I have a friend who opposes war with Iraq on pragmatic grounds. It will not be effective. It will not achieve the stated goals of disarmament, increased security, lessening terrorism, regime change, and Pax Americana throughout the Middle East. He tells me that his bottom line is the course of action that results in the least suffering. And ours is not that course of action.

A long time ago, I read a famous short story. How do I know it's famous? It was in a collection with O'Henry's and Maupassant's best. But the story that really got to me was this one: A bomber pilot (I do not know which World War, and I don't know what nationality he was) approaches a small French (I'm pretty sure; I imagined the gray stone buildings, church spires, and neat streets) town. His assignment is to drop his payload on the town. It's a beautiful, sunny, blue-sky day. The pilot feels godlike, powerful, and magnanimous. He feels a surge of rightness, righteousness, as he drops his bombs, not on the town, but on the fields outside its walls. The awe he feels at his own mercy and generosity, the way he has spared so many just with one decisions, these comfort him for years. When he is much older, he decides to visit the town. He decides to see the lives he has spared and the people he selected for his munificence. The town is very sparsely populated, almost everyone is old and defeated-looking. Where are all the young people, he asks, the families? "In the war," an old man tells him, "a plane came to bomb our village. We had expected this. But the plane did not bomb the village; it bombed our fields. We had sent all the children to hide in the fields."

This is why I cannot agree with my friend's pragmatic criterion for a just war. We are human, not gods. We can never know, never evaluate the path of least suffering. We can never say that, well, if we'd gone in and taken Hitler out when he was just getting started, there would have been millions spared. We do not know what would have taken his place. Each small decision in every life or in the history of nations creates a new universe, and then again and again, to form an incalulable whole; it is never an either-or or if-not-for-this-one-thing-then proposition. We cannot know if decimating Baghdad spares suffering in the long run at the expense of lives now. But we do not need to make that calculation. That is not a math we, as humans, are ever allowed to know. It is, simply, evil, to weigh lives or tens of lives or hundreds of thousands of lives against some posited greater good.

I am against this war. I am against it in the strongest terms, absolutely. I am against it because it is so morally reprehensible, so opportunistic, so shortsighted, and so falsely justified. I am against it because it stands the principles of the United States, of democracy, of international law, of international alliances, and the concepts of self-defense and peace on their heads. The rhetoric is a perversion of the very ideals it lays claim to. And one need only look at what is happening NOW, not posit or calculate all possible outcomes, to see this.

Because of the United States' thirst for war, the world is in crisis. There is massive anxiety, world markets are volitile, alliances are fracturing, leaders are forced to choose between the wills of their populations and the political bonanza of getting on board (thus falling on their own political futures' swords for the Bush administration), the United States is seem as imperialistic and bullying, its reputation is tarnished, its citizens are in danger abroad and at home. Because of the United States' thirst for war, the Muslim world sees cause for jihad, sees a thinly veiled holy war, the North Koreans see what happens to nations branded "axis of evil" and have decided to be preemtive themselves (whether or not, as they claim, they believe we are about to attack them, they've chose not to go quietly, with at least nominal cooperation, like the Iraqis, but to flout and provoke, to say: we are not your whipping boy), the Iranians may well be funding terrorists in northern Iraq, the Turkish military is hungering to bring the Kurds to their knees. Because of the United States' thirst for war, its own citizenry is divided between a desire to trust its leaders and believe they are not being lied to, a desire to be patriotic and supportive in the wake of 9/11, a desire not to penalize the soldiers as they were in Vietnam, and a desire for peace, peace of mind and security, and some attention to our domestic and economic woes. Simply as a result of engineering, jockeying for an ersatz legitimacy for war, ugly precendents have been set, ugly actions have been taken, ugly prejudices have been inflamed. We have promised goodies to those who fall in line, and threatened economic and political consequences to those who balk. We have questioned allies' loyalty and commitment to world peace and international law. We have revived French-bashing, and incited anti-Semitism. We have, in an underreported memo leaked to London's the Guardian, instructed the NSA to spy on Security Council members in hopes of exploiting their private fissures and doubts. We have, merely by promising major aid (to offset massive expense and economic hits, proven by the last Gulf War), and then, by democratic vote, having that phantom wealth disappear, caused the economy of Turkey to take a major hit. We have rejoiced at that hit, calculating that the precipitous fall of the Turkish stock market (which we rightly anticipated following the no-vote in their parliament) might well be the lever that would ensure a subsequent yes-vote to our basing our northern operations in Turkey. Already, large multinationals have calculated opportunity and placed their bets on war. And these interests are not tangential to policy, not merely second-level opportunists; they, in fact, in a global economy and in the currrent administration, in large part are driving policy, are engineering this nominally high-minded war.

