Hi from New York! Things are more or less routine again for us New York denizens, although that routine has now permanently changed. Two days ago I even went to a Williamsburger party and had a decent enough good time. A band called Fake Brain was there. Let me quote bandmember Gideon on the mic, summing up why we were all here, or there, five days after the greatest terrorist strike in modern history: "sometimes we have to realize that we are stupid fucking human animals!" With that the band started playing. Amen.

New York is a strange place now, but people are dealing admirably with the shock, fear and anger. Everyone talks and offers opinions. Most everyone goes to work, accepting the daily drudge as a much-needed relief from the visceral and stomach-churning turmoil of the past week. Or at least I am finally going back to work.

And then, for me, I've discovered a newfound pleasure on the way. Walking down corridors, sitting in subway cars, staring at crowds of people massed at street corners I envision a suicide bomber. I see destruction and smoke everywhere, every which way I look. Everything is a target. I feel a sickening decrepitude in every subway poster, on every piece of clothing, with every newspaper. Its quite fun, actually. To brave a newly charged atmosphere as a wide-eyed fool and everyone is suspect, including me.

And all these checkpoints! Rent-a-cops and and uniformed laundrymen. Human folly is very entertaining, in such a good way.

-TL

I was walking to my office on 8th & 14th at around 8:45A, and was on Greenwich Ave. when I heard a muffled rumbling (faint) as I was approaching the intersection of 7th Ave. South where St. Vincent's is. When I crossed the street to the northwest corner, I saw some people gawking, and I turned to see, about 20 blocks south, grey smoke coming off the left corner of the right tower on a diagonal, wafting left. At the time, I did not associate the noise with the smoke; I had thought there was a fire at the Tower. It wasn't until I got into the office 5 minutes later when I found out what had happened

Of course, I called Mom, who lived on Water St., six blocks to the east of the WTC, to make sure she was okay. She had slept through the 2 crashes, and didn't know a thing. I told her not to leave the building unless it is evacuated because of the debris and smoke on the street, not to mention the all-around mayhem. Not having understood the gravity of the situation at the time, she had replied, "I can still go to Chinatown, right? It's in the opposite direction".

Later, when the tower came down, she called the office to say that it was dark gray outside her window. She is still without electricity & water.

Butchie had went to his appointment at the unemployment office on Park Place, and had left the Station at around 8:40A. He was walking around West Broadway by Park Place, when he heard a loud scary plane noise overhead (like the normal plane-in-flight noise times 500). Thinking to himself that a plane was flying very low, he turned his head to trace the plane. He saw the plane go into the first tower, and the guy beside him started to scream. Butchie remembers the debris and paper that flew out, and he says it looked just like ticker tape confetti. Of course, back at the time, Butchie didn't hang around to muse about it, and he hightailed up the block and into the unemployment office.

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