February 7, 2009

Suffering Indulged


1 February 2009
Philadelphia, PA

Hours do become days, and days do become weeks and... Like many clichés, there is a deep, uncrackable truth to that awareness. I am also noticing just how much, and how easily I can become self-absorbed, as well as an awareness that (counterintuitive though it seem at first blush) the more I meditate, the less self-absorbed I become.

This strikes me as one of the more important insights I have had in a while.

My cravings have a self-indulgent quality to them that I need to pay attention to here. For a moment I slipped into an all too familiar posture of self-judgement and recrimination that I also need to pay attention to - another, more subtle form of self-absorption, no doubt.

Once again a word, in this case "indulge", threw me a rope and brought me safely back to shore. Indulge means "to allow space and time for". And in its other form, indulgens, this word means "to be kind, yield". At its core is the ancient European word dlegh, which means "to engage oneself". This old word with such deep roots is related to another astonishingly old English word, play.

So, being self-indulgent suddenly takes on a new meaning. What if I can sit for a moment with a craving, with whatever it is I am clinging to? Whatever it is - sex, drugs, rock and roll - no matter. And what if in that next moment I indulge that craving, or some compulsion? Does that matter? Well, the thought that occurs to me right now is: both yes and no.

It matters because in that very act of feeding the craving I am creating the conditions for my own continuing suffering. So, in that moment I am also creating the need to alleviate that suffering in the future. This is so because the one thing that I know to be true is that feeding those cravings increases my hunger, which leads to more cravings. Attachment leading to more attachment - an old story.

At the same time it does not matter if, after a moment of deepening awareness, I "indulge" in those cravings. In such rare moments of wakefulness I must take in all possibilities, and not just the positive or "enlightened" ones (that I also so often crave). If I were to magically reach some state where I "knew" that I would not feed those cravings, then I would have done nothing more than attain a higher and more refined state of delusion. It is in this very awareness that I could, or might, or perhaps likely will, succumb to any particular craving or compulsion, that the possibility to be free from these cravings exists.

The more I move away from the idea of "enlightenment" as my life's purpose, the more I find myself drawn toward freedom and liberation as a way to live. Alleviating suffering in the world must begin with me.

As I sit here writing this, again it is clear to me that the only way out of our/my suffering is the way in. It is to sit with that suffering, permit it to enter every cell of my body. To acknowledge that clinging to something, or someone - even when such clinging is also an act of love - is to be human. To allow space and time to, that is, to indulge in the suffering that is both heartbreakingly unavoidable and a fundamental choice of the human condition.

* * *

The other day I went to a funeral. They are all sad affairs, but this one was particularly so. The husband of a woman I once worked with died of a massive heart attack and other complications. His wife had to make the decision to end the life support in the hospital. She had to choose to let go of what she most desired, most craved - another moment with her beloved. The whole catastrophe of living and loving was right there in the room. Sic transit gloria mundi, so go the things of the world.

The tone of the funeral was one that I was familiar with from my childhood. The casket was open sitting as it was in the front of a small chapel. After viewing the body I went over to embrace the widow to tell her (as my grandmother taught me): I am sorry for your troubles.

The suffering she was enduring flowed from her body like sweat from an athlete. In that moment she was suffering embodied. Suffering incarnate. She was Mary's suffering body holding her dead son in her lap. She was suffering indulged.

A few moments later they began the ritual of closing the casket. The funeral director slowly cranked the gears that lowered the body deeper into the casket. The widow wailed, saying I love you, over and over. Then they covered the body with a blanket, and put a white handkerchief over the face.

Another gate closing between the two of them.

And oh how she suffered. How she craved having another minute with him. Another minute to say I love you. Or perhaps a minute to argue about taking out the trash. Another minute seems like such a small thing to crave. And how she keened for her husband as that minute never occurred.

Then they closed the casket. Yet another gate closing.

At the graveyard after the end of the closing prayers two workmen came over to lower the flower-covered casket into the ground. There was no sound from the clutch of mourners gathered all around the cold, barren gravesite. No sound save for the thick straps that were holding the casket, groaning now as they rubbed against each other when the workmen slowly, with a reverence beyond their station, lowered the body deep inside the grave.

