a loud sound or bang, I practically jump out of my skin. All I can do is try and take the medication that keeps me normalized and try and make some sort of sense of the whole thing. Now that I’ve just popped a “happy pill”, I’ve got 8 hours to write this all down, before I descend into my own abyss once again. In the past 72 hours, I have witnessed events that I never thought I would see with my own eyes. What you are seeing on your television is absolutely nothing…and I do mean NOTHING…like it actually was to be there. I keep telling myself that something or someone must have had a greater plan for me, and that is why I am alive today instead of being buried under a ton of rubble. Perhaps that plan just to write this document of my experience to share with others so that they may carry on the memory of those who survived like myself, and the memory of those who were lost. Perhaps it is to share with you that amidst all of the evil, I witnessed some of the finest moments of compassion and humanity that I have ever seen…an affirmation of a belief that I have always held: that we have greatness inside all of us. Perhaps it is about the redemption of my own soul, for like Saul on the way to Damascus, I’m slowly coming to the realization that my life has indeed reached a turning point. I also know that there is no going back to the person I was, and I just have to figure out just who the hell I am now.

CATHARSIS II: Abnormal Normality

TUESDAY, September 11th, 2001: 7:22 AM, Little Silver Train Station, NJ
Kissed my wife and daughters good bye as they dropped me off at the station. Took my coffee, laptop, and briefcase…bought a copy of the NY Daily News. Thankfully since the NY Giants/Denver Broncos game ended late, I don’t have to read about how my team was defeated. Read through the paper all the while sipping my coffee on the one hour ride to Newark NJ, where I will catch the PATH Train (a subway between NJ and NY) to the World Trade Center, just 3 blocks from my office at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza.

8:20 AM, Penn Station, Newark, NJ
Board the PATH train…and actually found a seat! I consider this a good omen for the rest of the day, especially as I was lugging around a very heavy laptop PC in addition to my regular briefcase. It was for this reason that I decided NOT to listen to my CD Player today…it would be just too awkward carrying around a CD player strapped to my waist as well as a laptop and briefcase. I close my eyes to catch a few winks on the 22-minute ride into Manhattan. 8:42 AM, World Trade Center, New York, NY Leave PATH train for the ride 6 stories up a series of escalators to the street level. I decide that my laptop is sitting awkwardly on my shoulder, and that I would fix it when I reached the top of the escalators.

8:45 AM, WTC Path Square (located in the center of the WTC Complex, 1 story Below Ground, where there’s a Shopping Mall)
Reach the top of the escalator, and begin to fix my laptop. As soon as I get myself situated…something happens…a sound…something different. Sounds like a crash at first…then a low rumble…then a “whoosh” throughout the complex. People are starting to run, and once others see people running, they too scramble for the exits. At this point, I think it’s a good time to get the hell out of there, and start to run toward the exits as well. Someone, in his or her haste to get out, knocks me over. I’m falling face first toward a plate glass window in one of the shops. Somehow, I manage to contort my body so that I land on my left knee pretty hard, but my face hits the floor. I’m dazed…compose myself for a minute…and realize I have to get out no matter what just happened. My knee is killing me, but the endorphins take over, and that pain is quickly gone. I feel something warm on my chin, and realize that it’s blood. My fall knocked one of my front teeth into my lip, putting a nice gash in it. I wipe some blood away, and follow another crowd into the lower level of the Border’s bookstore, which also has an exit to the streets…it’s much less crowded, and a calmer exodus of people. I reach the street and exit into the air. There is a burning smell…I’d never smelled anything like it. There are thousands of papers falling from the sky in a quiet procession of calm amidst the chaos. A paper rain, much like one of those party favors that you might have had when you were a kid…you know, the fake champagne bottles filled with confetti. I start to walk across Church Street. I can see smoke, but because I’m so close to the tower, I can’t really see anything. I begin to walk westward toward Broadway past St Paul’s Chapel. As I walk, people are looking up at the North Tower, then looking back down at my blood stained face. I see their eyes are filled with confusion. When I reach the corner of Broadway and look up I can finally see what happened. There, at the top of a building that is approximately ¼ of a mile long is a HUGE hole…several stories in length…plumes of smoke and flame billowing higher into the air. I can only stand there, watching in disbelief as I realize that what we had all feared had probably taken place: a bomb had gone off in the World Trade Center.

CATHARSIS III: Another Ulysses

APPROX. 9:00 AM, Broadway
It’s funny how the mind operates. You know, kind of like when you see a magic trick, you can’t believe what you saw…or when your team makes a triple play…or when you witness a birth. You know you’re seeing something, but your mind sends signals that it’s just not possible, but there it is. From out of the Tower, I’m seeing debris fall…but it’s coming in very irregular intervals. Usually, debris falls in a pattern as a structure is weakened, and at the same rate of descent. This debris was sporadic, and it wasn’t just falling in a straight line from the Tower…it was arcing. I saw it happen once, twice…but on the third time, I saw what I thought was debris MOVE, I thought I saw arms move…and I realized that debris cannot move, nor could it have arms. I had just seen people throw themselves from the North Tower to escape the consuming flames. I began to shake, began to shout “No F***ing way!” and “Oh my God” at the top of my lungs. Someone came over to me and put their hand on my shoulder and asked me if I was all right. I think I said something to the effect I was, but they offered me a bottle of water and some tissues to wipe the blood off my face. I accepted and I asked if they had seen the explosion…and that’s when they told me it was a plane that had crashed into the North Tower. They also told me it was an airliner. The brain couldn’t register that one really…except for the fact that I thought it was a terrible accident, and thank God it wasn’t a bomb. Another person in the crowd came up to me and asked if I needed help getting to where I was going. I realized that my hands were trembling and couldn’t hold either the tissues or water steady and my knees felt weak. Brain kicks in again: yeah, take this guy up on his offer. It turned out he worked for my company but at another location. We began to walk toward my building, and I notice some debris along the way. About a block from my office, right in front of the Federal Reserve Building I see some debris that catches my eye: some tacky looking upholstery that looks like it came from an airline headrest. It was then that I saw a seat cushion and an armrest…THANKFULLY empty.

APROX 9:12 AM, 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza
I walk one block further south to my building, and reach the Plaza. Just as I’m about to turn to enter my building, I hear the whine of jet engines. I look down the block at the South Tower, and see a fireball engulfing the building, showering flaming debris across the skyline, arcing outward and in my general direction. There is a low, rumbling sound, very much like what I had heard earlier…a sound that grew as the flames spread and debris rained down upon Manhattan. The crowd begins to run frantically toward the east, away from the falling debris. I overhear someone say that it was another jet that collided into the South Tower. It was then I realized that this was no accident, that my greatest fears were realized: we were under attack. It was at that moment, I knew that I had to somehow survive this…get the hell out of there…and get home to my family. I had just become a modern day Ulysses.