About our high-minded rhetoric. If we are so concerned about states that fund or harbor terrorists, what about Iran, Pakistan, the Philippines. If we are so concerned about domestic security, what about the inefficacy of our new behemoth bureaucracy and its scaremongering without real guidance or funding for emergency resources? If we are so concerned about peace in the Middle East, about democracy, what about the repressive autocracies with which we are allied, from whose bases we will mount our war; what about Israel's state-sponsored terrorism in which one of the largest military machines in the world, funded and equipped by the United States, annihilates and pulverizes entire communities of poorly armed, disorganized, and appallingly poor Palestinians in a tragically childish, ceaseless, self-perpetuating tit-for-tat? If we are so concerned about atrocities and human rights abuses, where were we in Angola (now a new ally, due for perks and goodies), in Rwanda, in Zaire, in Cambodia when Pol Pot was executing anyone with a high-school education (a corollary of our actions in Vietnam, as were so many atrocities), when Franco, and Pinochet, and Marcos, and Qadaffi, and Idi Amin, and Heile Salassi, and Miloscovic, and Ceaucescu were raping their countries and terrorizing their people? We supported many of these men, covertly, by open policy, or by inaction. We were so concerned with the "evil empire" and the "eastern bloc" that we colored the map red and supported any repressive, selfish zealot who at least wasn't Communist, while letting half the world's people suffer. And to war advocates who cede the above, but say that getting rid of Saddam is a step in the right direction, that the past is past but now we're stepping up to the plate, I offer a different, less morally defensible analysis of why Iraq and why now.

As to conservative commentators and pundits, as to administration apologists and mouthpieces, as to kowtowing Congressmen and fat-cat civilian hawks, I say now is the time to stop lying. The half-truths, immediately spun and rewritten history, outright lies and misrepresentations, jingoistic ignorance and hatred wrapped in the flag being foisted on the American people and the world right now is shameful. Shame on Congress for writing Bush a blank check for war without any of the debate, the hard questions that we've left it to our international allies to ask...and pay the price for asking. Congress rolled over on its responsibility, its grave and crucial role as the body that declares war. Shame on Congress for passing the Patriot Act so quickly, and for so misnaming a repeal of civil rights patriotic. Shame on the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee for proudly declaring that he considered removing his father's Croix de Guerre from his office wall to punish lily-livered France, and shame on John McCain for calling France an overpainted dowager who's lost her looks but still hopes to dine out on them. Shame on Condaleeza Rice for saying that Iraq has had "12 years" to disarm as if this administration hasn't pursued a new, aggressive policy just since November on the issue and as if there weren't dozens of similarly disregrded, toothless UN resolutions on the books that the US has no interest in pursuing, including one 35 years old requiring Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. Shame on Bush for withdrawing from the Kyoto treaty and pooh-poohing global warming, and pursuing a destabilizing missile defense shield against international outcry, and then casting aspersions on the international will toward peace. Shame on Donald Rumsfeld for saying, in a patronizing, avuncular, long-suffering way, that of course we have no interest in Iraqi oil; that the oil belongs to the Iraqi people. Shame on George Will for eching this in a screed belittling "the protesters' favorite slogan" "No Blood for Oil." Shame on him for showing an obviously photoshopped image of a deranged-looking Martin Sheen at the front of a march with a "No Blood for Oil" sign prominently over his left shoulder. Shame on him for pompously schooling his audience that this war will cost us much more than we could possibly gain and that of course America will pay for oil post-war as it does now, by the barrel. Shame on him for being either an idiot or a bullshit artist. And shame on NBC for giving him five minutes of prime air time to lie to their viewers. Yes, ordinary Americans will foot the bill for this war for generations to come, not only economically, but in the trade and political policy promises we're hogtying our future to in our attempt to build a coalition. And yes, ordinary Americans will pay just as much, if not more for oil in future. But American-controlled multinationals, the military-industrial complex, and the few plutocrats now in office and their special word-to-the-wise cronies will make billions on infrastructure contracts, war materials, contracts for every stage of the oil exploration, pumping, refining, and transporting process, and insider stock speculation on these outcomes, which makes their vested interest in war, and their power to ensure that we wage it, absolutely a factor, and absolutely deserving of the cry "No Blood for Oil!"