It was as if the hard ground itself were softening, yielding, to receive him. As if the earth herself, were taking in, creating space and time for, indulging all the suffering that was pouring out from the living, as we walked so carefully back down the frozen path, and back into our lives.

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January 14, 2009

Nothing Happened

14 January 2009
Philadelphia, PA

Yesterday morning I went through the back gate onto Pastorius Street, a narrow lane actually, on my way to the train station. As I was walking, I saw a young man crouched down next to his dog.

Suddenly, the dog lurched away - teeth bared - and began sprinting toward me.

Now then. A bit about the dog. He (I think it was a he) had the build of a large bulldog, brown in color. He didn't have that typical bulldog snout. I guess he is a mix of some sort. As he was running toward me, I noticed how wide he was. Odd thought, but there you have it.

Back to the lurching away and sprinting toward me part of the story. The dog moved surprisingly quickly and was clearly headed right toward me. As he got closer, he lept also surprisingly high for someone built so close to the ground.

Here is where the story takes a strange turn for me - literally and figuratively. All I did was make a sort of pivot, like opening a gate. When I did that, the dog just flew right past me landing a few feet behind me and sliding along the asphalt on the road. As he flew past, I felt his paw touch my leg and his shoulder lightly graze my arm. But that was it.

By then the young man had come running past me to regain control of his dog. The young man was very upset and began chastising his pet peppering him with "Bad dog. Bad dog." Then he apologized to me saying, "He is usually quite gentle, but sometimes you just never know..."

I continued walking down the lane as if nothing happened. The young man then called out to me asking if I was OK, and if my clothing were torn. I said, "No, I'm OK. I'm fine."

Then I noticed something strange - there was no adreneline rush; no rapid heart beat. No trauma. No images racing trough my head about "what might have happened". In that moment I came to the realization: Nothing happened.

There was a dog being dog. One aspect of being dog is a sudden, unpredictable need to lurch and lunge. And there was this self encountering this dog. In that moment I somehow felt, somehow knew, what "dog being dog" means. And so along with that awareness in some way there was an awareness that this self was also a kind of no-self.

I recall now moving in a way that might have been an aikido move. I don't know for sure because I never studied aikido. What I do know is that the move took almost no effort. It was as if this self/no-self, who somehow knew what dog being dog meant, also knew the absolute minimal effort that was needed to move out of the way. And the little street seemed wider, a bit more spacious.

When I called back to the young man that I was fine, I really meant it. I was just as fine as when I walked through the back gate just a few minutes before, and I was just fine as I continued on to the train station. The exact same fine - no more and no less.

The only echo I took away from the whole encounter was from the young man who said, "... sometimes you just never know."

So, that's the story, or no story, about nothing happening to no one.
X

* * *
X
Later in the day (and I am just now making a connection the morning after) I met with a client - a social worker in oncology at a large teaching hospital in Philadelphia. Her patients all have head and neck cancer, so the pain and suffering she encounters is profound. Anyway, she is pretty burned-out, and is dealing with the after-effects of one of her client's suicide. She is more anxious now. More hypervigalent and compulsive. She is determined to not have that ever happen again.

There has been no one she could talk to about all that she is carrying. No way to release it. I sat with her as she teared-up, and I said that she could talk to me about it all, and that it would not be a burden. And I knew in that moment what she does not yet know - she is fine, just fine.

Sometimes you just never know.

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July 25, 2008

Not Knowing and Not Owing

Two snippets from two of my teachers. The first is by John Tarrant, who is a (my?) zen meditation teacher in Santa Rosa at the Pacific Zen Institute. He is a master healer, who gave me the wonderful gift of a koan that became a raft keeping me afloat for a time. It was a time not so very long ago now when I was dangerously close to drowning in an ocean of fear and indifference. The second snippet is a poem by Hafiz, the great Sufi master who is reemerging in the west from the shadow of Rumi. If John supplied the raft, perhaps Hafiz gave me a paddle.


