I N T H E N I G H T K I T C H E N
Let the Mourners ComeThis is very sad but it keeps going through my mind. I had to get online and find the whole poem. I don't think this poem ever made much sense to me before but it does now. Many, many times throughout the past several days I have just had this overwhelming desire for everything to just stop: no talking, no moving, no television, no sound, no nothing. It seems like if we could just get a moment like that we could fill back up in our lungs and heart and soul.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West.
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-- W. H. Auden
10:29 AM link
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Survivor's GuiltNot sure what I'm going to write about today. I just need to get some thoughts out.
I finally heard that two people I know in New York who would be closest to the disaster are safe and sound. I hadn't heard about them until yesterday. I knew they were safe -- had to be -- but I wasn't sure.
One of them works for the mayor and I got a touching email from a friend of his this morning saying that he had spoken to him and that he was pretty shook-up. It made me cry. I can't stop welling up. There's just too much to try and think about.
I unsubscribed from a mailing list yesterday that was inundated with bickering over whether America got what was coming to her. I just can't take that kind of talk right now.
People keep saying that they want to know what happens next. I don't want to know. I'm not ready to know. I won't be ready until the workers in New York and Washington are done.
I was temping yesterday and will go in again today to do more production work. A couple guys in that office kept talking about how creepy it was that there were no planes in the air except military planes. I try and hear these creepy military planes but I just can't. Wait... maybe I hear one just now... in the distance. Yes. The thing is, I find the sound of military planes to be comforting. The roar of a distant jet, maybe an F-16, heading up into the clouds is not unpleasant to me. You can blame it on my youth on Air Force bases. I like the military. The military is good. It's the people who run it that scare me.
George Bush. He is such a shuddering disappointment.
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Addendum, 9.14.2001:
I just wanted to come back and address the last line of my entry above. It looks too hard and cynical for how I'm feeling right now. I just reread this entry today and I don't even remember writing that. I think, overall, I wish Bush was a bigger, more secure presence. He seems so small and perhaps ineffectual. However, my hopes are high that those at the top will safely guide us through these horribly murky waters.
8:48 AM link
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I'm speechless. The days events are far to horrible to imagine, let alone actually happen. I'm getting television overload but I can't look away. I think we're all waiting for some positive news but there really can be none unless they start pulling live people out of that rubble. Too horrible and too extreme.
3:28 PM link
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