Friday, Aug. 22, 2003 - 1:22 am
I finally gave up my bike of many moons. I had lots of nice memories of riding it around Prospect Park when I lived in Brooklyn. With my EB (the damn blister thing) I am always greatful to a bike for letting me get around and see things and not be trapped in a car. Trees air things like that- the feeling of being with them is lost in a car. But now that we live in the East Village it sat in our front hallway and the tires deflated and it got covered in dust, fur and poodle. So Rick took it downstairs and I came out just in time to see a smiling homeless man walk off with it. If he can clean it up and replace the tires then he has a nice bike. Rick told me the story of how the guy was amazed and so happy.
What Rick got to replace it were two amazing folding bikes that we keep in the closet. So we got two bikes and its like they never arrived where my one bike blocked stuff and was too heavy to carry up and down the stairs alone without pretty much falling at least once.
Our first huge ride, we have had smallers ones but this one left me pretty much lame afterward- was all around downtown and all the way up to the 70's and back. When we were downtown we came upon the healing Ground Zero. The lights are eerie and you see the glow long before you see the hole. When you do its intense. There used to be icons here that held people.
I know people will laugh or joke in emotional moments to hide their feelings or even go so far as to insult an event and the people caught in it, for various reasons. 9/11 was described by one idiot as "bankers dying who cares". I used to work down there- maybe of those people who died 10% or less were anyone with enough influence to be slightly offensive to some psycho overseas. The rest were working people... secretaries. Yeah they were You, your family and neighbors just doing their jobs to support their families.
Standing there watching the hole, I remembered watching it being made. I saw from my roof, the buildings smoke and fall and inside, souls left those bodies leaving them to burn. There was a single cricket chirping there now. Tiny black cricket.
When that hole is filled and the new buildings built- there will be a day that the lights will go out and the emergency generators will kick in and frightened people will make their way down dark poorly lit stairways and a fireman or a nice lady or man will tell them not to be afraid and then lead them out to safety- and they won't be afraid and they will be safe- and they'll get out and turn to say thanks and that person will be gone.
There will be ghosts.
They are watching now and they will be the kind that will comfort a child who was left accidentally alone in a daycare room or will unlock a broken door for a frightened young employee, they'll be the wrong number calling the desk phone that distracts a sad person from a window to ask them a question that will cheer them and they will decide not to jump afterall, the man who thwarts an attacker of a woman in the parking garage... you won't even know it, even after you try to find the small hero, no one will have seen them, no one will know them- and the years will pass and the stories will grow and eventually history will know that, it is a haunted land. These people will care for the living the way they did their own families every day that they lived because thats what they were. moms dads sisters brothers children.
The book/graphic novel is progressing well. can't say anything about it right now. no big mysterious reason, well maybe that jinx thing or simply that "steal your story" thing.....
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