Shame on Ari Fleischer for being an apologist and a forked-tongue mouthpiece. Shame on him for saying on the one hand that Iraq's refusal to destroy the missiles indicates intransigience, but on the other that their acquiescence is merely a game. Shame on him for rewriting history by claiming Iraq was hiding these missiles, saying they never had them. These missiles are not the missing "weapons of mass destruction," but conventional weapons that Iraq itemized. What they disputed was that the missiles exceeded the flight limit imposed by the UN; they did so on the grounds that the missiles were test-fired without the payload and guidance system that would weigh them down and limit their range. That is reality, recent history, rewritten for us as it happens.

Shame on "moderate" columnists like Thomas Friedman and Anna Quindlen for pandering to their audiences and hedging their bets. Friedman likes the idea of Pax Americana but regretfully doubts we can pull it off. Quindlan earnestly hopes for a smoking gun, a reason for a just war, a reason to believe America is not a bully. Both need to stop being so evenhanded and disingenously hopeful for the administration's truthfulness and motivations. Both can see clearly that we're grievously in the wrong, and they need to say so, strongly and clearly and proudly. Shame on the American news media for stirring music and red, white, and blue graphics with logos and slogans like "Showdown With Saddam" and "America Uber Alles" or whatever the hell. Shame on pundits who calmly predict the post-war political landscape and patiently explain the diplomatic wrangling that will result in our prevailing on the UN resolution, both as if war is a fair accompli. Shame on the media for forcing anti-war commentators and pundits and world leaders and policy analysts, over and over, and *every single time*, to have to reiterate that they are not pro-Saddam, that they, too, understand he is evil, evil, evil and lying and despotic and threatening. Why do those in favor for peace constantly have to preemptively defend themselves from being seen as Saddam apologists or unpatriotic while those who are pro-war are never required to give equal time to their belief in peace or international law or democracy, but in fact abrogate those principles to their shrill cries for vengeance? Shame on the media for not more closely scrutinizing and questioning administration rhetoric, and timing of recent events. Why has nobody raised the question that our recent shift in *stated* objective (for it was always our objective; we were being lied to) to regime change and remaking the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East might well have been a ploy to show that war was inevitible and thus force the Iraqis to halt destruction of the missiles (why should they participate in their own de-fanging if the attack is imminent) so that we could the cry to the Security Council "Foul! Material breach! We must attack!" Why has no one in the news media questioned the fortuitous timing of the recent Al Qaeda bigwig arrest, coming as it does right when the administration is getting so much heat for focusing on Iraq rather than terrorism. Apparently the lead came on Fenruary 13th. Couldn't it be that the Pakistanis have had a very good idea where quite a few "evildoers" might be found, but have only recently getten major heat from the US to be proactive, for the administration's agenda's credibility?

Somebody needs to stop this war. It is wrong. What is happening now in the world as even a consequence of our agitating for this war is wrong. We will all pay for the vengeance, greed, and powerlust of a few men and corporations. We will pay emotionally, or with our lives, or karmically, or in our school systems and social programs or with our jobs. We will pay with America's broken promise of democracy, its broken tradition of nonaggression, its sullied principles. Foreign leaders will pay with their broken political futures and the mistrust of their citizens. Citizens of many countries will pay as the world economy reacts, as hatreds mount, and as anxiety infests.

And we will pay in domestic security. We are begging future terrorist attacks. Donald Rumsfeld calmly explained that any collateral damage (those would be people, Mr. Rumsfeld, human lives) incurred by our bombs would be Saddam's fault, his war crimes, his crimes against humanity. Because he made us do it, he pushed us to it, it was our only option. This is not true, it is a lie. This is an optional war. As Bill Moyers said in his recent "journal," it is a failure of imagination, of moral courage, and of diplomacy. As such, the war crimes are ours. The childish, sibling whine of "He made me do it, Mom!" is being put forth by adults with immense power. The abusive parent or spouse's lament "Now look what you've gone and made me do" has become foreign policy. And, in the same Orwellian slippage that allows Wolfowitz to straight-facedly call this war "a peace initiative," we plan to cry, not only "look what he made us do!" but "Look what he did!" If and, god forbid, when, there are further terrorist attacks on American soil or against American or its allies embassies or facilities abroad, the blame will lie squarely on the Bush administration. They are courting terror. They are, in fact, counting on terror, to stoke bloodlust and vengeance, to further muddy the waters of cause and effect, to further broaden the "enemy" and legitimate their military plans and their domestic social agenda, including Patriot II, tax cuts, drilling for Alaskan oil, cutting back social welfare programs, and, in short, raping the American economy for their cronies' (controllers, really) coffers while destroying the environment, the economy, and the tenuous world stability. What the North Koreans are doing right now can be laid at this administration's bellicosity; labeling them part of an "axis of evil;" breaking diplomatic ties, and setting a precedent of preemptive aggression.