CATHARSIS IV:The Silence before the ROAR

APPROX 9:20 AM, 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza
I’m pretty superstitious. I usually sit in the same seat for a baseball or football game if my team is winning. I never pick up a penny “tails up”, and I don’t walk under ladders. In some convoluted manner, the Universe played a trick on me, for I work on the 13th floor of my building. It never bothered me before, but on a day like Tuesday, there was just no way I was going to go up into my office…so I decided to go downstairs to the Branch to use the phone to call my wife to let her know I was OK. (A footnote here and an important one because it’s going to come into play later: The Branch is an underground structure, kind of like a rectangular “donut”. It is just below the Plaza, with a circular glass enclosure in its center containing a fountain. There is an opening at the top of this enclosure to the Plaza to let light in. From the Plaza level, there is a circular wall that allows viewing of the fountain from the Plaza, and it’s quite beautiful when viewed from inside the branch at the level of the fountain.)

Just before entering the Branch, I meet up with a co-worker who sees me and is pretty amazed at my condition at this point…I can only imagine: A deer in the headlights look accompanied by a bloody face. I try and tell him what’s happened so far. It turns out, he’s not going to his floor either…and he helps me into the Branch. Needless to say, the Branch had been closed to all but employees with ID. I also know the Branch Manager, Assistant Branch Manager and many of the staff well because I’ve worked with them directly when I was in the Branches myself. I got in there; they sat me down and got me some first aid as well as some water. I called my wife, told her I was OK and told her of what I was going to do next: try and take the Staten Island Ferry and get to either my parents or my in-laws and have them drive me home. I just wanted to get the hell off Manhattan as soon as possible, especially with the thought that there were two ¼ mile buildings a few blocks away that had the possibility of collapsing. I called my parents and told them of my intentions as well. Needless to say, I’m pretty shaken up at this point. I decide to sit a few minutes to try and relax, collect my thoughts, and move on. A woman named Maxine (who I’ve never met before) sat with me and comforted me. She also spoke with my wife during my phone call and said she was taking care of me. God Bless her…she was a BIG help. We turned on the radio to listen to the news, to see exactly what had happened, and it was just as we feared: two jet liners were hijacked and were rammed into the World Trade Center…and one other thing that hit us all like a ton of bricks…the Pentagon was also attacked the same way. Nothing was the same anymore.

CATHARSIS V: No World Order

APPROX 10:15 AM 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza
Some people talk about a “New World Order”. At this point in my life, there was definitely a New World, but anything but order. I had finally calmed down, and was about to make my way toward the Staten Island Ferry when the unthinkable happened: That ROAR happened again…that ungodly Roar that still was imprinted in my head from the last few hours… …And then I saw the debris and smoke fill the glass enclosure around the fountain. The ground shook, and we all began to rush toward the escalators that would take us to the vault sub-basements in the Plaza. We arrived down there followed by a cloud of smoke and dust…we made our way through passages that led to the underground cafeteria where security told us to go. My first thought was that my building was attacked, but something completely unexpected happened. We had just found out that one of the icons of the New York Skyline, one of the World Trade Towers had crumbled to dust…and that rubble had spread across Lower Manhattan, washing across the Plaza. We were told to stay put…it was safer here, and there was NO visibility AT ALL outside. More people started to file into the cafeteria…all of them covered in dust…stark white ghosts with terrorized eyes peering from the rubble that had been strewn onto their bodies. Among them were two people who worked in my department. I rushed up and the three of us hugged and held onto each other. We got a table in the cafeteria; got some of the water and wet rags they were handing out to help us breathe. …And we sat…for two hours…and waited for news of when we could leave the building. In the meantime, there was another dull roar in the distance…THAT ROAR… …And the other Tower had fallen. …And God only knew what the rest of the world outside looked like.

CATHARSIS VI: A Hole in the Sky

APPROX Noon, 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza
Now I know what my cat feels like when I let him out of his carrier after we bring him back from the vet. He always wants to get the hell out, and yet he steps out gingerly, unsure of what he can expect. I kind of felt that way as I exited our building after we were told to head toward the East River. I also felt like a B-Movie actor on one of those bad 50’s “Day After…” movies, the ones usually used for cannon fodder on “Mystery Science Theater 3000”. There was dust everywhere, and it looked like it was snowing in September. There had to be two inches of dust and debris on the streets as CJ (one of those guys I mentioned earlier who worked with me) and I made tracks for the South Street Seaport. We’re wandering around, towels around our faces like some post-apocalyptic version of TE Lawrence and The Shadow trekking across the Nafud, or Paul and Jessica across Arakis in “Dune”. We looked back where the Twin Towers had been…the same two towers CJ and I came through every day from the PATH (she’s from North NJ)…the same two towers that had dominated the skyline since we were children (we’re both 40, born a month apart). There was nothing. Absolutely nothing…except for a huge black cloud where those beautiful towers once stood gleaming in the sunshine. It was as if you used a photo program on your PC, highlighted the Towers, deleted the image and filled the blank area with smoke. It hurt to breathe (and I’m a smoker, so I can just IMAGINE what a non-smoker would have felt). The dust stung your eyes and skin. It was raining dust…a horrible snowfall on a late summer day…a snowfall that contained pieces of building, asbestos, paper, jet fuel, and God only know what else. I was reminded of Good Friday for some reason… We finally got to the River, and began to follow the exodus uptown toward God knows where. All CJ and I knew was that we had heard there were ferries still running to NJ (the SI Ferry was shut down at this point, so my first plan was abandoned) and we had to catch one. The air was clear, and I decided I REALLY needed a cigarette at this point (NOTE: A martini was my first choice, but the bars were closed). I offered one to CJ…who hasn’t had a cig in 10 years…she took it, we lit up and moved on.

CATHARSIS VII: Dorothy and The Scarecrow

EAST RIVER ESPLANADE: Approx. 12:30 PM
I’m thoroughly convinced that The Universe has a sense of humor. CJ and I stop and look out at the river just below the Brooklyn Bridge. We can see hundreds of people walking across the Bridge to Brooklyn, the same for the Manhattan Bridge in the distance. It’s actually a beautiful day; there are no clouds in the sky…there are people just sitting on benches on the esplanade looking out at the water…some are fishing…some are making out. Order amidst chaos. We had just come from chaos into one moment of perfect beauty. I think to myself that this is really a beautiful day, and I imagine myself at the Shore or in my backyard with my kids…and then it hits me… …No beach to walk on unless I get home. No backyard and no kids and wife unless I get home…and God only knows what else happens on this day. Snap back to reality…we’ve got to get home. CJ and I meet a Police officer who says ferries are leaving from Pier 11 for NJ and directs us Uptown. Just a slight problem…Pier 11 is just South of us a few blocks, so CJ and I are headed in the wrong direction. Like I said, the Universe has a sense of humor…

SOMEWHERE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE: Approx., 1:00 PM
CJ and I have walked for a while. I’m still carrying the laptop and briefcase, and I really can’t feel the pain in my knee yet, but at least my lip has stopped bleeding. Needless to say, both my shoulders are killing me. We walk around trying to find Pier 11, just Dorothy and the Scarecrow trying to find Oz. We walk through neighborhoods that we would never walk through regularly, and people are coming up to us and asking if we are OK (we’re covered in dust at this point). They give us water and comfort. We see others helping people…a woman in a wheelchair giving directions and a bottle of water to two people…four people hugging in the middle of a street glad to find each other…Police Officers with their arms around people offering them comfort as well as direction. I realize at this point what my Dad always said about the blackout of 1964 (he was trapped in the subway) that New Yorkers are people who put all differences aside when in a crisis. We finally find a cop who points us in the right direction…we head back downtown.

