Saturday, January 5, 2002

for sale on ebay

"It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing in the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind."

Edward Gibbon, Memoirs

We start out with a goal. The concierge says there are long lines for the viewing platforms at the WTC site. (Doesn't calling it ground zero seem bizarre?) We just want to get close, get some sense of it. They tell us to take the subway to Chambers street. We walk over to Broadway and do just that. We emerge from the station and head south.

All the streets around are covered with those metal plates where the infrastructure has been exposed for repair. Not just a plate here and there, but almost no pavement, just plates. The building near the barrier where we walk up is partly destroyed. There's a makeshift memorial wall and a Christmas tree. The expanse behind the wall is huge, acres and acres. A few huge cranes are visible. The air is full of fine, white dust that makes me choke a little, given my cold.

What more can we see? There are arces of aching nothing. Debris. As we edge back from the barrier, I notice street signs bent from the blow back,

I peek into closed stores with layers of dust still on everything, marvel at what it must have been like to be here when it happened.

We stop at the first open place we see going back north, for some breakfast. A tiny shop, run by an Asian with a Latino man cooking, selling egg sandwiches and coffee. My companions ask to use the restroom. They let SuRu go and then balk at Mags.

"The stairs are steep. You might fall and sue."

"She's not from the U.S.," says SuRu. "She won't sue." And he relents.

Then we see more and more places open, nicer places. But I'm glad we stopped with these guys, on the edge of the destruction.

We walk north for a while, past where we got off the subway. But finally we just take the subway to Times Square. I don't know what I expected to see or feel. On the other hand I thought I understood it in a slightly new way.

In a completely opposite experience, I tell the gals I want to check out Toys 'R Us. Mags wants to go off on her own, but at least walks in with us. (Suggesting toy store destinations will do that to people.) Ru and I examine the Statue of Liberty, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building. Built from Lego. Then the giant dinosaur twenty feet high and the two-story Ferris Wheel. It's unreal. As unreal as downtown.

We walk over to Bryant Park and sit with our faces in the sun. There are a few homeless guys sitting there, too. One talks to himself. I feel right at home. The sun feels good; it glints off the Empire State Building, the tallest building in New York City. The real one, I mean.

We go get a slice of pizza and a drink. We settle into the theater (Henry Miller) which is gotten up like, um, a dank tunnel in a subway somewhere. Or a devastated city. Complete with dripping water sounds. For the musical Urinetown. (Pronounce it like "you're in town.")

Mags meets us and we settle in for the show. It's energetic and funny and sends up the Broadway musical formula thing.

I figure I can take a nap after the theater and get some energy. We go back to the hotel and I try. But it doesn't happen. I've gotten very sick. Mags goes across the street for some takeout. I give in to the drugs and cold and later SuRu orders a room service burger and fries and a Caesar salad and cuts off a quarter of the burger for me. I nibble at it and eat some fries.

JUST TYPING
One envisions things.
Expecting less.
Expecting more.
Changing the experience.