This war is wrong not only because it cannot achieve its stated goals and because bombing the hell out of a people in the name of their freedom, without demonstable and immediate threat, is ugly precedent and morally bankrupt, but because it is an artifically created crisis, a crisis that is already having profound negative effects on millions of people, on the global economy, on the world's existing tensions and fault-lines, on national and racial and religious divisions, and on the gestalt, the energy, the, if you will, karma, or the world. This crisis is manufactured, artificial. The threat is overstated and the response to it so disproportionate that it engenders more heinous consequences than the ill it purports to cure. All the ills of the world are laid at one villain's feet: terrorism, global instability, human rights abuses, nefarious plots and weaponry and game-playing. Building up a fading, delusional dictator to the epitome of evil, focusing so much of the world's resources in human energy and anxiety on one man, feeds a terrible beast. As retribution, we will annihilate many people who have only the misfortune to have suffered alrady by being born in Iraq. And this includes the soldiers, who will become the "enemy," whom we will hate and depersonalize and count as righteous casualties. Most of these soldiers are boys or young men who have no choice; there is compulsory military service and I imagine all able-bodied young men will be told to take up arms on pain of death.

This war is wrong on the most basic, naiive terms. What could possibly be right about massive destruction, at massive cost-- monetary, material, diplomatic, secxurity, economic, emotional, karmic-- that will kill and pollute and create chaos and untold echoes and repercussions for generations to come? What could be right about this if it weren't undertaken solely to save the world from imminent, greater destruction. And it is not. The United States is about to embark on its most shameful adventure. One that will destroy the meaning of our Constitution and the priciples of our republic; and one that some of the people themselves support only from a dull patriotism, a manipulated fearfulness, an appeal to that most core racism--the "other," or a terrible, unthinking acceptance of outright lies. I have to believe that a majority of Americans, whether the vocal minority like myself, or the "silent majority" of the vaguely apprehensive, the "Gee, I dunno, this seems a bit...," the "I sure hope they know what they're doing"s---have a true will for peace. I hope that even those who, the polls tell us, favor military action "with international support" now understand that we manipulated an actual internatioal coalition for disarmament into a rubberstamping of regime change; that the objective for which we received support was never our objective. This is why, at the peace march, I thought the signs that urged "Inspections Work; War Doesn't" were misguided; yes, inspections work, but only if the objective is really disarmament. "Inspections work" is no argument against war from the administration's point of view, because disamament is only a thin pretext for a war they badly want, have badly wanted for a long time and now see an opening for.

This is an artificial crisis at a time when we face real crises. We have a more difficult enemy, North Korea. We have a more diffuse enemy, which we label "Al Qaeda" and attempt to tie in a neat, hierarchical package, but might be better understood as situational actions by disenfranchised groups against percieved global hegemony. We have joblessness and deficit and cuts in programs and a souring national mood. We have fracturing alliances at a time when we need solidarity. Our multinationals expolit resources and vast populations and create crime, pollution, and corruption, sparking new manifestations of "al Qaeda." None of these crises is as easy to address, as "winnable," as worthy of breathless reportage, breaking headlines, patriotic and militaristic "in-depth" profiles, as manipulable, as expressible a in good-versus-evil Manichean duality, as glibly personifyable and easily reduced to an uber-villain, a Dr. Evil who must be spanked, and spanked hard, as is Iraq.