CATHARSIS VIII: Just Click Your Heels Three Times…

PIER 11, New York, NY: Approx. 2:00 PM
We found OZ. No emerald city here, just a bunch of ferries that were going back to New Jersey. CJ and I parted company here. She headed back to Jersey City and one of the few remaining trains that were running out of Hoboken. I got on a high-speed ferry bound for the Highlands on the Jersey Shore, about 10 miles northeast from my house. I decided I’d worry about how to get home from there…I’d walk if I had to. The Police search our bags before we get on… The ferry is VERY comfortable, complete with bar that is, unfortunately closed…it costs approx. $18 each way, about twice my cost for the trains (which were NOT running at this time), but they were ferrying everyone at no cost. They gave us water, and there were two clergymen on the boat, a Catholic Priest and a Minister, both Chaplains of the Highlands Fire Department. A call comes over the loudspeaker asking for 50 volunteers to take the next boat. People get up and leave, willingly with no problems. I see the Priest and yell out, “Father, are you riding this boat?” He says yes. I decide to stay.

NY HARBOR, Approx. 2:20 PM
The boat leaves, and the Scarecrow decides to look back at the Emerald City. The Towers are gone. The Black Void is still there. The Scarecrow loses what Brains he had left and breaks down. Like the Towers, I’ve just crumbled into a pile of rubble.

IN TRANSIT THROUGH NY HARBOR AND THE ATLANTIC: The Minister sees me and comes over to talk. He was in Viet Nam for two tours of duty. I tell him what I’m feeling, and he tells me what happened to him. He’s describing what I’m feeling to a “T”. I’m amazed that someone else can describe what I feel…and realize just how fragile we really are as humans…and I also realize at this point, I’m not the same person who woke up that morning. We both pray publicly. It is my first time praying in public since I was 14. Like I said, the Universe has one hell of a sense of humor.

CATHARSIS IX: …And Say ‘There’s No Place Like Home’

HIGHLANDS, New Jersey Approx. 3:00 PM
We arrive in New Jersey The Minister walks me off the boat and asks if he can do anything else, and I tell him he did more for me than anyone in a very long time. I follow the crowd off the gangplank. We are told that we will have to present ID. We are also told that if we are covered in dust we will have to be decontaminated. I am told to go to the “left” line. My belongings are put in a bag; my laptop and briefcase are scrubbed by men in isolation suits by hand. I am told to stand forward a man with a fire hose that then proceeds to spray water on me from head to toe. As he is doing this, I can see the NYC skyline in the background. What two gleaming towers, had once dominated, was now dominated by a huge cloud of smoke and a gaping hole where the towers should be. I was told to turn around so they can spray my front. They do so…and I have been baptized into the New World. I’m handed my belongings, and a Police Officer takes my statement as he was informed that I was in the WTC when the first plane hits. It’s the second time that day that I’ve told my story…but this time more emotions are coming out…and I find I cannot look anyone in the eyes when I talk to them… I’m directed toward a bunch of vans, busses, and private cars where I’m told that someone would drive me home. I walk slowly, drenched…laptop and briefcase still present…away from the water and toward a parking lot. All I can do is stare straight ahead and make no eye contact with anyone. I feel like I’m there (here) but somewhere else. A woman named Doreen asks me where I’m going, and I tell her. She says she volunteered to give rides to people, and really has nothing to do…mainly because she was just laid off from Nike the day before. She offers me her cell phone to call my wife…it’s the first time we’ve spoken my phone call in the morning. I tell her I’m coming home in a few minutes. Doreen assures her I’m shaken, but OK. We drive off to my home.

CATHARSIS X: Who Says You Can’t Go Home Again?

We arrive at my house…and I run to my wife (holding our month-old daughter) and my 4 year old daughter, Katie. Everything comes back to me in a big rush…I break down. We all thank Doreen, and I give her a big hug goodbye. In the next few hours, I try and explain things to my wife…and some of them I can…most of them I cannot. We call my doctor who tells me to go to the ER at the Local Hospital for a chest x-ray and some tests…apparently the stuff I was exposed to may have contained asbestos…and God only knows what else. While getting tested, they had me speak to a Psychologist…just like others who were coming in. I told my story the best I could, and she was a HUGE help for my family and me. I needed to talk and I did…and I realized that there is a lot I still have to deal with.

CHARTHIS XI: Phoenix Uncertain

I’m hanging in there as best as I can…and for the past five hours, I’ve been spilling my guts out for those of you I know, and those of you I do not. This has been my story, and there are thousands of others such as I. I mentioned before that I am not the same person I was when I woke up on Tuesday. Quite frankly, I’m not sure who the hell I am anymore…but these things I do know: *I am a Father of two beautiful girls *I am a loving husband of, quite simply, the most amazing woman on the planet AND THOSE THINGS ARE THE ONLY THINGS THAT ARE MY LIFE! Please…just take the time to hug your kids, wife, partner, loved ones…NEVER take them for granted! Hold on to your friends and keep them close…chances are that this has touched us all in one way or another.

We have all been transformed in one way or another by this event. We are all filled with a plethora of emotions…I certainly know I am.

Let us work together to seek justice for those who have been killed or injured. Let us offer a hand to those who need it, whether or not they have been there first hand. Let us all show the strength of humanity and compassion that we are all capable of. Let us rebuild our city, our nation, and our fragile planet.

Let us go forward with one voice that says we shall never allow this to ever happen again.

God Bless You, Your Families, The United States Of America, and our Beloved Planet.

Kenneth Austin Walsh- BORN: Mar 14, 1961 DIED: Sept 11, 2001 REBORN: Sept 11, 2001

————————————————————————————————————

For nine years this post has reached the Internet…and for nine years I hope that we learn something from the ashes of that day.  That we might have learned that this was truly a turning point in human history that requires us all to be brave, to be vigilant, to save us from the most dangerous enemy this world has known- to sacrifice our very souls if necessary…not from terrorism…

…but from ourselves.

“There are a million eyes watching the world tonight
Have we learned nothing?
Do we merit another chance?
By what grace have we earned some redemption
Ten million saviors, ten billion angels of man
Those who know that such miracles can be so
They arrive because they must go
And lead believers to bring it home”

-Todd Rundgren, “Shine”

Misplaced Amidst Chaos And Despair

I had the pleasure of dining out with my brother two nights ago.  We hadn’t done this in many years; it was just us, no wives, and no kids.  We both have similar domestic difficulties going on, and our dad passed away on May 1st…and we just needed to catch up as brothers.  We haven’t done that in years, mainly because we allow our political views to sway our opinion of the other guy way much more than they should.  As we were chatting away , one topic that I never thought would be breached was that of September 11th, 2001.  Mainly because that was the most horrible day of my life; I was just going to work on a beautiful late summer Tuesday morning…and the next thing I know I’m in the middle of a terrorist attack.  So was my brother.