A Snippet on Not Knowing
(from Bring Me the Rhinoceros, by John Tarrant, pp 31-32)


The old teachers thought that not to know is to step into life without repeating yourself. It is to forget the prejudices and comparisons that say, "I'm better than you, I'm worse than you, I'm good at this, I'm bad at that." If you practice "don't know" mind for long enough, perhaps you can learn how to be good at anything.

While emptiness is what is left when you take away the thoughts and beliefs that you have constructed around an event, not knowing is a way to move in the absence of such thoughts. It's a creative possibility. Not knowing who you are calls you to meet an event without pretending it is something else - something that happened before. Then you might experience just what is happening: something unpredictable, delightful, dangerous and safe - eating a taco or walking down the street.


A Snippet on Not Owing

(from The Gift, Poems by Hafiz trans. Daniel Ladinsky)

THE SUN NEVER SAYS
Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe
Me."
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.

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July 2, 2008

The Invitation of Trees

30 June 2008
Philadelphia, PA

This morning something extraordinary occurred. It actually took me more than an hour to let it sink in before I could capture a bit of it here.

I was sitting with my breathing - inbreath Clear Mind, outbreath Don't Know. Gradually, I noticed how comfortable I was in my body. No urge to move. No itches or facial ticks. None of the twitching that has continued of late. I was just sitting with my breathing and watching my thoughts pass through me. From nowhere to nowhere.

Then I began to notice the sounds around me. The patterns of the birds chirping. Wonderful staccato rhythms. And then more melodious ones. I had an unusual sense that I was somehow expanding to incorporate these sounds. As if I were somehow reaching out beyond this small self. As if all that I was hearing was inside a larger self. Not at all like listening to the sounds. More like listening into them. Into this larger container that was me, yet more than me.

Then I began to notice more sounds. The painter sanding the windows of the big house across the commons. At least that is what it sounded like, although I "saw" no one like that inside the container. I heard a woman talking on her cell phone on the commons as well - a neighbor, although I didn't know who it was. I didn't hear the content, only the happiness in her voice. Since her happiness was now within this container, I was now happy. I felt more and more expansive. In touch with all that was around me, even though there was no longer any around to be around me.

Then I noticed the trees in the commons. I felt a connection to their roots and their ancient rootedness. I felt in touch with their breathing through the very ground itself. In that moment there was no difference between me and "them". Their roots were inside this container as well.

All of a sudden I felt a shudder go through me. It began in my feet and legs, and then moved up into my chest and shoulders. There was no mind. No meaning. No trauma. No joy. Or sadness. No reflection and no echo. Just a shudder that moved through me followed by a profound stillness. I lost touch with parts of my body, and yet didn't mind. I recall thinking that I still must have a thumb on my right hand, even though I couldn't feel it. The same with my feet. Not sensing. Not knowing.

Yet, it all seemed fine by then. The shudder had moved through and had a completeness to it such that even the memory of it now has so little hold on me. It occurred and then it was over.

At some point in there - I cannot recall how long after the shudder - I heard the sound of something crashing down. A really loud cracking sound. It seems odd to me now that I did not open my eyes to see what was happening "out there". It was a loud crack and then it was over. The woman on the phone was still chirping and so were the birds.

It was only later - after I had finished sitting - that I saw the arborist outside working on one of the large trees on the commons. What I had thought was the sound of the housepainter sanding the windows was actually the arborist sawing off the limb of that great, incredibly old tree.

I realized then that the shudder I felt was my experience of tree consciousness within the container. There was no mind, so there was no pain. And since there was no story and no preference, there was no suffering. There was only the shudder, which was like the reflection of the geese flying over the smooth surface of the lake.*

The tree was not trying to teach me anything. It just became my teacher by allowing me to feel its own consciousness. And even that thought is creating a layer of meaning that was not there at the time. The tree did not invite me to experience this deep awareness of no awareness. The tree just is an invitation. Just as the lake is. And the wild geese. Just as the river of diamond water where the coin got lost** - the river I am so afraid to go into.

Invitations all.

*The koan is:
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection,
The water has no mind to receive their image.

