The whole routine of expecting a major layoff became a part of our daily lives after 9/11. The office was crawling with layoff banter. It was becoming harder and harder to be productive. I could not get any work done because just when I was able to bring myself together to concentrate on my project, another person from the 21st floor would come by to tell me all about their version of the news.
When I first started working, my coworkers took pride in the number of personal artifacts they had in their cubicles: toys, games, action figures, memorabilia, the list goes on. As the times changed from bad to worse, as our stock took a freefall dive down, and got kicked off the Fortune 500, the personal items started to decrease in number.
The personal toys were the first to go. Later the toys belonging to the office were hidden in a closet on the 20th floor. Soon we were all reduced to a bunch of people sitting at empty desks with our laptops.
In the good days, there was this fond term called the "beach" that is new economy's term for the "bench" as in not currently assigned to any projects. The beach used to be most sought after status for Sapient employees. Most employees worked 60-80 hour weeks during their project assignments. Therefore, several weeks spent on the beach were thought of as a rest time between projects.
As the company struggled, beach became the worst place any could be. No one wanted to be caught without a project assignment. Even those that were assigned to internal projects were at unease. All these people from other offices were calling our project managers almost begging for assignment to our project.
Being on a project felt like being in a lifeboat as Titanic sent. The sea was full of people struggling to keep afloat. If any of these people came close to our lifeboat they either tried to climb on or tried to turn it over so that they could get on it. It was THAT ugly at times.
The dress code changed also. Sapient employees were notorious for going to client meetings in raggy jeans and dirty t-shirts. Well, that was then and this was now --as our CEOs put it in a company wide e mail: the times and the economy was a lot more somber which meant that we were recommended/required to wear business casual now. This did not stand too well with the artistic branches of the company. But as we went from one layoff to the next, it became apparent, compliance with the dress code mattered.
Sapient had several core values. These core values were studied, elaborated on, and written about more than perhaps most of our client projects. Sapient was core value obsessed. One of our core values was "openness". This value meant that anyone at any level of the institution could speak freely about their observations on the company and would not be penalized for it.
Well, for one thing, this value is very hard to grasp for some; after all what is really the difference between "openness" and constant state of discontent and criticism of everything? Naturally, the distinction was easy to miss for many. Needless to say, these people were the first ones to go.
Sapient suffered from all the ailments and neuroses of any old corporation despite the fact that in its roots was the best of intentions: to become a non-traditional corporation, one that cared for its employees.
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Unlike most Americans, my TV and I have never been that good friends. I hated broadcast TV and was even less fond of cable. I always ended up watching a DVD. Truthfully most nights I just did not have time to sit for hours in front of the TV.
After 9/11, I now watch TV. I, the guy who never watched news, now watch news every morning religiously. If I do not see dead people, a bombing in an embassy, a fire in a nightclub, a failed election in a third world country my whole day is thrown off kilter. News media has bred the need for disaster into our souls so in this sense our perpetual state of catastrophe is a self-fulfilling one. It is not because the world is coming to an end, it is not because anything getting worse than it was before, it is just that our definition of being alive includes a healthy appetite for mishaps, losses, missed chances, and even the demise of others.
To this day whenever there is a documentary on 9/11, I can’t watch anything else. I have to see those towers come down one by one, one more time, as if I was not there; right there twenty blocks away, smelling the fumes, feelings the rush of air as they came down. As I cried for no apparent reason that day all through the event and the rest of the day, I tear up still today when I see images of the event.
When one experiences something this traumatic, the logical course of action would be to get away from the event, and all references to it. This is done for one's own sanity's sake and not because of disrespect to people who died. I could not do this. I reveled in the pain; a pain that really was not mine to be had. I knew no one from the towers, no one I knew really was harmed by the event. So why was I grieving the loss of something that had nothing to do with my life?
For several months after that day, I watched the TV non-stop. I watched the coverage of the event consume all daytime, nighttime, prime time, downtime TV time. I watched on as other shows started to return slowly claiming to be less humorous than before. I watched as comedians could once again make wisecrack jokes on TV, I watched as humor struggled, I watched as I tried to laugh. Then slowly the images of the towers started to disappear. They first disappeared slowly from TV broadcast. Then the signs around town started changing. Subway adds and billboards were the first to defect. Then magazines stopped printing glorious pictures of them. TV shows that even gave a glimpse of the towers were edited to surgically remove any reference to them. New films being released were delayed so that the twins' absence would not be reminded to unsuspecting New Yorkers.
What were we trying to forget? The towers? How great our life was when they were around? How miserable we are now in the aftermath of it all? Or how badly we were hit after all these years, after all these years we thought we were invincible? All of the above perhaps, perhaps none at all.
Like many people, I did not care for these two extremely ugly buildings until they were gone. Until that day, any midtown building could be the joy of my day and perhaps the love of my life. Any building that had a fancy crown, a gilded lobby, any building with a 306 million price tag could be the smile on my face.
I did not realize I liked the World Trade Center until it was gone; erased permanently from the spot it scarred with its footprint. Now in its absence, I craved its ugly existence --much like a kid missing an emotionally abusive mother once she's gone.
To this day whenever there is a documentary on 9/11, I can’t watch anything else. I have to see those towers come down one by one, one more time, as if I was not there; right there twenty blocks away, smelling the fumes, feelings the rush of air as they came down. As I cried for no apparent reason that day all through the event and the rest of the day, I tear up still today when I see images of the event.
When one experiences something this traumatic, the logical course of action would be to get away from the event, and all references to it. This is done for one's own sanity's sake and not because of disrespect to people who died. I could not do this. I reveled in the pain; a pain that really was not mine to be had. I knew no one from the towers, no one I knew really was harmed by the event. So why was I grieving the loss of something that had nothing to do with my life?
For several months after that day, I watched the TV non-stop. I watched the coverage of the event consume all daytime, nighttime, prime time, downtime TV time. I watched on as other shows started to return slowly claiming to be less humorous than before. I watched as comedians could once again make wisecrack jokes on TV, I watched as humor struggled, I watched as I tried to laugh. Then slowly the images of the towers started to disappear. They first disappeared slowly from TV broadcast. Then the signs around town started changing. Subway adds and billboards were the first to defect. Then magazines stopped printing glorious pictures of them. TV shows that even gave a glimpse of the towers were edited to surgically remove any reference to them. New films being released were delayed so that the twins' absence would not be reminded to unsuspecting New Yorkers.
What were we trying to forget? The towers? How great our life was when they were around? How miserable we are now in the aftermath of it all? Or how badly we were hit after all these years, after all these years we thought we were invincible? All of the above perhaps, perhaps none at all.
I did not realize I liked the World Trade Center until it was gone; erased permanently from the spot it scarred with its footprint. Now in its absence, I craved its ugly existence --much like a kid missing an emotionally abusive mother once she's gone.
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Deutsche Bank was the client of our current project at work. Within minutes all the critical systems of the bank went down and several systems remained down for several weeks. It turns out DB did not have any backup systems or they too were damaged during the attack. The scale of the event was apparent to all of us in New York City but looking at this incident from a German Bank's perspective, the lack of preparation could not be excused. Needless to say the big Bosses were quick to send a few of the administrators in NY to the firing squad pretty fast.
All of the bandwidth of DB NY was overnight redirected to bringing back the system. Of course no one cared about the training software Sapient was designing for them. Sapient team took three days off after 9/11 but then the next Monday we were back at work --with nothing to do. The client was scheduled to deliver us the content that would go into the training software and they were nowhere near ready. What was worse is they could not give us an ETA for the completion of the content. My team was sitting on their hands. At first it was a good thing after our hectic pace in the last few months. Then it got old and we started overanalyzing everything. I can not tell you how many redundant meetings I sat in during this time. We were all going through something and my cooperation was necessary so I played along.
During this three-week hiatus, I engaged in my own form of therapy. On one side I was building towers with the huge stash of LEGO blocks we had in the office, on the other I started writing some code to create automated templates for some of the presentations we were preparing. I was just coding away, I had no development plans and definitely no intentions to use this code in the client project.