We both are 9/11 Survivors.

It’s something that we never talk about.  For me, it’s uncomfortable because of the previously written about reasons: going slowly crazy and nearly drinking myself to death chief among them.  I have one hell of a bad case of PTSD as well.  For my brother it was other reasons.  He worked for the City of New York and was in a position of responsibility where information was on a “need to know” basis which he took very seriously.  So seriously in fact, that he never sought any counseling for years after 9/11.  He no longer works for the City and still will not divulge any information.  Last night, somewhere in the middle of a sentence…out of the blue…it was dropped in that he had gotten some counseling.  Not only that, but he expanded on the topic a bit to include a few philosophical statements, one of which is that no one can possibly understand the impact and the toll that had on humanity and on yourself unless you were there; much like the survivors of Oklahoma City cannot possibly express what they feel.  There is this void, this emptiness that comes with the fact of being a survivor.  There is the obvious “survivor’s guilt”…and there is this feeling of being forgotten.

While we rightly commend and mourn those brave souls who responded to the attacks, and mourn the almost 3,000 dead; those of us who just merely SURVIVED the event have now become a part of a date in history, rather than being treated as a LIVING part of that awful event.  We are not dead.  We are quite alive, thank you very much.  Some of us have started to become ill from specific types of cancer that can only be caused by radiation.  Or we have developed an obscure type of leukemia or another disease that affects the skeletal structure.  (Who the hell knew what was in that dust cloud in the days and weeks after 9/11?)  Or we have had our alcoholism escalate to new heights like mine was.  And a lot of us have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In short, you have several thousand survivors…LIVING breathing HUMAN BEINGS with families who have suffered with them.  My oldest daughter has been affected because her Daddy came back from work one day a very different man than he was when he left that morning.  I have a younger daughter who was only a month old when the attacks happened, and as a result she knows nothing of the person I used to be.  9/11 robbed me of a chance to be a better father to her than I was for her older sister.  My wife has suffered through all of this and quite frankly, our marriage is being strained by certain things that have resulted from that day.  No one gave a damn about how she reacted to watching two buildings be attacked knowing full well that I would be coming up from the PATH trains at the exact moment the first plane hit.  No one asked her how she felt…perhaps she would have been better off not having a husband coming home on that day, because there were certainly days over the past nine years I acted as if I might as well have been dead.  I was a living and breathing and walking shell of a man…and what woman could (and should) put up with that?

Now let’s think about this for a second: how many THOUSANDS of workers experienced this tragedy, this unraveling of the human spirit and creation of a condition or set of conditions that put these people AND their families through HELL because they were witness and today they live to tell about it?  How many children will grow up like mine, and what will happen to their children as a result of being exposed to the behavior of a completely dysfunctional parent created by a dysfunctional family that was anything but prior to 9/11?  How many THOUSANDS?  HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS?

And why the hell isn’t anyone standing up for us; recognizing what we went through over the past nine years…or later?  In my brother’s case, it took him several years to seek therapy; there are thousands in the same situation…and that delay just makes you more damaged as an individual. In my own case, my Psychiatrist said there was a chance of me not getting PTSD as badly as I did had it been addressed within the first six months.  I waited 14 months, until a horrible incident provoked me into going because I then knew that  there was something not quite functioning well in the brain department.  Two years later another incident happened that led to a complete breakdown…but it took years to battle back from that last one, because that was the final straw.  That’s when they also found out I was Bi-Polar.  Oh, my wife married a real winner, didn’t she?  But back then I had a career, I had a life, I had my health…and now all that has been ripped from me, no matter how hard I try; and like my brother said, you really cannot understand unless you were there.

Thanks for the flag waving, and invading a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.  Thanks for paying MILLIONS of dollars in settlements out to wives, insurance policies, continuing family health coverage…thanks most importantly for even ACKNOWLEDGING that we even exist.  We are the forgotten of 9/11; the office workers, the brokers and bankers (like myself) who had to come back for  two YEARS working  two blocks away from the WTC site of the old ruins South Tower; the cleaning people who were able to see the embers of the glowing pit for months after the disaster.  Let me be clear here, I am not looking for compensation in any way…just RECOGNITION that some of us kept the damned economy going as the fires burned and the dead were pulled from the rubble.  I want ACKNOWLEDGMENT that we exist, there are those who need to talk to other survivors (like my brother and I did, quite unexpectedly).

And I want an APOLOGY from the United States of America to every single one of its citizens that it let them down that day, that it failed to protect us.  It failed to do the most basic rule of government: protect its citizens, and on September 11th, 2001 they did a miserable job…all the while at the old Crawford ranch the report handed to the President for a photo op no less stated “Bin Laden Determined To Strike at U.S.” went unheeded and THOUSANDS of lives were impacted.

I’d like to see “9/11 Survivor’s Centers” set up for both the Pentagon and WTC attacks so that what remains of this generation of survivors, and the next two to be taken care of FULLY at no cost for physical or mental ailments.  Just simple places or groups where people can talk and meet one another.  The simple connection you feel and make inside your heart when you meet another survivor is indescribable.  They’re tracking our health (the Survivor’s who signed up for the annual survey) now, so why not just do the right thing…because it’s the American thing to do it’s the HUMAN thing to do

And FINALLY, I want every Goddamn War Veteran who has fought from 2001 until the day when we pull out of wherever we are and decide to go next (because God only knows where the elusive 7 foot Arab with a dialysis machine is)  to get the honor, respect, and outstanding treatment they deserve both physically and mentally.

It’s time you owned up, America…and I’m a Democrat saying this…THIS President should take it upon his own shoulders to do this…because it’s the right thing to do.  And the American thing to do.  And the Human thing to do.

Or else that damned Constitution isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

“[Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society” – John Locke

“The Air Is Just Fine…” Part I

I collapsed three times in one day a few months ago.

My right leg gave out on me after a searing white hot pain shot through it and my hip causing me to tear up because the pain was so bad.  And this was after I had taken pain medication for my back, which as you know (if you’ve been reading this blog regularly), has three or more degenerative discs in it.  The leg has been giving me problems on and off now for a few months but nothing major like this…I was taken completely aback by the pain and the fact that my leg no longer had any control and gave way.  A few weeks ago, I visited my orthopedist for my annual check up on nerve damage in my legs, which is where a lot of the pain is starting to make its way toward.  It showed some small issues, like the problem is getting worse (which I already knew because I could feel what was going on).  I told them what the problem was, and they said it could be from the nerve damage; but let’s wait a month to see if things were OK.  So, we waited two months because I wasn’t getting that pain any longer…until about a month ago.  This time, they ordered an MRI on my hip, and the results showed that I has bone spurs and some arthritis.  It also revealed anomalies in my bone marrow, which was something that was not new.