** This koan is:
The coin that is lost in the river is retrieved from the river.
(You can read more about about all this koan business here.)


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June 21, 2008

Margins

Philadelphia, PA
21 June 2008

This morning I was sitting with this word margin. It may have been in response to an e-mail I received from a dear friend this morning. Among other things she wrote about her relationship with her son and daughter-in-law. She wrote:

...I am trying to matter as well as create a world I want to live in...some combination of being in the third act, feeling the curtain going down, and coming to terms with the fact that I do not matter to my son and his wife the way I had hoped I might...

I guess this whole piece about "mattering" got me to thinking once again about being in (or on) the margins. At first I noticed a kind of almost contentment, as I thought about being on the margin. I even visualized this line:

Words words.More meaningful words.Profound words.Impactful words.Then ME

Right there at the end of the line with all that space next to me. All that luxurious space. Just for me. But I didn't trust that feeling, and of course it didn't last very long. Soon it was replaced by a feeling of sadness and loss. As if I had lost my place, which I suppose is right there in the middle of the page. The one that used to look like this:
PeopleWhoMatter...memememememememememememe...PeopleWhoMatter
But now looks like:
mememePeopleWhoMatterPeopleWhoReallyMatterPeopleWhoMattermememe
That feeling of sadness didn't last long either.

Soon enough I found myself thinking about times when I have felt invisible...and angry. Like the several times when I've been on the train to Center City and the conductor walked by without collecting money for a ticket. The first time this occurred I remember saying something to him to get his attention. When it happened again, though, I said nothing. I silently fumed as a reaction to feeling invisible. And it has happened at least four or five times over the past two years or so. And each time I found myself less angry. Maybe I am becoming resigned to that feeling of invisibility - horrifying thought!

Strange, now that I think about it, how most times when this has happened I've given the uncollected money to a homeless person. I told myself that it was my way of feeling that I had not stolen something. Now, I realize - actually it came to me while meditating - that it was my way to attempt to be seen. I recall how careful I was to be sure that the person saw that it was a five and not a one-dollar bill I was putting into the cup. And I made sure they looked directly at me.

There was a time when I would have felt ashamed to admit this simple truth, this need to be seen even by someone who can barely see. Now it is just so.

The sadness is true. So is the anger and resignation. And so is the need to be seen. And so is this creeping sense of my own, my own what? Desubstanciation, or dematerializing, maybe are the apt words. A kind of slow unmattering.

This may be what the three acts are all about.

We strive so hard to become solid and substantial when we are young. Daddy, Mommy, look at me! Look at me! How many times did we say that in so many ways as children? How many times did we hear that as parents?
Act 1: Water becoming earth.

And then we "become somebody". We have substance. We have standing in the world. We become, as a friend says, human doings, rather than human beings. Someone once said that good parenting is love in continual action. We are vibrant; full of purpose. Striving to create meaning.
Act 2: Earth becoming fire.

I guess as we age we do begin to dematerialize in some ways. Maybe we just don't matter as much in this act, or in the same way, because we are not made of the same matter as we once were. And yet, I do have those moments when, just like in Act 1, I feel like screaming, Look at me! Look at me! Who am I screaming to? My parents? My son? The world? Myself? I have no idea.
Act 3: Fire becoming air.

What's the fourth act I now wonder. Does air become water again? That nice, tidy cycle that allows me to go to sleep in the face of pain and suffering. Pain and suffering on the revolving installment plan. No, there are no acts, I suspect. Only transformations. What is left is to let go of the struggle - the struggle to stay, or leave, the center of the page.

And the struggle to stay out of the margins.


Posted by Edd at 10:05 AM | | Comments (0)

June 3, 2008

Root Canal Dharma

3 June 2008
Tuesday

To be humble is not to make comparisons.
Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse,
bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe.
It is nothing, yet at the same time one with everything.
Dag Hammarksjöld, Markings


Yesterday I found myself in a dentist's chair undergoing a root canal "procedure". It did not go well. The specialist working on me spoke of "tortuous canals", and an "unusual anatomy". Then there was the "calcification" he had to contend with. That did not sound pretty. Not the sort of thing I wanted to hear about my canals, and my anatomy - especially from a man in a mask with a drill in one hand and a sharp pointy thing in the other. Oh, and there was another thing I didn't want to hear. After more than an hour into the ordeal he said, "Well, I've managed to get two of the nerve roots, but the third one is really very difficult to get to."