I have a bad habit of showing my code to my producers often. This is a remnant of my childhood days; I have always been hungry for attention and approval. This little pet project was no different; I frequently showed it to my producer, Courtney. She was very impressed with it and encouraged me to keep working on it.
The more I worked on it, the more it seemed we could use this code to win some of the time lost once we receive the content. I do not blame any of us really but at some point we went insane and showed my work to the client. The client loved it, and said: "Yes, now you have delivered, this is the scalable solution we have been asking for since the beginning of this engagement."
While I thought to myself that this development was sure to bring me the kind of recognition I have been craving in this office, a storm was already brewing.
Once the client asked for this change, a quick meeting was held with them to renegotiate the price tag since we were now giving them more than we had originally promised. The client agreed to pay us $50k in addition to the original project bid for what we called the "Blackbox".
Blackbox, while sounding quite fancy, was actually a template implemented in Flash 4.0 that had within it a bunch of dynamic text fields and capability to load external graphics. It enabled relatively untrained users to create PowerPoint like presentations within the visual design Sapient had designed for Deutsche Bank's training presentations.
I went to work on the code, to make it more stable, and add the finishing touches to it. I thought I was pretty close to finishing it when without a warning a committee of directors from an unseen location within the company descended on our team and particularly on me. They called the whole process a "project review" and my bit of it a "code review". The idea sounded great except we were under extremely tight deadlines that had already been stretched to the limit.
The directors asked for all this documentation about the Blackbox, that as you guessed it, did not exist. I had to write the documentation in no time; luckily I got some serious help from a fellow coder.
Then I was asked to provide copies of my source code. The directors of technology looked at my code and made recommendations. As I said I am sure the intentions were well placed but these people had never programmed in Flash and did not know anything about it. During our review meetings, I had to answer a bunch of ridiculous questions.
When the dust settled, I finally understood what had just happened. Instead of being praised for spending my personal time in addition to office time to write a piece of code that literally saved a doomed project, I was blamed with a whole bunch of nonsense such as my code's inability to scale up and talk to databases in the future. The list of things I did wrong seemed to keep going and going. Perhaps some of this was my own fault, I was somewhat internalizing some of the angst that was around me. Maybe these people did not really blame me all that much, maybe they did. Sometimes one needs the equivalent of a Greek chorus to tell what the final verdict is because most of the time life never really does.
All I know is, I did not get a bonus that quarter and Sapient got its extra $50K from DB. The project was a success, and DB actually loved the Blackbox. This success story created a whole new set of demos and more work for us from DB.
Just when we thought we had a long trail of projects ahead of us, Sapient made a drastic move and laid off 40% of its New York Office. Times were sure changing, the invincible architects of the new economy were now out on the street, still tipsy from their large severances but when no one was looking fear laid in one corner of their eyes like a dusty old curtain.
I was laid off too, along with the other fifteen people Sapient moved from Austin to New York less than twelve months ago. The severance was nice but not nice enough considering I had eight months of unemployment to look forward to.
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It's been a couple of months since 9/11 and I still do not quite feel right. I don't know what the exact problem is. I feel exhausted, weak and unable to pull myself out of bed in the mornings. I am missing at least one day of the workweek and I feel real bad about it. What compounds my feelings of guilt is the fact that the people at work are not really saying much about it at all. If I did not know better I would conclude that no one notices that I am almost never at work on Thursdays and/or Fridays.
I have no substance abuse problems; I do not drink, I do not smoke, I have never used drugs recreationally, I don't binge eat; I don't go for days without sleep. I have a regular schedule, I get exercise, and I also watch what I eat. After this entire set of precautions, why then do I feel so horrible? I am 27 I feel 50. My energy levels keep fluctuating, some days I am crazy and bouncing off the walls, others I might as well die and be put underground. My migraines are hitting me almost every other day with increasing intensity. I have recently even started seeing colors during my migraines. I have been told that seeing visual artifacts is the sign of a severe migraine.
The strange thing is back in Austin I did not even have so much as a headache. Ever since I moved to NYC, migraines have greeted me like a welcome bandwagon and have never left my side to this day. After another Thursday away from work, I came in on Friday morning. I was on a mission. I was going to fix this migraine and fatigue thing once and for all. So I started searching the web. As usual there were the miracle cures, the unheard of diseases, and several questionnaires that conclude that you're bipolar even before you begin answering the questions. After a few hours of searching something caught my eye on our intranet page: An advertisement for nutritional counseling. The ad listed all of the symptoms I was suffering from and offered one free trial session. I felt I had nothing to lose; plus because this advertisement was on our company site, I thought my company was somewhat endorsing this person.
I sent an e-mail to the given address detailing some of my symptoms and what I am planning to get out of the consulting sessions. I received a prompt reply the next day. When I called the number in the e-mail, a very soft-spoken person answered. Her name was Sohyoung and although she did not have an official degree she was taking well-being counseling classes. The credentials were on the weak side but just like any other New Yorker I was lured by the free offerings --the free session. We agreed to meet that Saturday at her building on the Upper East Side.
I took the subway, the 4-5-6 (the JLo Line as my cousin and I called it) line up to Upper East Side. I took an express train that got me to her station within 3 stops. This is very convenient I thought to myself. I got off the train and when I exited the station it felt like I had been transported to a completely different part of the country. I assumed 14th street's unending buzzing action to be the norm for NYC. Whenever I traveled to these northern neighborhoods, the calm of the street always hit me when I climbed up the subway station steps. Sohyoung's neighborhood was beautiful, but not glitzy. This was where the normal people lived on the Upper East Side; it was a mix of tall high-rise building with 30-40 storey condos and shorter 4-5 storey buildings of old New York City.
Sohyoung greeted me at her building's entrance hall. They had a security desk with three attendants and everything. I don't want to sound like I have never seen a residential building with porters before but still this was more impressive than I expected.
She was an average height lady of Asian origin. I could not tell for sure which part of the world she was from. She was cute, and endearing; definitely one of those people you just warm up to right away although you know nothing about them. We went upstairs to this very nice lounge area at the top floor of her building. There was a gym next to the area we sat but there was no one there. I thought to myself, if I had 24-hour access to a nice gym like this I would be using it and it would not sit there empty.
The conversation mostly ranged from question answer to just darn right confessions of a new economy child. I gave her as much information as possible about my lifestyle, my eating, sleeping habits and my work situation. Although throughout this time she asked occasional questions and mostly listened, she was already doing a lot of good to me. I was finally getting a lot of things off of my chest. At the end of the hour, she wrapped up the conversation and offered me a seated massage.
While this was a very nice offering, as weird as I am about human touch from strangers, I did not quite know how to respond to the offer. It seemed at the time, it would be rude to say no, so I said yes. The massage was amazing, partially because I do not let anyone touch me for so long in the first place. I was getting warm and flushed, and I could feel underneath my clothes my skin was sweating like crazy in response to Sohyoung's massage. She definitely knew how to give a great massage.
I hate to say this but the massage was the final dealmaker for me. So I signed the dotted line for 6 months of sessions, 4 sessions per month totaling up to $600. I would pay her monthly but if we skipped a session, I would not lose it as long as I gave her advance notice.
So we began working through the rubble trying to patch my nutrition and my soul. The second work area came as a surprise to me. Sohyoung was not only counseling me on nutrition but she was more than willing if not more interested in hearing me talk about my life, my ordeals with my family, my relationship, my background. At times she would be so engrossed at my monologue that two hours would go by and we would still be sitting there. She was very helpful because she was a very good listener and that's what I needed at the time: someone who would listen to me and not judge me, at least not openly.
On the nutrition front, she added several leafy green vegetables to my diet, helped me increase my water intake, and banned all diet sodas out of my diet. Believe it or not, her recommendations seemed to be helping. My migraines were becoming weaker and far apart and I felt more energetic than usual. I am sure the tweaks in my nutrition were helpful but I cannot help but believe that I mostly benefited from the heart-to-heart conversations that helped me shed the bile that had been building inside me ever since I moved to NYC.