A few months ago, my white blood count was completely off the scale, so I had more tests done and for some reason, those blood tests came back OK with the white count within reason, but on the high end.  Still, it was normal and nothing to worry about.  Those tests were ordered because my annual MRI for my back showed that there was anomalies in my bone marrow as well.  This past one for my hip was the tipping point, and I’m scheduled for a full bone scan later this week to see if the problem is localized or widespread.  At best, there could have been something on the scan that the radiologist pointed out to cover all bases…but twice?  And worst case is leukemia.

I’ve lost some weight, and my appetite is not what it once was.  I do not really enjoy the taste of food anymore, at least until the past two days when I was pulling out all the stops for the holidays and making my specialties for the family.  I REALLY went to town eating over Christmas Eve and Day (hey, I’m Irish/Italian and we’re supposed to do that) and to be quite frank, it really felt good to be indulging in food again, because while most would be over-doing it, I was simply getting a normal appetite back where there was very little previously.  I am tired and run down a lot, but then again I’m a 48 year old stay at home dad dealing with an almost 13 year old daughter (who is allowing me to pay off karma at a vastly accelerated rate) and a precocious 8 year old girl.  I’m refereeing cat fights between our four felines (and to a degree my daughters).  Plus my sleep pattern is COMPLETELY out of sync with the rest of the world; I was always a “night owl”, but having 3 am as a regular bedtime and sometimes a 6:30 am wake-up call to get the kids off to school can be trying.  I’ll take an hour or two in the form of naps throughout the day to play “catch-up”.  And aside from the fact that I’m in constant pain because of my back (but it’s significantly alleviated by my pain medication), I feel OK.

What I have noticed (and so has my oldest daughter) is that my Bi-Polar Disorder is getting worse; that my moods are all over the scale and I’m very impossible to live with.  She said the one day her daddy “went out the door and never came back” (her exact words), and I couldn’t help but think if it was recently or on the morning of September 11th 2001 that this happened.  The body and the mind are interesting things: perhaps in some convoluted way my brain knew what was going on inside the very marrow of my bones and was in some form of revolt.  Perhaps my whole body chemestry is being thrown out of whack by the plethora of medications I’m taking…but I keep coming back to one inescapable thing, and that is the following statement by then-EPA Secretary Christie Todd-Whitman:

“We are very encouraged that the results from our monitoring of air quality and drinking water conditions in both New York and near the Pentagon show that the public in these areas is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances,” Whitman said. “Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breath and their water is safe to drink,” she added. [sic]

You know you’re in deep shit when a formal Government press release just days after the 9/11 attacks can’t even spell the word “breathe”; hence my “sic” reference.  If you’re going to initiate the biggest lie of the new century, then you think you’d use spell check.

You would think all the issues with my back are what I am on Disability for; it is not.  Acute PTSD (as the result of 9/11) and Bi-Polar Disorder are the reasons for that; the back and other things are happening to me only over the past 18 months, and it seems that every time I go back to the doctor, they notice something anomalous or new.  I cannot help but wonder if these ailments are happening to me as the result of being in the dust cloud on 9/11 or because I worked two blocks away from the wreckage of the South Tower and breathed that air every single day for another 3 years.  Or both.

After 9/11, our office was closed for about 3 weeks while they cleaned out the place and removed the dust.  We still found some when we returned to our cubicles at that time, and the smell of that horrible day lingered both inside and outside of the office for MONTHS.  You could still see the Pile burning every day for months after the attack; the twisted remains of a support of the glorious South Tower still standing for another few weeks as well.  People would develop coughs and then they would go away; allergies flared among my co-workers.  We all knew something was dreadfully wrong with the air, we could just feel it in our bones…and I have no doubt that some of us are feeling it quite literally now.

I’ve been doing research on the Net so see if anyone else is (or has) developed symptoms similar to mine.  What I am finding is that strangely enough, there is a connection between PTSD and muscular-skeletal disorders even prior to 9/11, but that those have become common in 9/11 Survivors.  In addition, every single time I look up these ailments, the word “cancer” is always used in the same article.  Almost all of these articles pertain to Rescue Workers, and in some of them there are mentions of office workers who survived having these symptoms, but they are usually buried or a footnote.  What I keep coming back to is the fact that Office Workers seems to either be one group that no one gives a damn about, or very few cases have been reported…until recently.

I have found a number of outstanding articles detailing the health issues of a lot of folks in Lower Manhattan, but as I said, almost exclusively all of the reported issues are with First Responders and the like.  The rest of us that worked, and ate, and spent prolonged exposure time down there are forgotten.  The ones who literally opened the Stock Exchange just days after the attack and while the remnants of the cloud were still there.  The ones who kept the engine of Capitalism moving…and now we are starting to drop; slowly, surely, and most definitely.  The Powers That Be (or as I like to call them the SOBICs- Sons of Bitches In Charge) have been good at keeping this quiet…but it’s almost 10 years later.  10 years of having the toxins build up and your body react.  10 years of trying to have a normal life again, only to find out that you may have gotten your life back together only to find out that you may be fatally ill.

I have no problem giving my life for my family and my country or even a total stranger; it’s almost expected of me based on my own moral compass.  I resent potentially having to do so for a lie and for perpetuating a system that enslaves the populace even more than it ever did in the form of economic and social chains of injustice.  Next time they start debating Public Health Care, ask yourself this question: why are they SO determined now to ensure that it is not single-payer, or a public option?  Why have the insurance companies gotten away with getting off the hook scott free?

Because sooner or later, there will be thousands of us who worked and lived in Lower Manhattan getting ill and dying.  Sooner or later they will not be able to keep things quiet.  Sooner or later, SOMEONE has to make a profit off all of us who die…

…and all because someone decided that the almighty dollar was more important than human life.  All because someone said, “The air is fine…”

TO BE CONTINUED…

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” -John F. Kennedy

SHOW ME THE HEALTH CARE!

For the past several weeks, you may have noticed that I haven’t been writing.  That is because I am sick.  REALLY sick.

I am currently on Disability due to Acute PTSD that was a direct result of 9/11.  I am also bi-polar.  This, you guys have all been familiar with as I write about them all the time.  I manage my life around them slowly and surely, and have also overcome alcoholism over the past three years.  That was of my own disastrous choosing, but with a lot of help and Grace and Redemption, I overcame that as well.

Years ago, I used to climb mountains…literally.  I would use ropes, hike trails, hang out on ledges…all because it was the most incredible high I ever have gotten without the aid of any drug or drink.  On one of those climbs, I injured my back and had to make an arduous trek down Mount Mansfield.  Luckily, we were near a trail that the CCC had paved out in the 30’s, and instead of going back blazing our own I slowly descended using what normal, sane individuals used to go up the mountain.  I eventually got over my injuries after lying flat on my back for a day or so and drinking lots of vodka accompanied by Tylenol #4 with codeine that the campus infirmary so graciously gave me.  The damage to two of my lower vertebrae in my spine was done, however.