I recalled the Buddhist proverb: On a journey through three roots and three canals, count two as half way...or something like that.

Forty-five minutes later it was over. Two hours and fifteen minutes all told, but who's counting?

The procedure lasted twice as long as both I and the dentist had expected. While I was not in physical pain (that came later...as in now), it was emotionally grueling, and to some extent, given my own personal history, somewhat traumatizing. Yet, it was bearable because I was not alone. Yes, there was a skilled dentist doing his best to minimize my torment. And there was a very nice assistant with kind eyes, and a welcomed efficiency to her every motion. They were there, but not in the way that a boy from Uganda, Stephen Batte, was there with me through it all.

As it happened, just prior to the procedure I was reading an article about this boy, Stephen. He is nine. He spends his days breaking rocks in a quarry near Kampala. All day long he breaks small rocks into smaller rocks. Like the convicts in the old movies, he has been sentenced to a life at hard labor. Only no court has passed judgment on him. Rather, he is the collateral damage from a civil war. For five years now - more than half his life - he has been working on this rock pile. Perhaps no diamond cutter, yet he does tap his homemade hammer just so onto a larger rock splitting it into smaller bits. A five-gallon bucket full of newly minted gravel garners him the princely sum of six cents. He fills three buckets during each twelve-hour day. Stephen's mother died not long ago in an accident at the quarry, and after that his stepfather abandoned him. So, he is alone now.

A few minutes after seeing the image in the paper of this boy sitting on the small pile of rocks, his stick hammer poised for another strike, he came into my mind again while sitting in the dental chair waiting for the next quick injection of novocaine. At first it was a ...well, if he can sit in the hot sun all day and break rocks without complaining, I can sit through this... kind of thought. I quickly realized how that sort of objectification was terribly self-serving, and not at all useful.

As the procedure proceeded, though, the image of this boy returned again and again. Finally, I began to feel myself in the presence of an enormous wave of compassion. It wasn't that I was being compassionate. Instead, I felt that somehow we were both enfolded in a larger mantle of compassion. That his suffering and my torment lived in the spaces well beyond, and also in between, the tapping and the drilling - in the empty spaces where we are all connected.

When I was able for a moment to let go of comparing one suffering against another, my pile of rocks compared with his, I was able sit quietly in those folds and hold him in my mind as another being in the world, another co-conspirator in this illusion of our distinctness and our differences. I found myself with tears in my eyes when I thought of the comment he made to the reporter, "Life has always been hard here..." Just so.

It's just that in that moment the here was there. And now here is here again. And I notice that the opening, that space between spaces, is still here, still open. I may not be able to do anything today about that rock pile in Uganda, but perhaps I will come upon another child today, or another being of any age for that matter, with a rock pile of their own that I might help diminish. And who knows, perhaps my own pile will diminish as well.

We can make meaning of our lives only when we open ourselves to all the joys and sufferings of the world - our own and those of others we will never know.

What I do know now is that a root canal is just a procedure, just dharma.

Update: On the way home from the office this afternoon a boy turned to me at the bus stop, and said, "Aren't you Mr. Edd, the man who traveled all over?" I looked quizzical for a second, and then I recognized him. (His name escaped me - still a little foggy from the medication. Oh, I think it is Saleem.) We had met several months ago at this same spot. Back then he had asked me if I had ever traveled outside the country. I said that I had, and then we talked about my travels in the past and his dreams for the future. This afternoon we picked up that conversation about his dreams for the future. My rock pile was smaller by the time he got off at his stop.

That's dharma, too. Another opportunity to stay awake for a moment.

Here is a link to the newspaper article. And here is another one.

