(written in September 2001)

Last night I sat mesmerized behind a pair of binoculars for over an hour, observing an excavator dislodge a twenty-foot steel beam from the wreckage of One World Trade Center. The beam was wedged precariously between the partially-collapsed Six World Trade Center and a mound of rubble. What struck me was how gingerly the excavator handled the beam. Its wide jaws, directed by a long, agile boom, nibbled and nudged and tugged at its prey from various angles. One false move could have triggered an avalanche of steel scrap and glass shards, to the detriment of the search and rescue crew, the missing, the crime-scene evidence, and the structural integrity of surrounding buildings. At last, the excavator successfully removed the beam and placed it in a truck full of debris.

A delicate operation is underway in lower Manhattan, and a unique community has sprung up overnight to support it. McDonald’s has come out of doors and set up a feeding station for hungry workers. A school playground is now a massage parlor, where New York’s best-trained hands knead the taut, overworked muscles of men and women who refuse to go home. Starbucks is teeming with customers clad in uniform-blue, fatigues, work boots and oxygen masks. Where are the laptops and backpacks, the legal pads and fountain pens? Will the café’s mauve-colored furniture ever be the same again?

A resident here is apt to feel a certain privilege, walking on streets limited mostly to representatives of organizations like FEMA, FDNY and NYPD. The loud drone of generators and the Rent-a-Fence-lined sidewalks magnify the civilian’s sense of privileged access, as do the huddles of guards one must pass through to get home. “I had to show my I.D. to THREE sets of guards,” a resident said. As hard as she tried to sound put-out, her face betrayed a smug satisfaction with the high-level security assigned to her neighborhood.

From the street patrollers to the crane operators, the different elements of this emergency community inspire a new appreciation for the human capacity to cooperate. However miserably our bureaucratic agencies may have failed us on September 11th, it is clear that our many civic, political and private organizations are now uniting to heal the gaping wound left in our city and psyche. And the cooperative spirit has rippled out to the unlikeliest of channels: even customer service representatives I’ve spoken to on the phone this week have demonstrated some humanity (surely that won’t last). When people are made to feel useful, their bounty knows no limit. They are quick to act.

Unfortunately, communities are not perfect, and my new community is no exception. Some volunteers feel useless. “If you’re going to cross the street do it now, but don’t just stand there,” said a cop to a confused-looking, middle-aged civilian. The exasperated man threw his arms up in the air and answered, “Well, maybe you can tell me where to go. I was told my medical services were needed, but no one around here seems to want them.” The cop was of no help to him either.

Communications are flawed. Evacuees want an estimate of when they can move back home or return to work. They want reliable answers about air quality. Checkpoints and access areas are constantly shifting, and the forms of I.D. that were acceptable yesterday are not acceptable today.

The lower west side of Manhattan is a neighborhood where residents are not accustomed to inconvenience. Doubtless, many whose homes are intact will accept their landlords’ offers to relocate to other buildings around the city. Some will simply break their leases. The long walks to subways, the closed shops, and the intermittent power outages will repel them. So will the endless plume of smoke, a constant reminder that they are inhaling the ashes of the dead.

I intend to stay. The passing planes are too many and too low, and each sudden sound recalls the moment of that first violent impact when Hell exploded over our blithe peace; but I still intend to stay. I want to absorb every detail of the physical aftermath of this catastrophe. Perhaps then I'll be more equipped to handle the psychological aftermath.

The twin towers adorned my fifteenth-floor apartment like the backdrop of a TV talk-show set. Now they have vanished. Volcanoes of sparks discharged by torch cutters, the charred façade of Tower Two, intrusive white work lights, pieces of paper fluttering through the air like dizzy seagulls—these are the features that now constitute my backdrop. But they too will vanish. In the coming years, ground zero will see one set replace another as cleanup continues and reconstruction begins. I’ll be watching from Ground One.

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