Whither goest thou, Flaneur?

The Flaneur fell to a state he never thought he would find himself in. Lost. He, of all, who knew twisting alleys and broad boulevards, dark slums and glittering towers. Lost. Lost in his own City, a stranger to himself, let alone the throngs he loved so well.

As well he knows, it takes more than one wrong turn to lose ones bearings. Usually it is a series of unconscious decisions that combine to make one eventually stop and wonder where the hell they are, anyway. We are lost for longer than we know when first we feel the stab of fear that accompanies disorientation. Ever intrepid, the Flaneur began to try and regain his sense of position and place. Small maps he drew up, of his immediate surroundings, in the hope that eventually these sketches without anchor would coalesce into something recognizable. In fact, this very chronicle is one of several such attempts.

His maps, however, were incomplete. He studiously avoided any attempt to chart perhaps the biggest landmark in sight. While the images of it were vivid and stark in his eye, he could not find the language or notation to record it. No pen or keyboard could encompass the vastness it held for him, so he just left it alone. There would be others of greater skill and acuity who could and would describe it so he would not have to.

And so he remained lost, every attempt to right himself deepening his state of distress. Eventually he stopped making his little maps. He stopped observing his world. He stopped seeing that which he loved most. No man has been as lost as he, lost in his own home.

The Flaneur dreamed last night. Dreamed of fire and smoke and death and ash filling his nostrils. He dreamed of fear and displacement. He awoke on this bright election Tuesday in New York City and remembered another bright Tuesday election morning. The landmark he could not look at and could never lose sight of.

He knows he still has not the expression to communicate that which he saw and felt. He knows that his story is pathetically minor and inconsequential in comparison to the stories of others, and for this he feels shame and even guilt. He also knows that if he is ever to find himself again he must sketch out this one crucial map, not matter how crudely drawn.

Read on if you will, but know that he writes not for you or your pleasure. What follows are simply reflections of what his eyes saw, and perhaps a little bit of what he felt. All inadequate, but it is all he has to work with. Please note that all images recorded herein are, as all things, touched with the patina of time. The Flaneur promises to be as faithful to his memories as he is able.

This is not salvation, this is survival.

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Q Express train, the Flaneur reads the New York Times on his way to work. Reading a re-cap of Monday Night Football the night before. His Giants lost to Denver. Train stops at DeKalb Avenue. A man gets on and asks the Flaneur if there is anything about an airplane hitting the World Trade Center in the paper. Slightly annoyed and distracted, he replies in the negative.

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Moments later the train passes over the Manhattan Bridge. He sits on the downtown side of the train and twists to look out the window. There is a long gaping scar in the side of the North Tower, oily black smoke billowing out. "Oh Fuck! Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.....". There are things falling from the building.

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He stands up as the train pulls into Canal street. His first instinct is to go there. To see, to help. There will be thousands of scared people trying to evacuate that building and he feels he should be there. This is his City, and it is his self-perceived duty to respond, to do whatever he can.
He hesitates.
He has just started a new job and is conscious of having to make a solid first impression. He reasons that he would not be able to do very much for anyone down there anyway. Besides, he knows the NYFD is the best in the world, they will take care of their own. He sits back down for the ride up to Times Square and his office.

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This decision quite possibly saved his life. But if he had to do it over again he would have gotten off that train and headed downtown.

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He exits the train at Times Square and heads east to 6th Avenue. Looking down 6th he can see the towers and the smoke. People on the street are edgy, knowing that something big, even for New York, is happening. But at this stage they are still in daily mode and pressing on with their day, as New Yorkers do.

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The electronic sign in the elevator flashes a news blurb about a small civilian aircraft crashing into the WTC. "Bullshit"
He saw that hole in the building up close, that was no Cessna.

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He gets to his office and immediately makes obligatory calls to his loved ones, knowing they will be watching the news and worried about him.

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Being on the uptown side of the building, he moves to another office to get a view downtown. From the 45th floor, he has an unimpeded view of the smoking towers.