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January 18, 2008

Traveling to Ground Zero Plus One

16 September 2001
Sunday

The call was a brief one, but everything seemed to change by the end of it. Matthew had only been away from home for a few weeks. School had just begun. But now his school, Eugene Lang College, was temporarily not a school. The slightly worn paper sign on the door said "Triage St Vincent's Hospital". The college became the place you could go to find out if a loved one was in one of the area hospitals. If their name was not on the list, then you would go to the Lexington Avenue Armory to fill out the missing per-sons forms - those are the forms that create the steadily rising number of "missing". But I'm getting ahead of myself. First there was the phone call.

Are you all right?
Everything is OK. I'm with some friends from school.
No. I asked you if you are all right.
Well, mostly. I'm a little freaked out. This morning there was a body in the street in front of the dorm. I went out and talked to a policeman and he said that the man died of smoke inhalation. Pops, I don't think it is a good idea for you to come up here. It's too dangerous.

As parents we secretly try to prepare for this day. With each ritual, each rite of passage - large or small, from moving up to the bluebird reading group, and each pencil mark on the door jam, right through to prom pictures and graduations - we prepare for the day when our children are no longer chil-dren. I suspect deep down we know it is futile, but we do it anyway. The day comes and it catches us by surprise. That day came for me when my son tried to protect me from the horrors that he had seen, instead of me trying to shield his eyes in one last equally futile attempt to hold on to the child that is already becoming a memory. In that moment it was as if the hand I held not so long ago to cross a busy street had suddenly become larger than mine, and was now gripping my hand. It all happened in an instant.

But I went anyway.

The train ride from Philadelphia to New York was eerily uneventful. It was like every other one I have ever taken. Until we got past the Newark Sta-tion. I sat at a table in the club car on the right side of the train. That's the side facing the city on the northbound route. Friday morning was gray and overcast. Nevertheless, the Manhattan skyline suddenly appeared off a bit in the distance. The outline of the city was barely visible, but then as I looked closer - the way you look at a face that seems almost familiar, and then you recognize an old friend who seemed to have changed over time - I could see the smoke billowing up through the hole where the towers used to be.

I remember thinking how the sky and the skyline now seemed to be oddly intermingled. Then I thought of that cartoon character, the one who kept saying the sky was falling. Only this time it was no cartoon. The sky had fallen into the space that had opened up.

The first thing I noticed approaching Seventh Avenue up the stairs from Penn Station was the smell. It was a subtle smell of smoke, but more like the smell of burnt charcoal with too much lighter fluid. The smell that is barely noticeable, yet impossible to ignore. Of course, I thought, it's the jet fuel. And then just as quickly I grew accustomed to it, and the smell seemed to recede quietly into the background.

And then there were the sounds of sirens. They seemed to be everywhere. Police sirens off in the distance. And then the sirens from two fire engines traveling against traffic on this busy one-way street. In any other place this scene would have seemed bizarre. On this day, in this city, it already seemed normal to me.

The cab ride to the Lower East Side was uneventful except for the radio, which was set to a religious station with someone reading from the Old Testament. The driver's dashboard was filled with small religious icons. It looked as though they had been there for a while. This was not some fox-hole conversion. This dial was probably permanently set to that station. I was already beginning to feel some of the familiar sights and sounds that compose this city.

Matt and I met outside his friend's dorm. It was wonderful to get my arms around him again. To feel his substance, the thickness of his back and shoulders. To feel how easily he bends his tall frame to meet me without in any way diminishing me. I've seen him do it from afar to others. For the first time it occurs to me that this has been happening with me for a long time as well. Everything is changing.

He took me over to his new place, his new home across from Union Square. We were about a mile from Ground Zero, as they were calling the site of the disaster. It occurred to me that we must be at Ground Plus One, but I doubt if anyone else there counted that way. On the way we came upon a shrine - one of many we would see this day. Off to one side in the park an impromptu collection of momentos lay in display as a large group of people huddled together in the cool drizzly morning. I went over, as if I were a visitor to a church I had never been to before. Not sure of the right thing to do. Not sure if I belonged. And then someone made room for us and we folded into the circle effortlessly.