Here I was becoming a true New Yorker, unable to find any dedicated friends who can listen to me babble for 3 hours about quite unsubstantial matters, I rented my own friend who would listen to me no matter what. Perhaps it was true, in NYC you could get anything you wanted / needed if you knew where to get it from and how much to pay for it.
Sohyoung and I met all spring, even after my layoff. After the layoff she proved to be an invaluable source of comfort and wisdom. As the summer months progressed, while I enjoyed our weekly conversations, I had started to feel a little strange about paying for them. So my pocketbook was finally catching up with my emotional side. I was not planning to renew our engagement once the first six months were over but our sessions had to stop before then.
She traveled to Korea in mid-summer and mysteriously never came back. She sent me a cryptic message about how she had discovered in Seoul that she had a medical problem and she intended to stay there until it was completely cured. We exchanged a few e-mails after that but I never heard from her again after I moved back to Austin Texas.
I have no substance abuse problems; I do not drink, I do not smoke, I have never used drugs recreationally, I don't binge eat; I don't go for days without sleep. I have a regular schedule, I get exercise, and I also watch what I eat. After this entire set of precautions, why then do I feel so horrible? I am 27 I feel 50. My energy levels keep fluctuating, some days I am crazy and bouncing off the walls, others I might as well die and be put underground. My migraines are hitting me almost every other day with increasing intensity. I have recently even started seeing colors during my migraines. I have been told that seeing visual artifacts is the sign of a severe migraine.
The strange thing is back in Austin I did not even have so much as a headache. Ever since I moved to NYC, migraines have greeted me like a welcome bandwagon and have never left my side to this day. After another Thursday away from work, I came in on Friday morning. I was on a mission. I was going to fix this migraine and fatigue thing once and for all. So I started searching the web. As usual there were the miracle cures, the unheard of diseases, and several questionnaires that conclude that you're bipolar even before you begin answering the questions. After a few hours of searching something caught my eye on our intranet page: An advertisement for nutritional counseling. The ad listed all of the symptoms I was suffering from and offered one free trial session. I felt I had nothing to lose; plus because this advertisement was on our company site, I thought my company was somewhat endorsing this person.
I sent an e-mail to the given address detailing some of my symptoms and what I am planning to get out of the consulting sessions. I received a prompt reply the next day. When I called the number in the e-mail, a very soft-spoken person answered. Her name was Sohyoung and although she did not have an official degree she was taking well-being counseling classes. The credentials were on the weak side but just like any other New Yorker I was lured by the free offerings --the free session. We agreed to meet that Saturday at her building on the Upper East Side.
I took the subway, the 4-5-6 (the JLo Line as my cousin and I called it) line up to Upper East Side. I took an express train that got me to her station within 3 stops. This is very convenient I thought to myself. I got off the train and when I exited the station it felt like I had been transported to a completely different part of the country. I assumed 14th street's unending buzzing action to be the norm for NYC. Whenever I traveled to these northern neighborhoods, the calm of the street always hit me when I climbed up the subway station steps. Sohyoung's neighborhood was beautiful, but not glitzy. This was where the normal people lived on the Upper East Side; it was a mix of tall high-rise building with 30-40 storey condos and shorter 4-5 storey buildings of old New York City.
Sohyoung greeted me at her building's entrance hall. They had a security desk with three attendants and everything. I don't want to sound like I have never seen a residential building with porters before but still this was more impressive than I expected.
She was an average height lady of Asian origin. I could not tell for sure which part of the world she was from. She was cute, and endearing; definitely one of those people you just warm up to right away although you know nothing about them. We went upstairs to this very nice lounge area at the top floor of her building. There was a gym next to the area we sat but there was no one there. I thought to myself, if I had 24-hour access to a nice gym like this I would be using it and it would not sit there empty.
The conversation mostly ranged from question answer to just darn right confessions of a new economy child. I gave her as much information as possible about my lifestyle, my eating, sleeping habits and my work situation. Although throughout this time she asked occasional questions and mostly listened, she was already doing a lot of good to me. I was finally getting a lot of things off of my chest. At the end of the hour, she wrapped up the conversation and offered me a seated massage.
While this was a very nice offering, as weird as I am about human touch from strangers, I did not quite know how to respond to the offer. It seemed at the time, it would be rude to say no, so I said yes. The massage was amazing, partially because I do not let anyone touch me for so long in the first place. I was getting warm and flushed, and I could feel underneath my clothes my skin was sweating like crazy in response to Sohyoung's massage. She definitely knew how to give a great massage.
I hate to say this but the massage was the final dealmaker for me. So I signed the dotted line for 6 months of sessions, 4 sessions per month totaling up to $600. I would pay her monthly but if we skipped a session, I would not lose it as long as I gave her advance notice.
So we began working through the rubble trying to patch my nutrition and my soul. The second work area came as a surprise to me. Sohyoung was not only counseling me on nutrition but she was more than willing if not more interested in hearing me talk about my life, my ordeals with my family, my relationship, my background. At times she would be so engrossed at my monologue that two hours would go by and we would still be sitting there. She was very helpful because she was a very good listener and that's what I needed at the time: someone who would listen to me and not judge me, at least not openly.
On the nutrition front, she added several leafy green vegetables to my diet, helped me increase my water intake, and banned all diet sodas out of my diet. Believe it or not, her recommendations seemed to be helping. My migraines were becoming weaker and far apart and I felt more energetic than usual. I am sure the tweaks in my nutrition were helpful but I cannot help but believe that I mostly benefited from the heart-to-heart conversations that helped me shed the bile that had been building inside me ever since I moved to NYC.
Here I was becoming a true New Yorker, unable to find any dedicated friends who can listen to me babble for 3 hours about quite unsubstantial matters, I rented my own friend who would listen to me no matter what. Perhaps it was true, in NYC you could get anything you wanted / needed if you knew where to get it from and how much to pay for it.
Sohyoung and I met all spring, even after my layoff. After the layoff she proved to be an invaluable source of comfort and wisdom. As the summer months progressed, while I enjoyed our weekly conversations, I had started to feel a little strange about paying for them. So my pocketbook was finally catching up with my emotional side. I was not planning to renew our engagement once the first six months were over but our sessions had to stop before then.
She traveled to Korea in mid-summer and mysteriously never came back. She sent me a cryptic message about how she had discovered in Seoul that she had a medical problem and she intended to stay there until it was completely cured. We exchanged a few e-mails after that but I never heard from her again after I moved back to Austin Texas.
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Here are some advertisements from 9/12. The meaning of these advertisements changes within a few hours on 9/11.
The advertisement reads: "Think New York's been cleaned up? You should see what we've done for vodka".
During my visit to New York City in August 2004, I noticed that this billboard was still in place but the tagline in it had mysteriously changed to "Distilled five times. Once for each Borough."
The advertisement reads:"Stella Artois: Sip from History Untarnished".
This is the makeshift memorial that was put together on 14th street and Avenue A. Someone literally painted the mural overnight. The next morning on 9/12, there were already flowers, candles, messages, and other items surrounding the mural. People visited this mural for weeks afterwards, each time bringing a candle, or some other item.
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I think the biggest cruelty of life is felt at times right after a traumatic event. Usually what hurts most is not the event itself. What hurts most is that the next day almost like clockwork, the sun rises, clouds drift calmly in the sky, even birds fly overhead singing completely inappropriately happy tunes.
The morning of 9/12 was no different. I woke up and I did not remember the events of the day before; it seemed that I could have had a bad dream from last night's dinner at Sushi Samba. I headed to the bathroom for my shower. In the shower, I accidentally knocked one of my shampoo bottles and it fell onto another one, and soon several of my shampoo bottles were tumbling down into the bathtub. Right at that moment a ZING went through my head; the events of the day before came rushing back and before I knew it I was crying.