We were told it was about disarmament, about a clear and present, or perhaps future, threat to national security. We were told it was about cutting off aid to terrorists and destroying their haven. We were told it was about human rights abuses and liberation from a despot, regime change, self-rule for Iraqis and peace in the Middle East. The more cynical of us perhaps suspect a profit motive and a power motive, a strategic ploy for a lever of American will in the inhospitable Middle East. Perhaps we even suspect the administration of winding us up and pointing us in the direction of their favorite enmy, spinning all of the anxiety and post-9/11 fear and powerlessness and rage with no outlet at a convenient target. Perhaps we suspect that this target has the virtue of being ruled by a familiar villain, a favorite bogeyman for the Bushes, that it has the virtue of being a Muslim country at a time when, although we vehemently deny it, Muslims are easy to lump together and blame for 9/11, and that it has the added attraction of being a strategic linchpin for a power shift in our favor in the Middle East as well as, purely coincidentally sitting on the world's second largest oil reservoirs. Perhaps we suspect them of wanting a definable crisis that distracts from domestic woes, and can be framed and "won" within the frame they present. Perhaps we understand that all of the caution by Nobel Lureates, academics, writers, actors, world leaders, and a majority of the world's peoples will not stop an action to which the administration has already staked its honor and deployed its vast armies. Perhaps we even suspect that the Bush administration wants to take the military out for a spin, watch the newfangled gizmos shock-and-awe the world, deter evildoers everywhere, and leave no doubt as to who's the superpower who'll be calling the shots around these parts.

But I'm suggesting something further, something that Bill Moyers hinted at in the phrase "failure of imagination." I'm suggesting that what is truly terrifying is that blasting a second-rate dictator to kingdom come is the best answer this administration can come up with for the global complexies of the 21st Century. I'm suggesting that all of the factors, rationalizations, woes, ramifications, costs, and crises that I have enumerated now facing us add up to the Bush administration to "let's go get Saddam." I'm suggesting that our leadership is not only morally bankrupt, corrupt, and undemocratic, but woefully inadequate to address the real threats and the real problems and the real needs of the American people. And I'm suggesting that they are at least partially aware of this, and hope that a spectacular, meaningless "victory," complete with media cooperation and stirring look-and-feel graphics, music, and montages, will mask their fundamental inadequacy. And I'm suggesting that, tragically, it may do so, and that, tragically, we will pay and pay and pay for their hubris.
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2/27 addendum:
my new favorite thing
a discussion I've spent more time on than this work that's due tomorrow (starts out dumb, gets better)

I just caught Bush's speech at the American Enterprise Institute. More on them.

What struck me quite forcibly is how the rhetoric has crept. We cried for disarmament. We pressed for inspections. But the clear objective, no longer veiled, is regime change and reshaping the entire Middle East in the name of peace and liberty. Mr. Bush never used the word "war." He called Saddam's Iraq an "outlaw state." He said that the U.N.'s failure to pass the US/British new resolution would render it an irrelevant institution, not committed to fighting terrorism and global peace.

Resolution 1441 is for disarmament. It's very clearly been a bait-and-switch. We do not want to disarm Iraq and then leave it alone. We want to depose, preferably kill, Saddam, try his henchment for war crimes, and install a U.S.-approved regime. The United Nations charter forbids assassination, unprovoked invasions, and forcible occupation and regime change. The Bush administration is telling the U.N. it now must support our illegal actions in order to have the power of its convictions as expressed in the resolution to disarm Iraq. This is positively Orwellian. There was very little in the spech that wasn't Orwellian. War in the name of peace. Occupation in the name of self-determination. Reshaping a region to better suit our political and economic ends in the name of liberty and national security. The concepts are so conflated that Bush didn't even bother to detail why Saddam IS an urgent threat. It's now taken as a given that our game plan depends on his removal. And the game is revealed as global. There was vaguue talk of his support of terrorism, something that the administration has been unable to prove. But by mentioning Sept. 11, threat, and weapons of mass destruction along with evil, despot, repression, and totalitarian, he basically threw everything into a big stew and hoped anger and vengeance would override close questioning of any proof.

