tavie.com

Oh. Got a new cell phone today. Same number.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 9:36 PM | shower me with attention

I want it understood that I don't look down in any way on those who have found newfound patriotism or had their feelings of national pride strengthened by the recent horror. I look upon it as a very powerful tool for comforting and uniting; just because something may be granfalloonery in my eyes does not mean it isn't a very real and very beautiful force in others' eyes.

This morning I was watching some of my favourite musicals on DVD because I love them and they make me feel good. I watched some Into the Woods, my favourite of all time, and found the ending of "No More" very moving:

No more giants, waging war
Can't we just pursue our lives
with our children and our wives
'til that happy day arrives
how do you ignore
all the witches,
all the curses,
all the wolves, all the lies,
the false hopes, the goodbyes,
the reverses?
All the wondering what even worse
is still in store?
All the children
all the giants
no more.

Then I watched some Godspell, for I always find my gentle hippie clowns so very comforting, and I was positively chilled to rediscover something I'd forgotten; at the end of "All For the Best", the entire cast is dancing on the top of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. I think it's actually on the cover for the soundtrack album or something; it's a famous scene. The movie was made in 1972, and you can see that the towers aren't even completely finished. There's still scaffolding all around the top. The end of the song is a swooping crane shot backing away to show the almost-completed towers.

Jesus. Singing hippie Jesus.

Today I spent the day with some loved ones; my Gina and Erica and Cheryl, down from Rhode Island, and my Goose, and we were together and it felt good.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 8:59 PM | shower me with attention

So I've been trying to figure out, for the past few days, why wearing red, white and blue and having an American flag stuck in my ponytail doesn't make me feel any more patriotic than I've ever felt, and why the impact that Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle had on me hasn't ebbed, and why singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" with strangers, while moving and beautiful in the fact that we were all singing in one voice, hasn't made me feel any less that patriotism is all really granfalloonery, and then this wise woman explained it to me:

While I may have problems with "God Bless America," I do think "United We Stand" is a wonderful motto to which we should all be beholden; this is a time we should transcend arbitrary borders and nationalities and emerge as not citizens of a country or a group but as citizens of the world.

Thank you for having the words.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:30 AM | shower me with attention

Tonight Kirsten, her friend Cammi and I went to the candlelight vigil in Union Square. It was strange and sad and solemn and fairly awe-inspiring. We sang with strangers. Later Erica and Kirsten's friend Reiko met us and we went and had coffee and for some reason I had to call Goose and I heard her voice and that was very good.

Then we went to the movies and Aggie and I saw Hedwig again.

It was different. It was funnier and it was sadder the third time. I cried harder than I'd ever cried at a movie during "Midnight Radio". That song will always mean much more than it should to me, now. It will always conjure burning memoes falling out of the sky.

You know you're doin' all right
So hold on to eachother
you gotta hold on tonight

Yeah, that one did it.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:13 AM | shower me with attention

Thursday, September 13, 2001

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

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

At 8:45, I got out of the subway on Rector Street. I was listening to "Midnight Radio" from Hedwig on my headphones, and the paper raining down from the sky looked like a ticker-tape parade. Businessmen and women were stopping on the street and staring at the sky; we didn't have a clear view of the World Trade Center. All we saw was that some of the paper was burning.

On Wall Street, at the cart where I bought my coffee, the woman next to me said that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. Everyone within hearing was shocked. I rode the elevator up to the 35th floor on 60 Wall Street and found my entire office gathered at the big windows with the unobstructed view of the Twin Towers right across the way.

I didn't see the black hole and the flames at first. I was shaking, I had my hands over my mouth. I tried to call home but Kirsten was still asleep. I went back to the window and that's when the second plane came crashing into the second tower. I saw it.

It was unreal. I thought I was watching it on television. I thought the glass window in front of me was a television screen.

A woman screamed. Everyone ran for the elevators. We were scared to be so high up. "I didn't just see that, I didn't just see that," I kept saying. I felt actually scared for my life. I'd never felt that before. We didn't know what was happening; planes were crashing into tall buildings and we were on a high floor.

We crowded into the elevator, rode down into the lobby. People were milling around looking terrified. I didn't know where to go or what to do. A woman in my office, Alex-- the woman for whom I did computer graveyard inventory the first day-- saw me crying and told me to come home with her. She lived in Hoboken. We didn't know then that everything was closed down. I followed her down to the river because I didn't know what to do. I didn't feel awake. There were people on the streets just standing, staring, crying. We started walking uptown, away from the buildings, next to the river.

I really wish I had worn socks today.

After the first hour or so the pain of my mostly unused leg muscles went away and I could walk without feeling it. Everyone was walking uptown, just trying to get away. We started picking up people like the fucking Wizard of Oz. A man named Richard joined our party. His cell phone seemed to work sporadically and Alex and I managed to get in touch with enough people so that there wouldn't be heart attacks. Richard lived in Queens and wanted to get home to the baby he was helping raise. He was extremely comforting. I'm glad he was with us.

We stopped at a park to rest and met a scared young man from Japan who was fruitlessly asking people for their cell phones so he could try and call Tokyo. He was unsuccessful and was sitting on a park bench a few blocks from us staring into space. We asked him to join us. We wanted to get somewhere safe. We didn't know what to think, were afraid of things in the air and wanted to stay by the river where the air was fresher. I was thirsty but Alex suggested I not drink the water in the park fountain. We didn't know what to be afraid of, so we were afraid of everything. When military planes flew overhead we all froze and stared up until they were gone. We decided to head for the 59th street bridge and walk across, being sure to get enough inward so that we wouldn't be walking too close to the United Nations.