That moment did not last long however, just like it came, it went. I had a calm breakfast in front of the TV while the network TV replayed the planes crashing into the towers and towers falling down sequences more times than one can count. Later in the morning, I called my parents on the phone. They were telling to jump on the first plane and return to Istanbul. They had a point but somehow in the back of my head, it seemed this would be admitting defeat completely. I was not ready to go anywhere yet, let alone all the way back to Turkey.
After lunch, this staying at home and watching the news thing got quite boring. I was craving to go outside. I finally pulled myself together and left the apartment. I soon found out that most of the streets going downtown were blocked by the police. I had a camera in my hand, just in case I saw anything worth capturing. At the same time, as soon as I left my building, having a camera in my hand felt inappropriate.
The streets were full of people walking around in a daze. Everyone was gravitating towards the downtown but we all could not go past South of Houston. I was not the only one with a camera. Overnight, Manhattanites all had morphed into photographer/news journalist. People were out with their camcorders, fancy digital cameras, and some with cameras like mine a 28-year-old Olympus. Perhaps it was easier to approach the situation as an event to be photographed, captured. Perhaps by playing the journalist, these people were able to avoid feeling like the victims. Perhaps these were a bunch of greedy people who at the wake of thousand others were trying to make a buck from the pain of others. Perhaps all of the above.
I must have walked up and down Houston several times that day. The street was closed to traffic, and there were no cars in sight. Instead, there were huge dump trucks, and other construction equipment lined up on both sides of the road. Every now and then a fire truck would rush on by screaming with its sirens. Everyone in the street would stop and start clapping and cheering for the firefighters. On one hand it seemed to be the right thing to do given our helplessness at the time, on the other it was just absurd to be applauding a bunch of a people going in to a disaster zone.
Other rescue workers were grouping around their vehicles and getting ready to go to the site now called "ground zero." These workers had overnight turned into instant celebrities. Every civilian on the street was clamoring for a good photo of the rescue workers. Getting a photo of a firefighter was even better.
New Yorkers who have always hated the tourists in New York had overnight turned into tourists in their own city. I soon noticed I was doing was many others were doing: Anytime I came by a street that was north south oriented, I was taking a picture. Each of these streets was closed with a barricade and several officers and national guard standing by screening people. Only people with identification that clearly showed and address in the barricaded area were allowed through.
Usually in these pictures there would be two large towers protruding behind the usual SoHo buildings. But today, there was a tower of smoke like a big rainstorm had exploded downtown releasing a large cloud of mist over the financial district.
The streets were crawling with people but there was silence in the air. It seemed like everyone was mourning. Several people still had tears in their eyes as they looked southward to where the towers used to be. The air smelled like someone had burned hundreds of computers, cables, industrial carpeting in one big fire. The wind no longer blew towards Brooklyn, it blew North towards uptown on 9/12. There was something else in this smell. Something I have never smelled before. It was very unpleasant and I did not even dare to think about what it could be.
Occasionally we would see a large dump truck filled with debris roll by. It was clear, the towers were gone. They were reduced to mangled steel, dust, and things that did not even have any recognizable shape or size to them anymore.
The morning of 9/12 was no different. I woke up and I did not remember the events of the day before; it seemed that I could have had a bad dream from last night's dinner at Sushi Samba. I headed to the bathroom for my shower. In the shower, I accidentally knocked one of my shampoo bottles and it fell onto another one, and soon several of my shampoo bottles were tumbling down into the bathtub. Right at that moment a ZING went through my head; the events of the day before came rushing back and before I knew it I was crying.
That moment did not last long however, just like it came, it went. I had a calm breakfast in front of the TV while the network TV replayed the planes crashing into the towers and towers falling down sequences more times than one can count. Later in the morning, I called my parents on the phone. They were telling to jump on the first plane and return to Istanbul. They had a point but somehow in the back of my head, it seemed this would be admitting defeat completely. I was not ready to go anywhere yet, let alone all the way back to Turkey.
After lunch, this staying at home and watching the news thing got quite boring. I was craving to go outside. I finally pulled myself together and left the apartment. I soon found out that most of the streets going downtown were blocked by the police. I had a camera in my hand, just in case I saw anything worth capturing. At the same time, as soon as I left my building, having a camera in my hand felt inappropriate.
The streets were full of people walking around in a daze. Everyone was gravitating towards the downtown but we all could not go past South of Houston. I was not the only one with a camera. Overnight, Manhattanites all had morphed into photographer/news journalist. People were out with their camcorders, fancy digital cameras, and some with cameras like mine a 28-year-old Olympus. Perhaps it was easier to approach the situation as an event to be photographed, captured. Perhaps by playing the journalist, these people were able to avoid feeling like the victims. Perhaps these were a bunch of greedy people who at the wake of thousand others were trying to make a buck from the pain of others. Perhaps all of the above.
I must have walked up and down Houston several times that day. The street was closed to traffic, and there were no cars in sight. Instead, there were huge dump trucks, and other construction equipment lined up on both sides of the road. Every now and then a fire truck would rush on by screaming with its sirens. Everyone in the street would stop and start clapping and cheering for the firefighters. On one hand it seemed to be the right thing to do given our helplessness at the time, on the other it was just absurd to be applauding a bunch of a people going in to a disaster zone.
Other rescue workers were grouping around their vehicles and getting ready to go to the site now called "ground zero." These workers had overnight turned into instant celebrities. Every civilian on the street was clamoring for a good photo of the rescue workers. Getting a photo of a firefighter was even better.
New Yorkers who have always hated the tourists in New York had overnight turned into tourists in their own city. I soon noticed I was doing was many others were doing: Anytime I came by a street that was north south oriented, I was taking a picture. Each of these streets was closed with a barricade and several officers and national guard standing by screening people. Only people with identification that clearly showed and address in the barricaded area were allowed through.
Usually in these pictures there would be two large towers protruding behind the usual SoHo buildings. But today, there was a tower of smoke like a big rainstorm had exploded downtown releasing a large cloud of mist over the financial district.
The streets were crawling with people but there was silence in the air. It seemed like everyone was mourning. Several people still had tears in their eyes as they looked southward to where the towers used to be. The air smelled like someone had burned hundreds of computers, cables, industrial carpeting in one big fire. The wind no longer blew towards Brooklyn, it blew North towards uptown on 9/12. There was something else in this smell. Something I have never smelled before. It was very unpleasant and I did not even dare to think about what it could be.
Occasionally we would see a large dump truck filled with debris roll by. It was clear, the towers were gone. They were reduced to mangled steel, dust, and things that did not even have any recognizable shape or size to them anymore.
My original unedited e mail message from that day:
9/12/2001 3:07 AM
Sorry for my general absence from e mail. I had a VERY close encounter with today's events. I am sending you all a CC of my account that I sent out to Friends and Family tonight:
Hi, I wanted to send out another message briefing you all on the new details and some corrections. First off, I am ok and unharmed by the World Trade Center Disaster.
My earlier message today: I was in a daze when I wrote the first message, I was not 30 blocks away, I was 10-20 blocks away on the hudson river side walking still towards the two towers when the South Tower collapsed. I was right around the Holland tunnel ventilation shafts.
The Experience:
I go through WTC everyday around 9 AM to transfer from NR subway trains to the Path trains that make me to my office in Exchange Place (NJ shore of Hudson river). I overslept this morning so I was running 30 mins late. I was rushing to work around 9 and I noticed smoke in the air blowing towards Brooklyn, but it did not occur to me that it could be WTC. I got onto my first subway train and then made it to my transfer station and got on the second train that takes me to WTC Path trains. There was something blaring on the intercom but there always is, so I did not think much of it. We made it to 8th street station and I finally got it, the Train was not going to make to WTC, something was up. I got out, somewhat angry that I was going to be late to work AGAIN! As I was walking towards the ferries on the hudson side I saw the two towers on fire. Apparently when I was going into the subway only one of them was on fire. By the time I got out and started walking, the second impact had occurred.
My own behavior did not make sense at the time. A group of people along with me were walking/running TOWARD the towers until one of them collapsed. When something like this happens you do not realize how serious it all is. I was still trying to go to work thinking, oh great now I have to take the ferry.