Throughout my 20’s and into my 30’s, my back would give out, and I would be shuffling around like some Quasimodo for sometimes up to two weeks at a time.  The last time this occurred prior to my recent bout was in my mid-30’s, and for years nothing else happened.  No pain.  Nothing.  I thought that perhaps somehow my back had corrected itself and I was out of the woods.  Then one day last year on a late May evening, I saw stars.  Galaxies, in fact.  The pain came from nowhere, and it was more intense than ever this time…and it happened for no good reason.  It just HAPPENED.  I made the emergency call to my Doctor who called in a prescription to get through the weekend before I could see him on Monday.  Next thing I know I’m going through a set of X-Rays, and an MRI and seeing an Orthopedist.

Yup, those two discs had returned to haunt me.  We tried traction, exercise, everything over the course of the year…nothing worked.  The latest MRI showed what indicated a loss of the spongy areas that separate the vertebrae in my back in several other spots this time…in other words, my back was getting worse.  I’ve had a blood test taken, and I’m waiting for my results to be officially told to me by my Doctor (although I know that the anemia indicated doesn’t represent anything fatal like it could have).  But all of this happened, suddenly and out of the blue without warning.

It can happen to anyone, it can happen to YOU.

I’m covered under my wife’s insurance policy, and I’m also covered by Medicare because of my disability.  Had I been employed and somehow changed jobs, my new insurer could have refused to cover me for any of these conditions.  In other words, I’d be broke and suffering…just like so many Americans are.  Now, I’m just suffering; and at least I’m getting through this with a modicum of expense.  Between co-pays my office visits and drugs run about $200 a month.  That is STILL a nice chunk of change, but I estimated one time how much that would have cost me without insurance or Medicare, and I figured somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000 A MONTH.

And people say we don’t need Universal Health Care in this country?

How many others are in the same boat as I and are left untreated?  How many others are shelling out full price for services and have to choose between eating, a roof over their head, the power being on, or medicine for their ailments?  How many people in this country have absolutely no insurance and are refused care because they have none?  Why is it that the most powerful nation in the world, the richest and most generous, cannot be generous with its own people?  Follow the money, folks…it’s all about insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, and elected officials beholden to these special interests.  SHOW ME THE MONEY!

And we come to a point in this country’s history where we are at a crossroads; where we must START down the road of Universal Healthcare.  The President is asking Congress to develop a plan that would allow affordable health care for every person in this country.  Not only that, you could not be denied coverage and if necessary the government would pay for you (we do already with those who go to the ER and skip out on the bill) if you could not afford it.  A Government run plan would COMPETE with private plans…you know, like a basic capitalist principle that the Republicans and Democrats who oppose even the CHOICE of a Government option don’t want YOU to have.  Because it’s all about the money.  It’s all about how rich people can get off human misery and suffering, how we are reduced to numbers and filed away somewhere so that the rich get richer, and the divide grows even more between those who have and those who have not.

All we need is a CHOICE for a Government run plan or a private one.  No one wants to take away your existing plan if you like it.  No one wants to deny you services, or doctors, or operations.  What WE need to do is make it clear to our Elected Officials that enough is enough…that it is time we are treated like Human Beings and with dignity.  It is time to end this barbaric practice of parasitic politics at the expense of the suffering.  Say it loud, say it strong, and say it clear…

SHOW ME THE HEALTHCARE!

“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own.” – Number 6 from “The Prisoner”

Once Upon A Time…

Once upon a time, I used to get cigarettes for .65 a pack and $6.50 a carton.  Now that same $6.50 may not even get me ONE pack

…I used to have no conveniences of a cell phone, computer, and web sites that constantly kept me apprised of my friends’ doings and them of mine.  Now, I have no privacy, even if I wanted it without becoming a hermit

…people used to by records and CDs.  Now, people buy downloads and don’t give a damn about audio quality.

…I could afford to go to a Yankee game, and maybe even take someone else.  Hell, Tess and I used to buy tickets on the same day, get decent seats, and have a hell of a good time relatively inexpensively.  Now, I can’t even GET seats, let alone afford to take my kids.

…I could set foot in NYC without getting panicked.  Now, that is not the case; so that pretty much eliminates any concerts, or Yankee games.

…I used to fly on a plane with no fear.  Today, the only way I am going near a plane is if I’m being evacuated.

…my 12 year old daughter was my baby girl.  She still is, but like the post I did the other day, she is very much making me feel like an adult today.  She is going to her first school dance tonight.  And thus begins my illustrious career in being the Girlfriend’s Father From Hell!

Oh sure, they call it a “dance”; they’ll be playing music, there will be a slushy machine there for the kids too.  My daughter will not be attending with a boy (at least one that I know of, anyway), but I’m certain she has a crush or two going on. They’ll all break up into their cliques and probably wind up texting each other on their cell phones rather than talk to one another.  That’s the problem with this generation: they have TOO MUCH technology; they don’t truly understand certain qualities of humanity, like actual verbal interaction between people.  I just don’t get this whole text message thing.  I mean, it’s one thing to send a quick blurb that you’re coming home or going out or something pithy that need not turn into a conversation.  These kids manage to write entire paragraphs on the new cell phones with the QWERTY keyboards that pop out of the side.  In my day (I cannot believe I just wrote that), IF you were lucky you got a phone extension in your room…at 16.  Now, my 12 year old blissfully chats and texts her way through life.

I just got back from being outside with my youngest daughter, who’s eight.  She was kicking a soccer ball around the yard, and she’s quite good at it too.  She’s the athletic one in the family; she was the only girl in her class last year to get the Presidential Physical Fitness Award.  She takes gymnastics, has the shape and form of a gymnast, and she’s very good at that as well.  It’s definitely the double recessive genes on my side of the family; both my father and brother were athletic, not I.  I am the only Irishman on the entire planet who cannot play basketball; I’m lucky to be typing right now considering how many jammed fingers I have from attempting to catch a pass.  I was quite good at soccer though, that being the only sport I truly enjoyed playing as well as watching.  I grew up during that first “great soccer awakening” of the 70’s, when Pele played for the NY Cosmos and the sport started to take hold in this country.  It’s too bad most Americans don’t appreciate a game that the rest of the world is absolutely bonkers over.

While I was watching my daughter play, I decided that I need to check-in a bit and just enjoy my moments with the kids now, before it’s too late and they’re off to University.  Next thing you know, I’ll be walking them down the aisle and giving them away to (hopefully) a better man than I.  I cannot believe how fast the past 12 years of fatherhood have gone, but at least I’m sober now for them and for myself to remember these moments, so that one day I can look back on an old photo album with them.  I’ll be sitting there with them and my grandchildren, and then they will say, “Pops, tell us a story about mommy”.  And I’ll begin it with a familiar refrain…

Once Upon A Time…

“Disneyland will never be completed.  It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” – Walt Disney

Help! I’ve Turned Into An Adult!