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One of the twins falls. He cannot remember his thoughts here. He only recalls screaming inside his head. It fell slowly to his eye. The smoke billowing upward, a column of churning ash and miasma to replace what was once steel, concrete and flesh.

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Instinct kicks in.
He goes to the small pantry and takes several empty plastic bottles from the recycling bin and fills them with drinking water from the cooler. He grabs up handfuls of packets of saltines. And even more packets of sugar to mix with the water.
He knows it will be a long day and he has much to do. He feels better knowing he'll not tire from dehydration or low blood sugar.

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He stuffs the supplies into his bag, along with wads of paper towels and a roll of masking tape. He doesn't know why, it just seems prudent.

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He returns to a window in time to see the second one fall. He feels physically sick. He cries, or at least his vision becomes blurred and his face somehow wet. There is no sensation of breathing, and no sound except the continuing scream inside his head. Memory tricks him now, and he could describe the sound as jet engines or sirens but neither would be quite true. The screaming was something else entirely. Something he has no desire to investigate further.

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An announcement is made, the building is being evacuated. There are other airplanes in the sky, and this building could be a target.

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The City is locked down. No subways, no buses, no bridges, no tunnels. He heads north without conscious thought.

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St. Patrick's Cathedral. A woman sits on the steps, crying and terrified. He stops and tries to console her, to see if there is anything he can do for her. There is nothing.

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A black limo sits with its doors open, radio loud with the news. A small crowd gathers around it, listening for something tangible and real. The Flaneur and the limo driver, a husky African American in his 50's lock eyes for long moments and what passes between them is beyond description. Spontaneously they embrace, as men, two sets of eyes welling with tears. They tell each other to be careful, and wish each other luck as they break their embrace. Two strangers, same tribe. At that moment they would do anything for the other, but there is nothing they can do just then except hold on.

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All aircraft has been ordered from the skies, but they are still up there. When the sound of an aircraft is heard, every person on the street looks to the sky in fear, fully expecting to see another silvered behemoth raining death and debris down upon where they stand. He has never known such fear in these streets.

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Streets empty quickly of traffic, except for the continuing flow of emergency vehicles, all headed south. He walks up the dead center of Lexington avenue all the way into the 70's. He muses in a lighter moment that he'll never have this chance again without fear of being run over.

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Stopping at an old friend's house, ostensibly to see that she and her family were ok. She is surprised to see him, but not displeased. Later he realizes that he wasn't so much checking on her welfare so much as needing to set his eyes on someone he knew. Who knew him. Some connection with how life had been the day before, which seemed so far away.

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At his father's house he watches some coverage on TV. Nothing of use but only images he has already seen first hand. He refreshes his bag with some more water, band-aids (!), a heavier pair of socks more suitable for walking, and a towel.

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Before he leaves he writes a note for his father, who is out of town.
"Someone ripped a hole in my City, Dad."

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Outside the National Guard Armory on Lexington stand a young Puerto Rican kid, fully uniformed, M-16 cradled in his arms, standing in the intersection alone. The poor kid is probably the most scared looking person he sees all day.

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Thinking blood might be needed, he goes to Lenox Hill hospital to donate. The line for donating blood runs down the block, and is hours long. The line is quiet and determined. Fear is less pressing now in the people. Grim determination has set in. The people of his City have a reputation for self-centeredness and callousness. Not today. He cries again, now from welling pride. He heads downtown.

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A couple of small girls stand on a street corner and offer drinking water for free to anyone passing by. Rockwell's lemonade stand, redux.

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Passing schools, seeing cots being unloaded from trucks to create emergency shelters. Passing hospitals, he sees the doctors and nurses standing by for triage outside the doors. Stretchers and white sheets at the ready. They all stand idle. Where are the ambulances, there should be ambulances screaming uptown with the wounded. Where the hell are the goddamned ambulances?

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He sees the first vehicles from the site coming uptown, covered in a ghostly white dust and his heart just fucking stops.