As I got closer to the towers (the ferry stations are in that area too), it became evident that this was not a movie. Tons of paper were flying out of the North tower (it was a VERY windy day to start with). Half way through my walk something took over and I was sobbing for no reason. There is nothing comparable to seeing one of the world's largest buildings on fire. Once I saw the South tower collapsed, I woke up from my dazed walk towards the towers. Until then I was just unable to take my eyes off of the towers to realize that I was putting myself in jeopardy by approaching. Just around this time I met with the wave of hundreds of people walking away from the towers towards North. When the buildings fell, the smoke and debris in the air was UNBELIEVABLE. The force of the buildings falling down pulled down a whole bunch of air which let all of us at the scene see the skyline without the two towers. It looked like major after effects digital video editing work only it was real. I still can not believe the news that keeps saying that there were no bombs in the buildings. They fell down so elegantly, mostly caving into themselves like they have been imploded by an professional deconstruction company.
A lot of us started running uptown to beat the storm of dust coming our way. And hope was with us until the last moment, the second tower was still standing, it was ok, one tower was still better than none. Then the second one fell, and you should have heard us all on the streets. Crying, in anger, in tears, totally overwhelmed just by the visual impact of what was happening. I found myself saying "game over"... it was over, it really was. Thousands of people walked home today at noon, all transportation, all bridges, all subways, all path subways, all ferries were shut down.
I have seen several "mud people" walking to their homes in a state of absolute shock and disbelief. I was able to avoid the dust.
All streets are empty right now, and there are ambulances and emergency vehicles ferrying patients north to uptown hospitals. The downtown hospitals are only used for EXTREME cases. I have seen several people on the streets with scratched and scarred faces.
All restaurants, all stores are closed. I was out tonight to get dinner (yes some restaurants were open), everyone is talking about this and strange thing is, in a town where everyone is a stranger, no one is a stranger right now. You can really talk to anyone and they will discuss the details of today and where they were and what they felt, and what their theories are in detail at length.
One final thing that occurred to me tonight is that all theories I hear from the news is about foreign origination....but I think otherwise, what I saw today was MUCH similar to the ending scene of the famous film Fight Club from a couple of years back.
One positive thing is, the people who hit the towers do not know that those buildings really fill between 9 and 9:30. When the first impact happened at 8:45, everything leading to WTC was stopped. And the second tower was already being evacuated when it was hit by the second plane.
So thousands of people did not even make it to their office in WTC because the subway would not go past Canal. A lot of people like me were saved by the excellent response and sense of the city's officials. I applaud the city's organization and efforts in this really challenging and difficult time.
We are all in the state of shock and disbelief, I am just hoping that the survivor's guilt will not be too severe. I am going to try to go to my work place on the shore of Jersey city (exchange place) right across the WTC complex on the NJ side. I might have to take the ferry for a while. One of the major Path (transportation between NJ and NY) is located at the WTC. Needless to say this attack pretty much destroyed that station.
Working in NY will be very difficult for a couple of weeks. Our clients have been effected and we have no word on how many of them actually evacuated the towers and the adjoining buildings in the complex.
It feels like the news is not supplying enough information. Most of us in Ny are just as information starved as you all are, no one is allowed to go past the Canal Street downtown. Only emergency personnel is allowed.
Please spread the news that everyone that I know in Sapient seems to be fine. I think we were saved by out slightly late starting schedules. (Amazing argument for showing up to work at 10:30AM !)
So far I do not know of anyone that is not ok. The phones are still not behaving right if I can not be reached it does not mean I am not ok. I am taking good care of myself. I am unable to call all of you to tell you we're doing ok, I need your help to tell others that you know might be worried about us.
Thanks for all your messages.... I am glad you all are not here to see what I saw, because on TV what you see could not possibly represent what was felt by us all here. Thanks in advance for spreading the news, ES
9/12/2001 3:07 AM
Sorry for my general absence from e mail. I had a VERY close encounter with today's events. I am sending you all a CC of my account that I sent out to Friends and Family tonight:
Hi, I wanted to send out another message briefing you all on the new details and some corrections. First off, I am ok and unharmed by the World Trade Center Disaster.
My earlier message today: I was in a daze when I wrote the first message, I was not 30 blocks away, I was 10-20 blocks away on the hudson river side walking still towards the two towers when the South Tower collapsed. I was right around the Holland tunnel ventilation shafts.
The Experience:
I go through WTC everyday around 9 AM to transfer from NR subway trains to the Path trains that make me to my office in Exchange Place (NJ shore of Hudson river). I overslept this morning so I was running 30 mins late. I was rushing to work around 9 and I noticed smoke in the air blowing towards Brooklyn, but it did not occur to me that it could be WTC. I got onto my first subway train and then made it to my transfer station and got on the second train that takes me to WTC Path trains. There was something blaring on the intercom but there always is, so I did not think much of it. We made it to 8th street station and I finally got it, the Train was not going to make to WTC, something was up. I got out, somewhat angry that I was going to be late to work AGAIN! As I was walking towards the ferries on the hudson side I saw the two towers on fire. Apparently when I was going into the subway only one of them was on fire. By the time I got out and started walking, the second impact had occurred.
My own behavior did not make sense at the time. A group of people along with me were walking/running TOWARD the towers until one of them collapsed. When something like this happens you do not realize how serious it all is. I was still trying to go to work thinking, oh great now I have to take the ferry.
As I got closer to the towers (the ferry stations are in that area too), it became evident that this was not a movie. Tons of paper were flying out of the North tower (it was a VERY windy day to start with). Half way through my walk something took over and I was sobbing for no reason. There is nothing comparable to seeing one of the world's largest buildings on fire. Once I saw the South tower collapsed, I woke up from my dazed walk towards the towers. Until then I was just unable to take my eyes off of the towers to realize that I was putting myself in jeopardy by approaching. Just around this time I met with the wave of hundreds of people walking away from the towers towards North. When the buildings fell, the smoke and debris in the air was UNBELIEVABLE. The force of the buildings falling down pulled down a whole bunch of air which let all of us at the scene see the skyline without the two towers. It looked like major after effects digital video editing work only it was real. I still can not believe the news that keeps saying that there were no bombs in the buildings. They fell down so elegantly, mostly caving into themselves like they have been imploded by an professional deconstruction company.
A lot of us started running uptown to beat the storm of dust coming our way. And hope was with us until the last moment, the second tower was still standing, it was ok, one tower was still better than none. Then the second one fell, and you should have heard us all on the streets. Crying, in anger, in tears, totally overwhelmed just by the visual impact of what was happening. I found myself saying "game over"... it was over, it really was. Thousands of people walked home today at noon, all transportation, all bridges, all subways, all path subways, all ferries were shut down.
I have seen several "mud people" walking to their homes in a state of absolute shock and disbelief. I was able to avoid the dust.
All streets are empty right now, and there are ambulances and emergency vehicles ferrying patients north to uptown hospitals. The downtown hospitals are only used for EXTREME cases. I have seen several people on the streets with scratched and scarred faces.
All restaurants, all stores are closed. I was out tonight to get dinner (yes some restaurants were open), everyone is talking about this and strange thing is, in a town where everyone is a stranger, no one is a stranger right now. You can really talk to anyone and they will discuss the details of today and where they were and what they felt, and what their theories are in detail at length.
One final thing that occurred to me tonight is that all theories I hear from the news is about foreign origination....but I think otherwise, what I saw today was MUCH similar to the ending scene of the famous film Fight Club from a couple of years back.
One positive thing is, the people who hit the towers do not know that those buildings really fill between 9 and 9:30. When the first impact happened at 8:45, everything leading to WTC was stopped. And the second tower was already being evacuated when it was hit by the second plane.
So thousands of people did not even make it to their office in WTC because the subway would not go past Canal. A lot of people like me were saved by the excellent response and sense of the city's officials. I applaud the city's organization and efforts in this really challenging and difficult time.