A few weeks ago, I went in to the Optometrist to get a new prescription for my contact lenses and eyeglasses.  I’m quite nearsighted, and have been since I was about 8 years old; which is when I started wearing specs.  I started using contact lenses when I turned 18 the better to show off these baby blues; (and no, they are not colored by the lenses because only the Universe makes this particular shade of blue).  In the past 3 years or so, I’ve been doing what most middle aged people do when they read a paper: they hold it at arms, length and pray that the instruction manual that has been translated from the Chinese into Cyrillic and then into English makes some sort of sense.  What I can’t figure out is why I’ve suddenly gone farsighted in addition to being nearsighted…it makes absolutely no sense to me at all.  So, I wear bi-focals when I’m wearing my cheaters, and up until two weeks ago, I had no problem with my contacts.  Now, I need reading glasses on top of a stronger prescription.  The amazing thing is that I can read a sign half a mile down the road, but I can’t even look at the computer screen without these cheap reading glasses.

Face it…I am now an adult.

Oh, there’s more: my oldest daughter got her first detention the other day.  We won’t go into the details, except to say she beat me by three grades and definitely has her father’s temper and way with words.  I calmly dealt with the situation, affording her the same courtesy that I never was shown as a child, and tried to sort through things logically.  Ok, that worked fine.  Then yesterday, my youngest daughter not only forgot her project for school, but she got a note sent home that she, like her father, loves to talk.  She talks more than anyone on the planet; so much so that her seat was moved several times in the past few weeks.  Not a happy camper was I; but I dealt with that situation with the dreaded “No television for a day or two” punishment.  Needless to say, she tried every angle to get that nefarious predicament removed from her life and I wasn’t having any of it.  Looks like not only have I become an adult about things, but I’m becoming more like a parent, sounding more like a parent, and acting more like a parent.  I’m still trying to decide which TV Dad I resemble, and I’m convinced it’s a cross between Tim Taylor and Mike Brady with a little bit of Steve Douglas thrown in for good measure.

The final piece of the adulthood process came today when my daughter’s new cell phone arrived.  Her old one went belly up last week, and the kid was going through a withdrawal worse than I was when I went to rehab for booze.  After shelling out full price for the phone (thank you Sprint for being so flexible; we’ll happily wave goodbye to you in December when the contract runs out), I had it sent via UPS to the house.  It was SUPPOSED to be activated already; in theory, all I had to do was turn it on, the old phone would have been removed from my account, and the new one added.  Oh…I remember now, this is Sprint I was dealing with!  The phone arrives, and I read over the set up instructions…and couldn’t find the battery cover.  A stinking battery cover!  And neither could my wife!  Not only that, the very detailed diagram of the phone didn’t contain its exact location.  Perplexed, we went on the internet and found the answer.  Forgive me for thinking that the entire back of the phone was supposed to be removed to access the battery compartment.  I was looking for something sane, like a recess somewhere in the device.

Now, I’m no stooge when it comes to electronics.  I can set up home theater systems, computers, wire just about any electronic device you can think of.  My wife is extremely tech savvy too; and here we were, two 40 somethings trying to figure out where a battery cover was.  The activation didn’t happen as planned, so I went on the Internet to activate the phone that way.  They asked me for the number ON the battery as confirmation; so now, I had to navigate that cover once again and locate the number.  Needless to say, the number was too small for even my reading glasses and a 100 watt lightbulb to discern; so I called customer service who activated the phone.  Cheerfully now having said device in operational form, I went out to pick up my daughter who was delighted when I drove up and waved the phone at her from the car.  Once we got home, I asked her if she could find the battery compartment…just to see if it was a middle aged adult thing, or a common sense thing that the manufacturer screwed up on.  She found it immediately; oh, she also never saw one of these phones before either (at least up close).  So now, the text queen is happily typing away on her slide out QWERTY keyboard giving her thumbs a workout.

Yup, I’ve officially been christened an adult and a father under fire in the past few days.  I can’t read without my glasses, my kids are getting into age bracket behaviors that I have to deal with simultaneously, and I can’t find a damned battery cover on a phone.  I did manage to get a very cool ring tone assigned to me by my daughter: it sounds like a bad 70’s porno soundtrack, with the “whaka-whacka” funky back-beat.  Absolutely perfect for this child of the 60’s and 70’s.

I wonder if Mike Brady would have found that battery cover?

“Thirty-Five is when you finally get your head together, and when your body starts falling apart” – Karen Leschen

Is Stat-en-Island?

Henry Hudson is sailing into NY Harbor when he looks over to his left.  There’s a bit of early morning mist, and he’s trying to make out what he thinks is land, so he turns to his First Mate and says, “Is ‘stat an island?”.

If you’ve ever lived on Staten Island, you already know that joke about how the place got its name by heart, and have already figured out what this post is going to be about.  From 1966-1992, I grew up on this unfortunate piece of rock that lies between Brooklyn and New Jersey, never quite having an identity of being either a true New Yorker (Staten Island is technically one of the 5 boroughs that make up NYC) or something else.  Just what that something else was, I really wouldn’t find out until I left that veil of tears in 1992 for the Jersey Shore, where I spent many a summer and a happy day in my youth, teens, and 20’s.  All of my side of the family has moved to the somewhat better pastures of the Garden State, but my in-laws still reside there.  Undoubtedly, the place has changed for the worse, which is probably why I have such a deep hatred for it now.  I consider my time spent there an accident of life; but as in all misfortunes, we learn from them…if you allow yourself to.

I was born in Brooklyn, and that is my Hometown; it always has been and always will be despite the fact I only lived there for 5 years.  I have many great memories of that place: riding the Els and the subways to Downtown Brooklyn to go shopping at A&S department store; the A&P around the corner where I would drive the counter person nuts while our coffee was being ground because I would constantly be ringing the little bell on the counter; my mother dragging me out all over Brooklyn in all kinds of weather to visit her friends and their kids.  I did not by any means lead a sheltered existence.  We lived in a nice sized apartment in a small building one block away from the El and down the street from a bowling alley.  The building had a small yard that would be open to tennents, and on the 4th of July there would always be a BBQ.  I had my first taste of hamburgers on the grill at these events, likewise I had my first taste of pizza at a whole bunch of places throughout the Borough.  I always went to Coney Island or Manhattan Beach to swim in the summer, and occasionally my Dad would take me to Sheepshead Bay to watch the boats and for some food at Lundy’s.  All of this was packed into the first five years of my life, and more.  Every day there was always something to do, always an adventure as I would be whisked away all over Brooklyn and occasionally into Manhattan to visit my Dad’s office or go to the Christmas Show at Radio City.