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Greenwich avenue, headed downtown. On this street one could always see the Towers at the end of it. Now the sky is empty and he is shaking so badly. One glance in the sky could always tell him where he was, now he feels adrift. He sits for awhile on this empty street and tries to stop the shaking. He watches a homeless man root through garbage cans, seemingly oblivious.

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Canal Street. The NYPD has blocked off all non-emergency traffic south of this point. Those who can prove their residency south of Canal are allowed to pass. He dreads the feeling of being stopped here. He understands and appreciates the reasons why, but these are his streets goddammit, he will not be stopped from going where he will on them. Not fucking today. He contemplates making a break, but feels compassion for the cops working the barricades and doesn't want to have to cause them to chase him down.

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Endless days and nights spent exploring the city streets, an idea forms and he heads east along Canal. The emergency traffic coming into the City is heavy here. Cranes, dozers, earth movers, fire trucks from all over pouring through. He says a prayer for every damned one as they pass.

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Pedestrian traffic for Brooklyn and Queens is being sent across the Manhattan Bridge, but the Flaneur fast-talks his way into an apartment building complex. He winds his way through the buildings and comes out on the other side, well south of Canal. Down here it is empty, and no one questions him. He is where he is supposed to be now, getting closer.

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The air is thick with ash, everything is covered with it. The sun is blocked out and the sky is and angry reddish black. He soaks down his towel with water and wraps it about his face so as to breathe better.

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Closer now. Fulton Street. Visibility is maybe a quarter block. The ash and paper debris is about knee-high. He slogs through it, breathing harder.

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Shrouded ghostly shapes appear and dissolve in the thick air. Firemen, cops, janitors, emts, court officers, junkies, poets priests prostitutes and him.

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A fireman shuffles down the street, ash-caked, clean only where tears and sweat have carved channels down his face. The Flaneur gives him a bottle of water. The fireman smiles. To this day, the Flaneur does not know how or why.

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Fulton and Broadway, about a block from it now. A pile. A mass. Heat, fire smoke and always ash raining. He cannot.....

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Retreat. Back over to Pace University, across from City Hall. Looks like a blizzard in NYC, except the snow is warm to the touch. He stands with firemen and just watches the sky. A great roaring and a renewed deluge of hot ash. Another building down. He doesn't try to imagine which. There is nothing anyone can do now.

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Onto the on ramp for the Brooklyn Bridge, he follows it for awhile, then clambers over the wall and fence to get onto the pedestrian walkway. The wooden boards are filthy with ground in ash from the thousands and thousands of feet which earlier had sought refuge across the East River, in Brooklyn. All but gone now, he sees only a handful of others as he crosses the bridge. He is mostly alone.

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The Bridge is a touchstone for him. He feels connected to it. He remembers crossing it with his friends when young, to end up running all around the WTC site, their own personal playground. Gone.

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He stops and look back at his skyline, now empty, and he retches and cries and screams. A man passes and looks to him sympathetically, but makes no move toward him. The Flaneur is left alone with his City, on his Bridge.

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Brooklyn. Sanitation dump trucks filled with sand block access to the Federal Courts.

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He walks to DeKalb Avenue to catch a train home. He is offered water and compassionate looks. He looks at himself and realizes he is covered in dust and ash and looks like he went through hell. He is so deeply ashamed because he went through nothing. He was a spectator, an observer. He helped no one, saved no one. Their looks of compassion are wasted on him. He wants to tell them, but cannot. So they are left to their own imaginations to create the stories they cast him in.

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That is all of it, and barely touches it at all. I always feared that committing these memories to any sort of permanence would be an exercise in futility, bringing nothing but tears. Resurrecting the pain of that day. And highlighting the injustice and abomination of all that has been done since in the name of September 11, 2001.

And I was correct in my fears. I don't feel any better at all and I sit here still crying as I write.

But my City still stands, and I am proud of her.

I'm still standing too, I'll take pride in that. I am still here to draw my little maps and hope that they might help someone else find their way, if not my own.

-The Flaneur, NYC, 2005