We are all in the state of shock and disbelief, I am just hoping that the survivor's guilt will not be too severe. I am going to try to go to my work place on the shore of Jersey city (exchange place) right across the WTC complex on the NJ side. I might have to take the ferry for a while. One of the major Path (transportation between NJ and NY) is located at the WTC. Needless to say this attack pretty much destroyed that station.
Working in NY will be very difficult for a couple of weeks. Our clients have been effected and we have no word on how many of them actually evacuated the towers and the adjoining buildings in the complex.
It feels like the news is not supplying enough information. Most of us in Ny are just as information starved as you all are, no one is allowed to go past the Canal Street downtown. Only emergency personnel is allowed.
Please spread the news that everyone that I know in Sapient seems to be fine. I think we were saved by out slightly late starting schedules. (Amazing argument for showing up to work at 10:30AM !)
So far I do not know of anyone that is not ok. The phones are still not behaving right if I can not be reached it does not mean I am not ok. I am taking good care of myself. I am unable to call all of you to tell you we're doing ok, I need your help to tell others that you know might be worried about us.
Thanks for all your messages.... I am glad you all are not here to see what I saw, because on TV what you see could not possibly represent what was felt by us all here. Thanks in advance for spreading the news, ES
Category :
We take so much for granted; our bodies, our health, our sanity, and most of all our identity. We spend our days constantly trying to go from point A to point B only to realize that point B is the new point A. But beyond all of these thoughts, and the circle of life, which on most days feels a lot closer to a re-enactment of the myth of Sisyphus, we find that from day to day, from year to year, from one turmoil to the next; in the middle of all this change the only thing that stays constant is our presence.
They say that the loneliest places on Earth are the most crowded ones, and I felt this so strongly during my time in New York City. Six million people all stuffed several storey high onto the same old half mud, half bedrock, half water, half steel island. We were all so important, so primed and ready to hit it big any moment now. As I sat at my window and stared on to the brief green outside my building, I realized in more ways than one this was a deserted island. Nature in its true form had long fled this place, only remaining piece of it was tucked neatly at the center with right angles around it; almost a hostage the city was holding onto, in case the rest of nature came back to make claims. All these streets, all these buildings, these tunnels, all these dreams, they seemed all so empty, yet we stayed day after day; every day waking up with renewed hopes of stardom and wealth; every day digging the same old hole in the same old spot with no significant progress to show. We thought we were rowing on Hudson against the current and we knew we had it bad; but it was much worse than that; Hudson had eaten us alive and we did not know it yet.
As I walked in the September breeze, the streets were busy with people. Between 1st Avenue and Union Square I could run into two friends, hundreds of strangers and perhaps on any given day a few models and marginal celebrities. New York City was the ultimate Noah's Ark, we had two of everything; which made me wonder, where was my other half? Was he or she out here on this island too or was he the person I left behind in Texas?
Manhattan was a zoo; it was now mine, and I had my cage in it, labeled "100% genuine imported Turk". But really was I genuine anymore? After ten years in the US, what were the remains of my Turkish persona? Maybe it was the fact that I got upset so fast, that I expected things from people Americans do not; or perhaps it was my manners, my accent, my refusal to learn the proper names of trees and flowers. Perhaps just the simple fact that when I closed my eyes I still dreamt in Turkish. Or perhaps the fact that my family refused to give up their ways, and still called me up to two times a day.
Walking the streets, there were familiar faces on people I had never met. As they looked up from the pavement, our eyes would meet and right then and there we both knew it but no one dared to speak a word. It felt like I had checked myself in to a secret society and our secret handshake was avoiding eye contact at all cost.
I would frequently have these days where I would literally hide from acquaintances, friends. If I saw one from a distance I would quickly turn the corner and pick up the pace. In the US, this kind of behavior is classified as antisocial, perhaps abnormal. I have never considered it as such however. I see nothing wrong with wanting to be alone for a day. Seriously at what point did we lose our right to be by ourselves? In a city where everyone must mingle, everyone must work, everyone must fight and win, what if I was completely content with being alone and perhaps even willing to lose? Would that mean that I did not belong here? Should I have seen ahead before moving here that I was just not made of the right stuff for this city?
The storm was brewing, the September skies were clear blue. It was cold but without clouds or rain but something weighed down on my neck like a pair of heavy hands --comforting to some degree but a burden nevertheless. It hung over the city like a veil. It knew better and it was not going to tell anything.
Along the Hudson I walked with Hudson touching me every now and then in the breeze. I tried to learn the language of New York, I practiced every day, and I believed I could walk myself to being a true New Yorker. West Side Highway buzzed on to my left. My head was busy, my head was as crowded as this city; busy as a beehive with questions that have been asked many times before yet their enigma remained.
In the middle of my coming confused thirties crisis I was given the additional burden of knowing that there was nothing original or interesting about my suffering --but somehow this knowledge did not dull the pain nor did it justify its presence.
They say that the loneliest places on Earth are the most crowded ones, and I felt this so strongly during my time in New York City. Six million people all stuffed several storey high onto the same old half mud, half bedrock, half water, half steel island. We were all so important, so primed and ready to hit it big any moment now. As I sat at my window and stared on to the brief green outside my building, I realized in more ways than one this was a deserted island. Nature in its true form had long fled this place, only remaining piece of it was tucked neatly at the center with right angles around it; almost a hostage the city was holding onto, in case the rest of nature came back to make claims. All these streets, all these buildings, these tunnels, all these dreams, they seemed all so empty, yet we stayed day after day; every day waking up with renewed hopes of stardom and wealth; every day digging the same old hole in the same old spot with no significant progress to show. We thought we were rowing on Hudson against the current and we knew we had it bad; but it was much worse than that; Hudson had eaten us alive and we did not know it yet.
As I walked in the September breeze, the streets were busy with people. Between 1st Avenue and Union Square I could run into two friends, hundreds of strangers and perhaps on any given day a few models and marginal celebrities. New York City was the ultimate Noah's Ark, we had two of everything; which made me wonder, where was my other half? Was he or she out here on this island too or was he the person I left behind in Texas?
Manhattan was a zoo; it was now mine, and I had my cage in it, labeled "100% genuine imported Turk". But really was I genuine anymore? After ten years in the US, what were the remains of my Turkish persona? Maybe it was the fact that I got upset so fast, that I expected things from people Americans do not; or perhaps it was my manners, my accent, my refusal to learn the proper names of trees and flowers. Perhaps just the simple fact that when I closed my eyes I still dreamt in Turkish. Or perhaps the fact that my family refused to give up their ways, and still called me up to two times a day.
Walking the streets, there were familiar faces on people I had never met. As they looked up from the pavement, our eyes would meet and right then and there we both knew it but no one dared to speak a word. It felt like I had checked myself in to a secret society and our secret handshake was avoiding eye contact at all cost.
I would frequently have these days where I would literally hide from acquaintances, friends. If I saw one from a distance I would quickly turn the corner and pick up the pace. In the US, this kind of behavior is classified as antisocial, perhaps abnormal. I have never considered it as such however. I see nothing wrong with wanting to be alone for a day. Seriously at what point did we lose our right to be by ourselves? In a city where everyone must mingle, everyone must work, everyone must fight and win, what if I was completely content with being alone and perhaps even willing to lose? Would that mean that I did not belong here? Should I have seen ahead before moving here that I was just not made of the right stuff for this city?
The storm was brewing, the September skies were clear blue. It was cold but without clouds or rain but something weighed down on my neck like a pair of heavy hands --comforting to some degree but a burden nevertheless. It hung over the city like a veil. It knew better and it was not going to tell anything.
Along the Hudson I walked with Hudson touching me every now and then in the breeze. I tried to learn the language of New York, I practiced every day, and I believed I could walk myself to being a true New Yorker. West Side Highway buzzed on to my left. My head was busy, my head was as crowded as this city; busy as a beehive with questions that have been asked many times before yet their enigma remained.
