September 11th, six days later.

Right. Last Wednesday. I was driving through Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. I didn't think about it in advance, but that was a great way to spend the day. We passed flags at half mast. Folks behind the counter at Starbucks or Wendy's or whatever were wearing 'United We Stand' pins. I didn't have the news on. I was listening to REM and Staind and Crystal Method. I didn't think about it at all. I didn't think 'Gosh, it's 1pm. Last year at this time I was dialing my parents number over and over and over and over again to let them know I was safe in Brooklyn.' If I were in NYC last Wednesday, I don't know what I would have done.

Here's what's wrong for me. There was no news. My means of navigating life in general is to gather information and put it all together in a sort of constantly shifting mosaic of my understanding of the world. That's how I got through September 11th and it's aftermath last year. (Did you know that the World Trade Center, built on unstable landfill, sits in a sort of giant subterranean bathtub? A big concern was that the wall of the bathtub would be breached. Water from the Hudson River would flow in and fill up the bathtub. The other thing that penetrates the bathtub are the PATH trains. So the water would have flowed into the PATH tunnels, under the river to New Jersey, then back through the tunnels into Manhattan, where the PATH connects to the New York City subway system. The subways would flood, crippling the city, and there would be nothing that anyone could do to prevent it from happening due to the intricacy of the tunnel network. Did you know that? I did.) And there was no new information last Wednesday. And absent information, I'd just be sort of left with feeling. And we couldn't have that.