tavie.com

I have school in a few hours. This is good. They've turned the Armory, a block away from school, into some sort of command center. I wonder what it will be like outside the building.

I spoke to almost everyone I know Tuesday and yesterday. People I haven't heard from in years. People that didn't contact me, I contacted them. I spoke to the last on my list last night. N. is safe, and so is her husband. She walked across the bridge too. I hadn't realized how scared I'd been about her until I got off the phone. Speaking to her, which I hadn't done in months, about this, really hit me hard. Her husband had had an 8 am meeting scheduled in the WTC; she'd made him hit the snooze and he slept through it, thank god. "It's a good thing I'm so bossy," she told him later.

I've never felt so much fear and helplessness and exhaustion. I've never seen so many affirmations of love. I don't feel any of this is real.

All my loved ones are safe. Everyone I know. The worst off is Matt. I keep crying for him and his family and it's just their home, just physical things, all of them are safe. But it's their lives, too. Their lives are changed forever.

I keep seeing the Japanese man sitting on the bench, staring at nothing.

I keep seeing that homeless girl we met in the park, wandering in a daze that I think was her normal state of being, asking if people were all right, giving walking directions. She told us when she woke up she heard the bang and thought her friends were making noise or something.

I keep seeing Richard, my walking buddy, bursting into tears in the middle of the street when he thought the World Financial Center, where he worked, had been hit. I see myself patting him on the shoulder, not knowing what to do.

I keep seeing Alex waiting for the phone outside of a nail shop where there were still women getting manicures, tears streaming down her face when she finally spoke to her sister.

I keep seeing the car driving over the Roosevelt Island bridge stopping for the man with the walker, and other strangers, to take them the last few blocks to their homes.

I keep seeing the orange traffic cone burning in the sunlight in the middle of a Queens street, unattended, like some sort of gruesome symbol.

I keep seeing that plane crash into the building. I keep seeing this more than anything else. I can't stop seeing it.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 11:20 AM | shower me with attention