In the middle of my coming confused thirties crisis I was given the additional burden of knowing that there was nothing original or interesting about my suffering --but somehow this knowledge did not dull the pain nor did it justify its presence.
Category :
If you've just moved to New York City and you think that this is the hottest shit of a place you've ever seen, you just wait, more than likely this summer you will be proven right. For when August rolls in, and the winds completely stop, the temperatures reach and jump over the higher nineties and even dare to climb onto the hundreds a horrid stench starts to rise from the city. It seems everything starts to heat, then melt, and then steam releasing an evil brew of asphalt, human breath, last week's trash, sewage and that hard to describe smell of the subway tunnels. Of all of these the most unfamiliar was the subway smell.
It was a like a strange sci-fi creature, half organic, half metallic, half machine, half current it was ever present but never seen. As the months went by, August suddenly came by. Everyone told I must dread August in New York City but I just could not believe that NYC was going to get all that hot. Well it did, and this year it seemed to be worse than others according to the locals. In the office I was fine, the A/C was always in high gear there. At home I was in good hands thanks to the two windows units I had. But on the street... On the street there was simply no escape from the heat. As I walked back from the 1st Avenue Subway station back to my apartment it felt like I was in an oven with both the grill and oven turned on at the same time. The pavement that had been absorbing the heat all day long now had reached its threshold and had no intention of keeping all of this heat to itself --so it released the heat, steadily and viciously. As I reached my apartment, my backpack's straps were beginning to leave sweat marks on the front of my shirt.
At first I thought, ah this will pass, it is a day or two of real hot weather, I can do this, no problem. Then as the weeks of August progresses what I thought would be the exception became the norm. A scolding hot day after another followed.
Waiting at the subway station for the train went from being a torture because of the irregular unreasonable schedules of the trains to one that just involved cooking in there until my turkey button popped out.
The interesting thing was, here was I in shorts and a thin white t-shirt sweating like a turkey before thanksgiving while the businessmen headed downtown seemed to be doing just fine in their three piece business suits. Perhaps the Wall Street bunch were indeed cold blooded. That's an unfair thought, I thought to myself as I smirked. The train arrived after pushing another piston full of stale subterranean air through the station. The doors opened, and the cool air rushed out; the torture was over. Well at least until I reach my destination.
It was a like a strange sci-fi creature, half organic, half metallic, half machine, half current it was ever present but never seen. As the months went by, August suddenly came by. Everyone told I must dread August in New York City but I just could not believe that NYC was going to get all that hot. Well it did, and this year it seemed to be worse than others according to the locals. In the office I was fine, the A/C was always in high gear there. At home I was in good hands thanks to the two windows units I had. But on the street... On the street there was simply no escape from the heat. As I walked back from the 1st Avenue Subway station back to my apartment it felt like I was in an oven with both the grill and oven turned on at the same time. The pavement that had been absorbing the heat all day long now had reached its threshold and had no intention of keeping all of this heat to itself --so it released the heat, steadily and viciously. As I reached my apartment, my backpack's straps were beginning to leave sweat marks on the front of my shirt.
At first I thought, ah this will pass, it is a day or two of real hot weather, I can do this, no problem. Then as the weeks of August progresses what I thought would be the exception became the norm. A scolding hot day after another followed.
Waiting at the subway station for the train went from being a torture because of the irregular unreasonable schedules of the trains to one that just involved cooking in there until my turkey button popped out.
The interesting thing was, here was I in shorts and a thin white t-shirt sweating like a turkey before thanksgiving while the businessmen headed downtown seemed to be doing just fine in their three piece business suits. Perhaps the Wall Street bunch were indeed cold blooded. That's an unfair thought, I thought to myself as I smirked. The train arrived after pushing another piston full of stale subterranean air through the station. The doors opened, and the cool air rushed out; the torture was over. Well at least until I reach my destination.
Category :
--A step by step guide into claiming your sanity, your life, your neighborhood back.
Meriam-Webster Definition:
1 : an act of crushing
2 : the quantity of material crushed
3 a : a crowding together (as of people) b : CROWD, MOB; especially : a crowd of people pressing against one another
4 : an intense and usually passing infatuation; also : the object of infatuation
Definition number four is the winner.
The strange thing about a crush is, he was there the same spot you saw him for the first time, perhaps yesterday, doing the same old things being the same all crushing person he is, perhaps for someone else. This is before you saw him and granted him the rights to crushing you indefinitely.
We're talking about someone who you run into regularly in a public setting and you never get to meet them. After a while they usually know that you're insane, and that you have this crush thing going which of course makes it all the more impossible to meet the person because they believe you're a freak.
So you see them day after day, week after week and never get to talk to them. You see them at the grocery store, at the westside highway running, or if you're gay at your local gym.
Then slowly a story emerges. First you make up a name for him. The red tanktop guy, the skinhead guy, the shoulders guy, the nike guy, the list goes on. You pick a certain physical aspect that makes this guy noticeable to you and make it their name. Then follows the rest of the story. You start inventing their character, perhaps after overhearing a conversation, or maybe observing what they're wearing, they're carrying.
Before you know, you're asking friends about him, pointing him out openly at the gym, trying to get to meet him, looking for him on friendster, looking for him in clubs that you do not want to go to....until...until you're a full-fledged stalker that's picking up receipts from the trash to find out his real name.
What started out as a fun game now has started to consume a significant part of your life. And it seems every time you actually find out something about the person instead of calming you down, it adds fuel to the fire.
Come here my friend, let me give you a hug. You have a crush, and if you do not stop and listen now, it will eventually crush you. That's why they call it that.
So here's a crush junkie's guide to ridding yourself off of nasty crushes and hopefully avoiding new ones:
Remedy #1:
Don't get a crush in the first place. What the hell am I talking about like you're going to be able to do this. Skip to step 2.
Remedy #2:
Go meet the damn guy. Yeah right, if you could do that you would not be reading this entry. But seriously, if at all possible go and meet him. You will find that the moment you meet him there will be an immediate crack appearing in the crush. Soon as you find out more about this person, you will realize that he has nothing to do with who you thought he was.
Remedy #3:
If at all possible, try to avoid going to the places you go to run into your crush. Now dont'cha start saying it's blind luck. Don't lie, I know you're going to the gym at 6:30pm to run into him although going there at that time requires you to brave two extremely crowded trains, the pouring rain, and perhaps a rough cab ride.
Change the time, change the location, mix your life up a little. The monotony of your life is the reason you got yourself a crush in the first place. Go on a vacation, give yourself a break. When you come back you will wonder what you were so obsessed about.
Remedy #4:
Unfortunately, after applying remedy #3, and feeling just fine afterwards, at least more than 50% of you will run into your crush and the whole thing will start all over. If you're in the other group, I take my hat off to you, you're what progress is made of.
So, here you are again, getting crushed, and not in a good way. you tried meeting him, it did not work, you tried avoiding him it did not work. Soon there are parts of the town you can not go to, certain restaurants you can not dine at, hell even shopping is not what it used to be. So it seems like you're a prisoner in your own city and you deserve better than that.
Well, go get yourself a boyfriend. Easier said than done, this if accomplished will rid you of 99% of most crushes. This is because you will focus on this new person you're dating and I hope this shift in focus will mean you will have less attention span for other people.
If the relationship does not last, go get yourself another one and another one, and another one. Be a serial monogamist and enjoy it. I would rather have you become a serial monogamist than a serially crushed person.
Remedy #5:
Use only if the dating thing does not work. Move to another town completely. Just pick up and go. The crush will not follow unless of course he has a crush on you too. Gosh people, why can't you be more normal??? *just kidding*
Final Remedy:
Well this one actually is a catch all. Feel free to use this before or after any of the above listed remedies.
Just listen to me. The person you're obsessed about is human. Beside being physically attractive to you, this is just an ordinary guy. As Rita Hayworth said about her troublesome love life: "they go to bed with Gilda, and they wake up with me". For those of you not familiar with her movies, Gilda is her temptress-gone-bad mix of Satine, the courtesan, and the film noir black widow.