All of this is unprecedented. No smoking gun, no aggression, no crimes, and yet a righteous call for war. The U.S. and U.N'.s own stated principles prohibit preemptive war. Reshaping the global landscape for our own ends no longer even hidden, yet not debated or decried. And, above all, the speech made clear that *no disarmament will satisfy us.* Our plan requires war, which requires Saddam to be evil, which makes a truism of his non-cooperation. *There is NOTHING that Saddam or the inspectors can say or do that will avert this war, because our objective is not disarmament but occupation.*

This gigantic a change in American foreign policy, this broad and expensive and costly in terms of the world's good will and human lives an initiative, this amount of peace-and-democracy warmongering wrapped in the flag and gee-whiz look at those big guns news specials...should call forth the most intense, forceful, and sustained debate from real leaders. And yet, by creeping rhetoric and inexorable actions while paying lip service to a U.N. process, the administration seems to have sandbagged the opposition, to have presented a fait accompli which allows only for debate on "restructuring" and "length of occupation." I am having trouble forgiving Democratic politicians and the news media for looking to their own small fortunes when the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

This is a few mens' war, in the guise of world will. How can this happen? Look at the mood, the economy, the anxiety and rising tensions. This is all down to a few men. How dare they fuck with our lives this way? How dare they lie and lie and lie and lie? How dare they sit in their corporate-special-interest ballroom they call a "think tank" and congratulate themselves IN PUBLIC on their plan to take over the world? And have a multi-flag backdrop and never ever ever talk of war or cost or death, but only of peace and freedom and the United States' vision and moral leadership?

For shame. Shame! Shame! Shame!

The New York Protest and Rally

I present my experience and my take on the news coverage I saw and read at home.

My mom's bus was to get in to Shea Stadium at 10 am. She'd left Worcester with four busloads of people at 6:30 am, just two hours after I'd finally fallen asleep after consuming most of a bottle of Pinot Grigio and writing an ambitious "things I'm gonna do as soon as I finish this work push" list. Chief among them might be finding out if anyone on the web has archived Groksoup's old content. The site has turned into an ersatz search engine, and even Google doesn't have the material cached. I started Texting in December of 1999 on Groksoup and, until the server returned more error messages than successful posts, posted there until the beginning of 2001. I left the archives up there, and, although I often reminded myself to copy them to disk, that got entangled in my plan to revamp all archives and make them searchable, which made me put off the complex task. Now it seems that hundreds of pages of my writing may be lost in cyberspace.

Anyhow, mom called at about 10:20. What I should have done the previous night was get my warm clothes and protest supplies together, as, hung over, I stood on a chair to reach a jammed storage area in which were hidden mittens, hats, and scarves. Never found 'em. Had no bottled water or kleenex. Tried three different coats (do I want puffy down, for safety and warmth, a long black wool coat for style and "look, we're not all crunchy hippies" respectability, or the shoat black city coat I wear every day? Finally went for the last, thinking that rather than create more anxiety by treating this as a scary situation, I'd act like a New Yorker who's on the streets every day and just happens, this day, to be near the U.N.) -- and in the process left my tobacco in the down coat pocket, prompting a nicotine fit later.

I walked over to Astor Place, stopping to buy some overpriced, cheaply made gloves from a St. Mark's vendor. When I got to the subway station, everything suddenly seemed real. The platform was jammed with peple, many with signs or slogan hats or buttons, a sense of subdued anticipation and solidarity. I began to feel very excited. The train was already crowded and became unbearably so as we neared Grand Central.

I got out at 51st, the plan being to meet my mom at the Waldorf Astoria's informal restaurant. The crowds were thronging, and I was fighting them walking west. Some organized groups paraded the sidewalk with drums and costumes. On Park Avenue, I passed a large Catholic church, the kind with a wide apron of marble steps. The steps were full and the sidewalk impassable as paritioners gathered, wearing lots of white and purple, carrying "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" signs and pictures of waiflike Iraqui children with the taglines "Collateral Damage?" or "What is Her lIfe Worth To You", and singing hymns. My throat tightened and I got teary.

The Waldorf is huge and I ended up having to backtrack the entire avenue inside the hotel's lobby because the restaurant is on the Lexington Avenue side. My mom wasn't there, which was weird because she'd had almost an hour to get there while I futzed around like an idiot. Now the sidewalks outside were solid with people, unbroken streams. I was circling around the restaurant again when my mom dashed in the hotel lobby door and headed for the escalator; I headed her off at the pass. She said she'd spent almost 40 minutes covering the blocks from Grand central and trying to get out of the terminal itself.

Mitsu was picking up friends of his and Sue's coming in from Princeton at Penn Station, then busing west. I figured he was long gone, but when we called his cell phone, he and the group were still stuck in the Grand Central area, which had become complete pedestrian gridlock as thousands swarmed out onto streets with no room to hold them, and the police began blocking certain exits and routing people away from where they wanted to go. My mom waited for Mitsu while I went for coffee, easier said than done in Midtown, which features blocks of solid granite buildings, and few delis or bodegas. I had to go almost over to 5th again, worried that Mom would miss Mitsu in the throngs. Then having that first sip of coffee and realizing no cigarettes. I bummed one from another person waiting in the lobby portico; turned out he also smokes roll-your-owns.