Some of the candles were still burning - defiantly almost in the dampness. Others had gone out, the water having pooled in the wells submerging the wicks. It's only temporary, I thought to myself, as soon as it is dry, some-one will relight those candles. Then I began to look at all the various objects within the circle. Besides the candles I saw a woman's black shoe. How fitting, I thought, just one shoe. Even now I don't fully understand the truth of that thought, but it still stands. Several books lay open. Several were bibles, others looked like favorites someone wanted to share. I wanted so much to go into the collection to see what pages they were opened to, but I didn't. Leaning against a makeshift monument draped in a flag was a red teddy bear, nearby another hand made sculpture, a sprinkling of beads and bangles. Each one individually would have looked like so much litter strewn about the city streets, but clustered together as they were, I marveled at how pro-found the mundane becomes when it is in such sharp relief. Bits of stuff that have been left behind, that had been touched just a few days before, nestled there as a way to let the living say good-bye to their dead.

After prayers, lunch. A short walk from the park led to John's Deli, a wonderful little corner place made deceptively larger with strategically placed mirrors. The owner, the latest iteration of "John" I suspect, is a delightfully rotund Greek gentleman. He greeted us as if we were regulars. I had the sense that if we return again, next time we will be regulars. He greeted others - the real regulars - as they straggled in during lunch. Each time was a quiet reunion, an unspoken prayer of thanks that another one had made it, another was safe.

We ordered sandwiches.
Have it on rye, it's best with rye.
Thanks.
Fuggeddaboudid...

In some cities a "thank you" is followed by a "your welcome", or a "my pleasure", but in New York it is fuggeddaboudid. Some things even crises can't affect.

There was talk about how the Lexington Street Armory had become the place to file missing person's reports and that there were grief counselors on hand. I know from personal experience how draining this work can be and had the thought that they might need some help. So after lunch Matt and I took a cab up to 24th Street to see if maybe I could lend a hand.

Everywhere we looked outside the armory we saw leaflets and flyers with pictures and descriptions "Missing... 5'10, 160 pounds... last seen leaving the WTC..." Loved ones walking about the street with larger pictures. It seemed as if every inch of wall space was papered with such posters. I thought immediately that the fatality estimates are way too low. Then I thought maybe this was a good thing, to slowly allow us to let the enormity of it all to sink in.

What I didn't see was an angry face. Just oceans of sadness and concern. What I didn't see was stinginess. Instead we were met with kindness and civility everywhere. People were taking an extra minute with each other making sure they were getting to the right place. Not sure who was who, everyone was treated as the vulnerable beings they were and are. It was a strange contradiction - this city that was founded on a real estate deal and, in addition to the incomprehensible loss of lives, a city that has suddenly lost so much of its real estate, is acting with generosity and a sense of abundance. I wondered what this city (or any other one for that matter) would be like if it sustained that way of being with each other even after the pile of debris is removed, even after the last body is recovered.

A police officer gave me a phone number to call to volunteer. I called from the street. It rang about thirty times with no answer. It seemed as if they had plenty of help, so we thought it best to leave the area to make room for the people who were slowly migrating up from Matt's college after not finding the names they were searching for on the hospital lists.

So off we went back to the Lower East Side to meet up with Jim and Jane, my brother and his wife. We packed up for the trip down to Philadelphia. As poignant as the scenes were on the streets, I was relieved to be leaving, to give them a break from all the reminders around them.

We snaked our way north to the bridge - the George Washington I guess it was. Then before I knew it we were on the New Jersey Turnpike. Traffic slowed as people looked over to the east as the smoke rose as if from some gigantic, invisible eternal flame. Matt was in the back seat next to me. I couldn't resist the urge to put my arm around his broad shoulders. The sounds of the drumbeat of war were slowly receding from my mind. The fears I have about the two facts I know for sure about war - that young people get killed and that civil liberties get curtailed - were put away for an-other time. Perhaps for another letter. Right now, I thought, my New York family is a bit frayed around the edges, but they are safe and sound. For now, I thought, and that's all I can hope for.

Then as we left the city behind us the conversation began again. Talk of family and friends and food. A few jokes. It all seemed so normal.

*Originally published in The Journal of Creative Non-Fiction in 2001

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