In May of 1966, we moved to the then up-and coming borough of Staten Island.  The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge had just be opened in 1964, and easy access to the rest of the city had become possible.  We moved to a new development of duplex-style two story homes in mid-Island, and at the time we moved there, only a school across the street and the 5 duplex homes on our street and the 10 down another were the only ones around.  Surrounding us was nothing but woods.  Nothing.  Cue up the sound of chirping crickets now, please.  While I surely had many new areas to explore as a youngster (along with the other kids my age on the block who also moved from Brooklyn or other parts of NYC), it was a VAST change of pace from what I was used to.  Public transportation was also at a premium: there was one rail line that ran the entire length of the borough (we had a train station just a few blocks away from us) and buses traversed every corner.  There was just one little problem: not enough roads for the buses to run on, at least in our neck of the woods.  So I learned to WALK, and so did my mother.  One mile walks to stores were not unheard of in all kinds of weather.  Of course, that is until she learned to drive…oh boy.

My mother is not the greatest driver in the world, to be frank; I’ve told her this on a number of occasions where I’ve been met with the “I’m a good driver!  I know what I’m doing!” responses.  She is the only person from Brooklyn who doesn’t drive like one; nor is she a person who drives like she is Staten Island despite having learned there.  Those people would cut off their own mothers in a toll both line if a new one opened up, or simply swerve in front of you because they could…and got a kick out of doing so.  When you learned to drive in either place, you became the Incredible Hulk the minute you turned on the ignition; my mother became Gracie Allen.  She is NOT an aggressive driver, and most time she has a bird’s eye view…as in other people flipping her the bird.  Still, it was important for her to learn how to drive on SI because without a car, you were up the proverbial creek without the paddle.  At least the walks in the snow with us dragging the old portable shopping cart behind us were over.

I later found things to keep myself occupied as I grew up: as the new houses were springing up all over the neighborhood, we would ask the builders if they had any spare wood so we could make a tree house or club house in the rapidly vanishing woods.  Many times, they complied; other times, they pretty much told us where to go.  That’s when they received a visit from a bunch of 10 year old Sorpranos who decided that they would take what was rightfully theirs anyway; and if the builder found out the next morning, the older brothers of a few of us would “negotiate” with said builder…usually by mentioning certain relatives in either the Bronx or Brooklyn who they might know.  The situation was always resolved by peaceful means, and we could go on building our clubhouses…and they were truly a thing of beauty.

One clubhouse we built had three floors, and we had a sawed off ladder from a firetruck that ran through all three floors; it had a top hatch with a sun deck that led to a bridge to a tree-house lookout.  It took us weeks to build that, and we hung out in it just to…well, hang out.  The older brothers of some of the guys (the ones who protected us from big nasty Mister Builder) used it to drink beer and smoke weed in (as their fee for “protection”)…which wound up being the eventual cause of the fire that burned it down to the ground.  Yeah, like all kids in NYC, despite our relatively bucolic settings, we were exposed to drugs…a lot of them.  Panama Red, Mexican, Acapulco Gold, Thai Stick, LSD, Mescaline (those incredible brown capsules)…I did them all.  As a matter of fact, there were plenty of places to do them that were probably better than in any other part of the City: the woods (which were rapidly disappearing because of development), or the beach or sometimes even in a friend’s basement if their parents were cool…I mean, this WAS the 70’s.  People were smoking pot and swapping wives for Christ’s sake…and it happened in our little corner of the world too.  The best times I remember were keg parties or clam bakes down on the beach where bonfires would roar until dawn built out of wood that had floated ashore from the polluted water covered in oil and kerosene.  Occasionally the fire would blow up, but you’d duck and just continue partying.  It was a heady time…and all around us, change was happening.

The borough that was once the quiet forgotten one began to become more populated.  The roads became so overcrowded that it takes almost an hour to drive the 12 mile length of the Island on several of the main roads; it was one particular day where because of a special event, my wife and I could literally not even get off the island for over two hours.  It was that day, I swore that the buildings, the roads, the people who were moving to the Island (all the lowlifes from the other boroughs…and by that I just mean people who had no class, or thought they did) would no longer constrain me.  I convinced my wife (then my fiancée) that the time had come to leave this all behind and go to the Garden State.  I figured, it took me 90 minutes to commute from that rock; I might as well use that as my radius for finding us a nice place to live when we were married.  We both loved the beach, so that seemed like a great place to start.

Within a few months, we landed an apartment with a terrace overlooking the ocean (and I mean we were right ON the ocean) in Long Branch, NJ.  We were three blocks from both the Hospital where she got a job, and the train station where I would commute to my job in Manhattan.  The complex had a beautiful pool in addition to the beach, great restaurants and bars and nightlife all within walking distance for us (no DWIs, thank you).  For me, I had just gone to heaven; I had always wanted to live on the ocean (I grew up very close to the ocean and bays on SI) on the Jersey Shore, and now I had my wish.  One day, I will return to an apartment on the ocean somewhere when I am much older and ready to go to that vast sea of the Universe myself; but back in my 30’s, that was pure delight…and I was off that rock, that unfortunate geographical mistake of my life called Staten island.

It’s not so much I hated living there all the time, I didn’t; it’s just that every time I came home from college or wound up visiting friends and family when we moved to NJ…something from my youth would disappear.  A restaurant; a street off the ocean where there was nothing had condos squeezed in;  a bakery that had been in the same family for 50 years had a new owner…and every single inch of space that could be used to put some type of domicile was used.  What was once a pretty nice place to live had all of the worst elements of suburbia, Brooklyn, and Queens all packed into it…literally packed.  The people were nasty and unfriendly, classless jerks who had the IQ hovering somewhere above a slightly educated dolt.  It no longer was what it was…it became an aberration of everything that was bad in society and over-development.

So yeah, I’m now a Jersey Guy and proud of it.  I’m also from Brooklyn, and when I get angry, my accent suddenly changes and you can hear the Midwood in me coming out in all its glory.  At least I can say one thing about where I am now and Brooklyn…at least they are honest places; places with character and a tradition and a history that is not compromised, unlike that rock…that veil of tears…

Good riddance, and may it never darken my life again.

“When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed but your childhood” – Sam Ewing

Absent With A Pretty Good Excuse

I’ve been remiss in posting over the past week for a couple of good reasons.  One is that there is so much going on with politics these days, I just can’t pick one topic to sink my teeth into without my head exploding.  Rush?  Please…if I go off on that whole fiasco, you’d end up with a book instead of a post.  Likewise with the way the economy is all over the place.  The one topic I REALLY want to dive into though is the fact that from late 2001 until just before Inauguration Day 2009, this country was effectively a dictatorship.  This was confirmed after 9 memos were released by the Justice Department detailing the extent the Bush Administration was willing to go in order to carry out its Neocon agenda.  Now THIS is something I can write about, and probably will do so tomorrow; I’m just waiting for late breaking news on it today and the usual Friday News Dump where more info might come out.

The next reason I haven’t posted is because I feel I had nothing to say over the past few days.  One thing I will never do is post something here for the sake of posting something; there has to be a reason behind it.  If I can’t say it well, then I’d rather not say it at all.  Hey, at least no one can fault me for bad quality control!

So look for something tomorrow.  In the meantime, I’ll be ordering a pizza…