Your crush is the same. If there was any chance you met your crush, and dated him, you would be highly dissapointed with him, with the relationship, with yourself, and perhaps with everything. This is because your expectations are unrealistic. You are attached to an unreal person you created in your head and then projected onto a walking breathing pile of meat.
Remember, when he opens his mouth, you know he is going to be all like "Ghurrll", then he will smile and you will see his ugly teeth, next he will take off his shirt, and he will have the biggest ugliest scar on his arm, then he will speak and all that he will be talking about will be his last trick, and how he has slept with all of Manhattan and half of Brooklyn and Jersey. He will be eating dinner with you in the restaurant, picking his teeth with his fingers, he will be spitting pieces and not closing his mouth while he is chewing, perhaps he will be burping, and even laughing about it. He will go to bed with you, the sex might totally suck, or worse yet after a great night of sex, he will turn around, release a largest fart you have ever heard and experienced in technicolor THX surround sound. In the mornin,g he will wake up with drool running down his cheek, and his face will look like hell, he will clip his toenails while still in bed, perhaps even leave the bathroom door open when he goes to do a number 2. Later after a few weeks of dating, while doing laundry you will get to marvel at his skid marks, you will find his dildos next, and the video tape he made with his previous lover, he probably will not stop talking about his exes, or maybe he will spend your money until you're broke, he might even ask you to buy things constantly, or cheat on you from day one.
I don't want to sound bitter and I do not want to make you bitter but the truth is we're all human. I assure you that one person alone will not have all of the shortcomings I listed above, but they all will have one or the other.
What you need to realize is, your guy on the big pedestal is not chiseled out of marble, he is just flesh and bones; what seems like a perfect complexion from 6 feet away sometimes turns out to be a skin covered with millions of dark freckles from over-tanning.
Keep these things on your mind; and above all else, love yourself. You're hotter, smarter, and more shaggable than you think. For once look at the mirror and see your real self. He's been there in the mirror waiting for you to see him all this time.
Meriam-Webster Definition:
1 : an act of crushing
2 : the quantity of material crushed
3 a : a crowding together (as of people) b : CROWD, MOB; especially : a crowd of people pressing against one another
4 : an intense and usually passing infatuation
Definition number four is the winner.
The strange thing about a crush is, he was there the same spot you saw him for the first time, perhaps yesterday, doing the same old things being the same all crushing person he is, perhaps for someone else. This is before you saw him and granted him the rights to crushing you indefinitely.
We're talking about someone who you run into regularly in a public setting and you never get to meet them. After a while they usually know that you're insane, and that you have this crush thing going which of course makes it all the more impossible to meet the person because they believe you're a freak.
So you see them day after day, week after week and never get to talk to them. You see them at the grocery store, at the westside highway running, or if you're gay at your local gym.
Then slowly a story emerges. First you make up a name for him. The red tanktop guy, the skinhead guy, the shoulders guy, the nike guy, the list goes on. You pick a certain physical aspect that makes this guy noticeable to you and make it their name. Then follows the rest of the story. You start inventing their character, perhaps after overhearing a conversation, or maybe observing what they're wearing, they're carrying.
Before you know, you're asking friends about him, pointing him out openly at the gym, trying to get to meet him, looking for him on friendster, looking for him in clubs that you do not want to go to....until...until you're a full-fledged stalker that's picking up receipts from the trash to find out his real name.
What started out as a fun game now has started to consume a significant part of your life. And it seems every time you actually find out something about the person instead of calming you down, it adds fuel to the fire.
Come here my friend, let me give you a hug. You have a crush, and if you do not stop and listen now, it will eventually crush you. That's why they call it that.
So here's a crush junkie's guide to ridding yourself off of nasty crushes and hopefully avoiding new ones:
Remedy #1:
Don't get a crush in the first place. What the hell am I talking about like you're going to be able to do this. Skip to step 2.
Remedy #2:
Go meet the damn guy. Yeah right, if you could do that you would not be reading this entry. But seriously, if at all possible go and meet him. You will find that the moment you meet him there will be an immediate crack appearing in the crush. Soon as you find out more about this person, you will realize that he has nothing to do with who you thought he was.
Remedy #3:
If at all possible, try to avoid going to the places you go to run into your crush. Now dont'cha start saying it's blind luck. Don't lie, I know you're going to the gym at 6:30pm to run into him although going there at that time requires you to brave two extremely crowded trains, the pouring rain, and perhaps a rough cab ride.
Change the time, change the location, mix your life up a little. The monotony of your life is the reason you got yourself a crush in the first place. Go on a vacation, give yourself a break. When you come back you will wonder what you were so obsessed about.
Remedy #4:
Unfortunately, after applying remedy #3, and feeling just fine afterwards, at least more than 50% of you will run into your crush and the whole thing will start all over. If you're in the other group, I take my hat off to you, you're what progress is made of.
So, here you are again, getting crushed, and not in a good way. you tried meeting him, it did not work, you tried avoiding him it did not work. Soon there are parts of the town you can not go to, certain restaurants you can not dine at, hell even shopping is not what it used to be. So it seems like you're a prisoner in your own city and you deserve better than that.
Well, go get yourself a boyfriend. Easier said than done, this if accomplished will rid you of 99% of most crushes. This is because you will focus on this new person you're dating and I hope this shift in focus will mean you will have less attention span for other people.
If the relationship does not last, go get yourself another one and another one, and another one. Be a serial monogamist and enjoy it. I would rather have you become a serial monogamist than a serially crushed person.
Remedy #5:
Use only if the dating thing does not work. Move to another town completely. Just pick up and go. The crush will not follow unless of course he has a crush on you too. Gosh people, why can't you be more normal??? *just kidding*
Final Remedy:
Well this one actually is a catch all. Feel free to use this before or after any of the above listed remedies.
Just listen to me. The person you're obsessed about is human. Beside being physically attractive to you, this is just an ordinary guy. As Rita Hayworth said about her troublesome love life: "they go to bed with Gilda, and they wake up with me". For those of you not familiar with her movies, Gilda is her temptress-gone-bad mix of Satine, the courtesan, and the film noir black widow.
Your crush is the same. If there was any chance you met your crush, and dated him, you would be highly dissapointed with him, with the relationship, with yourself, and perhaps with everything. This is because your expectations are unrealistic. You are attached to an unreal person you created in your head and then projected onto a walking breathing pile of meat.
Remember, when he opens his mouth, you know he is going to be all like "Ghurrll", then he will smile and you will see his ugly teeth, next he will take off his shirt, and he will have the biggest ugliest scar on his arm, then he will speak and all that he will be talking about will be his last trick, and how he has slept with all of Manhattan and half of Brooklyn and Jersey. He will be eating dinner with you in the restaurant, picking his teeth with his fingers, he will be spitting pieces and not closing his mouth while he is chewing, perhaps he will be burping, and even laughing about it. He will go to bed with you, the sex might totally suck, or worse yet after a great night of sex, he will turn around, release a largest fart you have ever heard and experienced in technicolor THX surround sound. In the mornin,g he will wake up with drool running down his cheek, and his face will look like hell, he will clip his toenails while still in bed, perhaps even leave the bathroom door open when he goes to do a number 2. Later after a few weeks of dating, while doing laundry you will get to marvel at his skid marks, you will find his dildos next, and the video tape he made with his previous lover, he probably will not stop talking about his exes, or maybe he will spend your money until you're broke, he might even ask you to buy things constantly, or cheat on you from day one.
I don't want to sound bitter and I do not want to make you bitter but the truth is we're all human. I assure you that one person alone will not have all of the shortcomings I listed above, but they all will have one or the other.
What you need to realize is, your guy on the big pedestal is not chiseled out of marble, he is just flesh and bones; what seems like a perfect complexion from 6 feet away sometimes turns out to be a skin covered with millions of dark freckles from over-tanning.
Keep these things on your mind; and above all else, love yourself. You're hotter, smarter, and more shaggable than you think. For once look at the mirror and see your real self. He's been there in the mirror waiting for you to see him all this time.
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