Mitsu's friends were a family with two small children. The oldest daughter had made a big cardboard sign that said "Dear Mr. Installed by the Supreme Court, Why Don't You Give Peace a Chance" and was pretty greens and pinks with a flower motif. The sign, on a folding box remnant, turned out to be very hard to manage.

We joined the throngs flowing north on Lexington, and within a block, were off the sidewalk and in the street, solid crowds from building to building on either side and as far as one could see north or south. We were allowed to go east to 3rd within a few blocks north, but were trapped on third for several more blocks before being allowed to go east on the next unblocked cross street, to 2nd Avenue, where we spent the bulk of the afternoon.

At first, on Lex and Third, we'd be pushed to the sidewalk by blocs of traffic, still trying to get through at a snail's pace. But by 55th Street and for all of our journey north on 2nd Avenue, the sea of humanity was far too dense to allow vehicle traffic, and we passed cars that had been caught up in the crowds, some with drivers inside or sitting on their hoods, some abandoned where they'd been trapped. The crowd would flow around them like liquid. The very very few police this far west were desperately blocking the cross streets east; some had wooden barriers, others just had personnel. It was only about the mid-50s that we saw police in riot gear. On the avenues, maybe one or two policemen every block had been given crowd control, and either simply stood still like the vehicles while thousands passed, or shouted futilely to "get on the sidewalks!" (which were absolutely full already), or just collected wooden sticks (prohibeted) from signs.

I was fortunate to have arrived early enough to both be able to reach the meetingplace with my mom (others were divided by barricades from their parties) and to be situated in the main flow of people toward the demonstration, the flow that would actually reach the First Avenue blocks earmarked for the rally, albeit three hours later. Other groups, coming from west, north, and south, hit cul-de-sacs of barricaded cross streets. The way it worked was like a staircase. The further south you were, the further west the cross streets were barricaded, to prevent the sideflow crowds from crushing the full avenues. However, since the police had not figured any of this out in advance, barricade rigidity became situational. Also, police were unable to say where one *would* be able to access the protest, since there was no traffic flow plan. This meant that protesters at Fifth or Park or Lex Avenues shouted and agitated at barricades on cross streets rather than simply being told to go further north until the next open cross street east. Almost all of the clashes with police were due to this simple communication/logistics breakdown. The police simply hadn't been paying attention to the grassroots news. March permit or no, how were several hundred thousand people, coming from every direction, going to access one location (given as First Avenue and 51st)? Inevitibly, streams would converge into rivers and would become gridlocks and solid, stationary masses, unable to get in. The protesters should have been told to stay on subway trains until the late 60s or so, where some cross streets were open to First Avenue. The barricade cops should have had walkie-talkes so that instead of pointless argy-bargy, they could have said, go up five blocks north and then cross east. Very very bad planning.

That said, the protest was fantastic. It took awhile before it coalesced in the sense that for perhaps half an hour, we all thought we'd soon be on First Avenue, facing the podium, all gathered as one group and one energetic body, where we'd sing and chant and cheer. During that time, we all felt like commuters at rush hour who were waiting for a temporary bottleneck to ease, and the mood was sort of like waiting in line for a popular movie or something. Grumbling, silly songs of "let us though," and massive energy and sign-waving and puppets all held in abeyance for the "real" protest.

But it soon became apparant that this WAS the "real protest." That we were the protesters, every bit as "real" as the First Avenue rally, and that this was the time we had, where we were. There was sort of an energetic change then, as we resigned ourselves to walking north indefinitely, "away" from, and parallel to the rally. People who had portable radios turned the speeches up loud, and you'd hear several minutes before the amoebalike crowd carried you away from them. Staying connected to ones group was hard, it was easy to be cut off and then drift in a different pattern, lose visual contact.

People were very, very funny. It was an intelligent and very upbeat crowd, which was reflected in both the overheard snatches of conversation ("Oh, yeah, this'll be on the news 'several protesters gathered.' 'In other news, a handful of radicals mad life hard for motorists today in Midtown'), and in the signs, which were terrific. Although there were "No Blood for Oil" and "Impeach Bush" signs, as well as some signs for peripheral issues, most were not polemical, but presupposed a commonality of purpose and hopeful-but-slightly-cynical tone with puns and humor.

