During our nation's
morning of waking nightmares, it seemed as if the wounded twin towers were valiantly stalling
for time, struggling to protect those human prisoners and their would-be rescuers. Then reality
crumbled... again... and again... and again. The demonic television images needed a
counterbalance of written words, before I could ever hope to find sleep. The next afternoon, a
very kind editor at In Posse Review published my meager attempt at exorcism, and now it's been
reprinted in a book (profits to charity), which was featured on a recent episode of Rosie
O'Donnell's show.
I think I finally understand the true meaning of "mixed
emotions."
-Alan
12Sep2001/21Oct2001/8Jan2002/11Sep2002 (Issue 0.3)
The Day The Planes Stopped
Flying
"Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday
from the neighborhood
Hop a flight to Miami Beach
Or to
Hollywood . . ."
-- New York State Of Mind
lyrics &
music by Billy Joel
Surely you remember that crazy Frenchman.
What was his name? Philippe something? He started bringing up his equipment a couple of days
beforehand, slipping everything past the Twin Tower guards in a rucksack. By the eve of
his big performance, he'd stashed a sizable pile under the open-air tourist platform. He hid
there until after everyone had gone home that night; then his crossbow landed a grappling hook
on the other building's edge. Was the attached nylon rope secure enough? Would it hold his
weight, while he dangled upside-down in the midnight winds blowing up from Battery Park? He
risked everything in the darkness for a half-hour in the next day's limelight. Shimmying across
the quarter-mile distance at a height of 110 stories, he made several trips during the next
few hours, trying to secure a heavy cable. By dawn, everything was ready.
But he was
exhausted. Not the best condition for a tightrope artist.
And yet he managed to
wire-walk his way into history, from one building to the other.
How about that mountain
climber who scaled the outside of one tower during a nail-biting afternoon? By rush hour, every
news crew in the city had a camera focused on him.
Then came the parachutists... or
maybe there was only one. I can't quite remember.
However, I do recall my
much-less-dramatic visit to the top. On that perfect September day, Lady Liberty seemed like a child's
toy: so close, you could almost pick her up with casually-outstretched fingers. In the other hand,
you might grab onto the huge bridge spanning Verrazano's narrows.
I remembered
starting my first marathon over there, on Staten Island, ten years earlier. It was an easy sprint into
Brooklyn, but by the time we jogged through Queens, I was hurtin' for certain. Later, the Bronx
became a cruel hallucination of pain, and my legs seized up in Manhattan. There's a half-repressed
memory of lying flat on the pavement, beating my fists in frustration against a cramped thigh,
while some Harlem kids laughed at the foolish white boy in their gutter. Somehow that white boy
got up a few minutes later, finding a way to float just above his suffering body while it half-ran,
half-limped across the finish line in Central Park.
And that's why the September day was so
perfect, one decade later--I took enormous pleasure in surveying the five boroughs, from horizon
to horizon, at the top of those magnificent buildings. They allowed me to daydream about the
vast domain I had conquered, when I was young and foolish.
Damn, that was a
great view.
© 9/11/2001 Alan C. Baird