As the dust clears from my head a little, and the events of this week settle in, I find myself tangling with a mix of depression and sheer horror. I can't believe the numbers of people who have died in this thing, or the destruction. I can't even begin to imagine the ghost town conditions of lower manhattan, the comparisons to Pompeii.
Before this happened, I found myself struggling with a lot of my sentiments about New York. My last trip there was so mixed. There was, of course, the bad night at the Coil show. Some things that had been building came to a head, which resorted in me humiliating myself by crying in public. In particular to one casual "friend" that I kind of got the impression was more than a little annoyed by the display of emotion. There was a lot of embarrassment on my end with this, and it was evidence of why drinking should be done as a social thing, not as a coping mechanism. As the last night in New York, It left me feeling dismal about the city.
And of course, there was the school strife. But after visiting three schools in the Chicago area, and coming away from it with only one visit that wasn't completely horrible, so it probably wouldn't be fair to judge the city on that.
There was the constant conflict, though. The grittiness that I loved and hated, the sense that the people--however intense at times--were a constant source of substance. Everything from conversations at a bar to cabbies with their wisdom. At times, it saddened me as I recalled the midwestern alienation I've become accustomed to. In Chicago, there were a few choice individuals I could talk to, but I spent most of my time feeling awkward and out of place. And in Kalamazoo? Well, in Kalamazoo, I don't even bother to try.
As I walked over junkies and saw the Starbucks-ification on St Marks, the grittiness disappointed me. It made me think about the accessibility of Chicago. As I listened to Russian cab drivers giving bits of wisdom, as I walked around the city talking , as I had vivacious bar tenders make small talk, I loved the realness and the grittiness.
I left there depressed. Depressed and drained by how emotional the city had been, haunted by memories of my teenage years in Philadelphia, and a bit overwhelmed by the expense of everything. And I left equally depressed that I couldn't have it all. That there was no perfect city that mixed the qualities I loved and craved the most into one neat little package.
I quickly forgot about it, except in weird vague dreams that made me want to paint the weekend there, that got to the core and sentiment of it all. At the back of my mind I tangled with all of these.
Then, on Tuesday, I watched with shock and disbelief at all these people, with all their dispositions and stories and histories, crumbled under what has been more than a building but an institution. I watched in disbelief of the magnitude, unable to grasp the horror of it all.
Disbelief was replaced with anger by all the racism I saw in the media and especially here in the midwest. All of the accounts of violence against people of arabic descent have occured throughout the nation, but most poignantly in the midwest. My earlier entries were a reaction to that knowledge, wondering why more people can't cope with this by donating blood or money or both, and how anyone can think that violence against Americans of Middle Eastern descent could be any kind of answer. And the horrible truth that the people that do these things are not acting in reaction to what happened: the media just gave them an excuse. And that has caused a loss in what little faith I had left in humanity. After all, if every one of the people who has harrassed Arab Americans, stormed mosques, firebombed community centers instead opted to donate money or blood to the victims of this atrocity, then they could actually help in some way, they could actually show that they want unity rather than wave their flags while screaming slurs at people of a certain ethnicity. After all, these same people that are being attacked in "retribution" also lost friends and family on Tuesday. (With the death tolls at 10,000 last I heard, I'm sure there were at least a few Arab-Americans working in the World Trade Center as well.) Others no doubt moved to this country to escape the horrible living conditions and oppressive government that we've heard about in Afghanistan.
And then of course there's the midwestern mindset that has been bothering me. In my Design and Appreciation class, my teacher said that she was "amazed there was no looting in New York". A woman from Indiana was quoted in the New York Times as saying how amazed she was that people in New York were helping eachother throughout this because she'd always thought that New York was a "godless cinderblock". This sort of thing not only angers me (though I did shut a lot of the people in my class up when I pointed out that my father grew up in New York and I spent most of my teenage years a couple hours outside of New York.) in its ignorance and self righteousness, but it embarrasses me to live in the midwest and even be associated with these people. Most of them have never been to New York, and a lot of them are even afraid to drive two hours to Chicago. They want to stay in their little farm communities, where they can live an insulated and fearful existence, all the while being so sure they know so much about the rest of this country. They wave their flags and speak of god and country, yet are too paranoid to see anything but their small part of this country, and never get to know the vast numbers of citizens which are rather unlike them.
But at times, this all passes and I just feel a sort of sadness and helplessness at it all. I stop feeling angry at peoples' ignorance and just feel horrified at everything that's happened, and melancholy with still some disbelief...