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I wasn’t there, my memories aren’t important.
Like most Americans, I watched the tragedy unfold on TV.
Unbelievable? You could say that: I felt the distance. I wanted a closer connection, so I spent hours reviewing my list of potential contacts in the area: Could I claim to know anyone who was actually there? Could I pretend to be legitimately worried about someone’s safety? ‘Cause that would give me a legitimate stake in the disaster. Without that, all it was was a disaster movie.
I wasn’t prepared for how neatly and finally, with what fine surgical precision, the terrorist attacks divided my life and the collective life of the nation into a Before and After. Details of the After have been formulating and reformulating ever since – it’s an alternate universe in which we’re all wearing electronic handcuffs, have invisible tracking systems implanted in our frontal lobes.
No, it wasn’t like that before.
The most immediate fallout? I had been walking Xena the Dog through the Presidio every morning. The Presidio had barracks but it also had a hiking trail that led to the top of Huckleberry Hill, the highest point in Monterey. I was still mourning my mother’s death and I had worked out a bizarre little ritual that involved counting the wild blue coast iris: If I counted even one more iris than I had the day before, that meant my mother was happy on the other side of the river, in whatever afterlife she had chosen for herself.
But on September 12, armed guards stopped me from entering the Presidio. “You’re not authorized to pass,” a young man in a military with a shaved head and tattoos told me bluntly.
And this could be the motto for the subsequent portion of my life, couldn’t it? You’re not authorized to pass…
###
Beyond humiliating, Susan and Max’s clean out of all my worldly possessions. They took most of them to the dump. That wasn’t at all the way Susan had explained the cleanout operation to me over the phone: “Listen, I own all those buildings in West Oakland. I’ll just store your stuff in one of those basement.”
I couldn’t do anything, of course. I’d lost control over my own life. Other people were making the important decisions.
I should be grateful, right? Like Uriah Heap.
But all I felt was violated and betrayed.
FUCK YOU, Max. Have a great life. I set you up well on that account, so you should. But I never, ever want to see you again or Susan either. Just forget that I exist, it’ll be easier for everyone that way.
Of course a week from now I won’t feel like this. And maybe not even tomorrow.
But then again, maybe I will.
Like most Americans, I watched the tragedy unfold on TV.
Unbelievable? You could say that: I felt the distance. I wanted a closer connection, so I spent hours reviewing my list of potential contacts in the area: Could I claim to know anyone who was actually there? Could I pretend to be legitimately worried about someone’s safety? ‘Cause that would give me a legitimate stake in the disaster. Without that, all it was was a disaster movie.
I wasn’t prepared for how neatly and finally, with what fine surgical precision, the terrorist attacks divided my life and the collective life of the nation into a Before and After. Details of the After have been formulating and reformulating ever since – it’s an alternate universe in which we’re all wearing electronic handcuffs, have invisible tracking systems implanted in our frontal lobes.
No, it wasn’t like that before.
The most immediate fallout? I had been walking Xena the Dog through the Presidio every morning. The Presidio had barracks but it also had a hiking trail that led to the top of Huckleberry Hill, the highest point in Monterey. I was still mourning my mother’s death and I had worked out a bizarre little ritual that involved counting the wild blue coast iris: If I counted even one more iris than I had the day before, that meant my mother was happy on the other side of the river, in whatever afterlife she had chosen for herself.
But on September 12, armed guards stopped me from entering the Presidio. “You’re not authorized to pass,” a young man in a military with a shaved head and tattoos told me bluntly.
And this could be the motto for the subsequent portion of my life, couldn’t it? You’re not authorized to pass…
Beyond humiliating, Susan and Max’s clean out of all my worldly possessions. They took most of them to the dump. That wasn’t at all the way Susan had explained the cleanout operation to me over the phone: “Listen, I own all those buildings in West Oakland. I’ll just store your stuff in one of those basement.”
I couldn’t do anything, of course. I’d lost control over my own life. Other people were making the important decisions.
I should be grateful, right? Like Uriah Heap.
But all I felt was violated and betrayed.
FUCK YOU, Max. Have a great life. I set you up well on that account, so you should. But I never, ever want to see you again or Susan either. Just forget that I exist, it’ll be easier for everyone that way.
Of course a week from now I won’t feel like this. And maybe not even tomorrow.
But then again, maybe I will.