I've never seen anything like the mass of people walking through the streets, all in the same direction. We passed by a hospital and saw an enormous line. We bought enormous bottles of water to drink. We passed through the neighbourhood of Goose and Matt's school and I hoped they were together and okay.

Alex finally reached her sister on the phone. We all exchanged phone numbers, and she and the Japanese businessman went to meet her at 34th street. Richard and I walked the rest of the way. The scene at the 59 St. Bridge was like something out of a movie about WW II. There was an unbelievable mass of people moving across the bridge. We had to climb over cement guardrails to get to the path. We walked next to slow-moving cars and trucks. I began to feel my feet. And it was really, really stupid of me to wear a skirt today. (Any woman with big thighs knows what I mean about that. It began to hurt worse than my feet.)

Queens was a mess. Richard and I picked through the crowd and moved down Crescent Avenue. There were people standing outside their buildings passing out cups of ice water to the walkers.

Richard and I hugged goodbye with promises to call tonight and make sure everyone was okay. The walk from 36th avenue to Roosevelt Island to my building was the longest walk of my life. It was more of a limp, actually.

We started walking away from Wall Street at 9:15. I got home shortly after 1.

You don't want to see my feet right now. Why didn't I wear SOCKS today?

Why are you in Tavie's head? 5:13 PM | shower me with attention

Monday, September 10, 2001

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

I lost my FUCKING ASS CELL PHONE. I left it in my FUCKING ASS PSYCHOLOGY CLASS. The battery isn't working right so it doesn't stay on long and therefore calling it does NOTHING. It is LOST. And my ghetto-ass school is full of fucking-ass LOSERS most of whom would never THINK to deposit such an item in a lost and found office when they could have themselves a nice, free Nokia phone.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

I cannot express how upset I am.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 9:14 PM | shower me with attention

Why I Should Be An Advertising Executive:

::close-up on a depressed-looking woman on a white couch::
::cue voice-over music::
Aimee Mann: I can't do it, I can't conceive--
Voice-Over Guy: Not so fast!
::depressed-looking woman looks up hopefully::
Voice-Over Guy: Johnson & Johnson Home Pregnancy Tests. If we fuck it up later, you do get your money back!

Why are you in Tavie's head? 4:39 PM | shower me with attention

I hate it when the hotties get down on themselves. (I only use the word "hottie" ironically, you understand, for I think it a silly word.) But the Gosling is quite attractive, you know. (Although criminally underage. ;)

Last night my sister and I had the following conversation:

Tavie: Who turned off the air conditioner? It's like hell in here.
Kirsten: It really sucks living in a family full of fat people.
Tavie: WHAT????? ::starts throwing things and screaming and generally having a big fit:: ("You horse-toothed, big-nosed jackass, how dare you, etc")

For although I understand that I am fat, and when strangers (usually nasty children) allude to it, I generally ignore it, but Kirsten has to learn that she, of all people, must not use it as a weapon against me. I will crush her every time she does it.

Not that she is a bad sister, you understand, but when she gets in a nasty mood I have to bite back. One is not superior simply because one is the only thin person in a family full of obese sacks of gloop.

In other news, saw "The Producers" on Broadway yesterday with mom and sis and Tante Joan. It was most excellent, but the fellow who wasn't Matthew Broderick (I TOLD my family we wouldn't get to see him when they first got the tickets-- I just knew) really sucked in the role of Leo Bloom. He was way too Broadway for it. It's a very Broadway show, but Leo Bloom has to have some degree of mousiness. This guy was a great singer and dancer, but he just didn't work as Leo. However, Nathan was so wonderful as to completely make the aforementioned flaw irrelevant. The chick who played Ulla ("You Swedish tease, you'll bury me") was vunderfyool as vell, and of course reminded me of my own Swedish meadowlark.

As I was telling my mom yesterday about the glory that is Matt, I caught myself referring to him as "my little love". My mom said, "You're his Auntie Mame!" and it is so true. I am totally his Auntie Mame. I like to think I'm Goose's, too. Only in their case, it's ME writing down the words I don't understand and asking them about them later. ;)
I am, however, their Rosalind Russell Auntie Mame. I am most certainly not the Lucille Ball Auntie Mame. No way, no how.

(Zero Mostel just walked into the room and shouted, "Tavie! Go to verk!" And so I must now get up and shimmy my way through another list of numbers. Goddag!.)

Why are you in Tavie's head? 11:02 AM | shower me with attention

Sunday, September 09, 2001

Today we took Kit to the Bronx Zoo. We saw many animals, notably the gorillas and the elephants, which are the best animals. Then we went to the Longhorn and had steak. Then we came back home and watched "Shadow of the Vampire", which just ended. Kitana and I were half-asleep through most of it; she is now asleep in front of VH1 Classic and I am half-asleep in front of the computer. (And you think you're addicted to blogging.) This is not smart because I have to take Kitana to the bus station tomorrow and her bus leaves at 10 am. One thing I've noticed since I've started working is I never, ever get enough sleep anymore. I never wake up naturally, full of rest. Will I ever, again? Even my weekends are sleepless. Boy, am I tired. I feel Goose's pain. I can't even go home and sleep tomorrow, because we have tickets to a matinee of "The Producers" (sans Broderick?!?!?!?).

I'm going to go force her to come to bed now. We must both sleep and awaken unnaturally early.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:25 AM | shower me with attention