I'd wanted to carry a sign on a stick, but abandoned the idea when told no sticks. I forgot about cardboard tubes, which many people used to hold their signs. I couldn't decide between "No War No How"; "Ask Me Why I March" (a segue to handing out my list, which I had about 30 copies of but didn't hand out because it was silly; everyone WAS marching, couldn't stop and read, and were all packed in like sardines); or "Mark Shields for President!" Now I wish I'd put duct tape all over my slothes, worn plastic sheeting as a shawl, and carried a sign saying "Am I Safe Yet?"

Great signs included a gorgeous felt applique peace banner with doves (no space to march with it unfurled to be seen, though), pretty silkscreened scrims of the earth from space, "Draft the Bush Twins," "Got Tape?" (takeoff of the milk campaing with a pic of Bush with duct tape over his mouth); "Asses of Evil" (picture of Bush administration bigwigs), "Regime Change Begins at Home," "Not in Our Name," and, my mom's favorite "Let's Not Elect Bush (Again)."

At one point we heard the crowd estimates for protests in Rome and Berlin and London and everyone cheered. We heard snatches of a very informal and funny speaker from Harlem who was like "You can stick Colin Powell or Condileeza Rice in your Cabinet and we stil;l aren't fooled! Those people do not represent us! We're not gonna die in your war! If you hate Saddam so much, Mr. Bush, why don't you take a plane over there and punch himn in the nose!" They announced PeteSeeger but then I was out of range, which was sad.

Further north, we passed the "Glamericans," my favorite agit-prop theme of the day, they were glammed out in sort of goth/drag with sequins and lots of fake fur and feathers and high heels, with pink, white, and black signs in glitter on faux fur saying "Peace is Glamorous!" "War is a Bore" and other silly fabulous things.

There were big puppets of peace doves with wings on sticks flying over the crowd. People would start localized chants, from the good-oldies "a people united will never be defeated!" and "we shall overcome" to "I-2-3-4 We don't want your stupid war! 5-6-7-8- No More Duct Tape!" to silly situation-specific chants like "Onward to 59th!" Some young people made a sort of grunge rap from old chants, We caught up with the Psychiatric Profesionals For Peace carrying their "Peace of Mind" banner and looking sensible and calm as is their wont.

We all came to realize that, by denying a permit and a march route, the city had created a march, a march to the protest. And that, with all the concerns for "safety," this unanticipated march was completely unpoliced or regulated, with all the barricades and crowd control and sharpshooters over on First Avenue. And that we were in a completely self-regulated crowd, organically marching, and it was somehow beautiful. And a huge cheer would arise from behind us, massive and unified, a tonal "ooooh!" that traveled forward in a sound wave like the visual waves organized at large sporting events, but completely spontaneously, forming a shape, an aural energetic wave of solidarity and assent. It was very very powerful, like an "ohm," and it also seemed transpersonal, global.

"We got our march!" people said. "Yeah, we're marching." There was no intent to defy the law; this wasn't a rebellion against the rally; it was the people marching TO the rally. Mitsu said, "It looks like the decision to forbid the march was like dividing the baby in half." Somewhere in the early 60s, the family from Princeton peeled off to go home, with two exhausted and overwhelmed kids.

This is why crowd estimates on this particular protest are very misleading. Lots of people never got to the rally and staged side-street rallies; other got freaked by the crowds; some went all the way west and protested not having been able to get to First Ave at the Javitz Center. And thousands, like our friends, came a long way, joined in, but never made it to First Avenue to be counted although they marched for hours. Even as we marched north, exhausted protesters who'd been standing in the cold since 10am were coming west, out from the cross treets that were blocked from our direction. We stopped at the first deli we came to (really, 2nd Ave needs more delis in the 60s!!) and it was packed solic with hungry protesters. Restaurants as far away as 5th Avenue were slammed. Midtown was like the West Village right after the Gay Pride parade winds up and tens of thousands fan out into every locale. Some protesters stopped in elevated corporate building stairs or aprons to take video, watch the parade, or try to find the people they'd lost.

At some point we asked a barricade cop how far north we'd have to go and he said "72nd," but it was 69th that north of us was blocked and we swung right, the energy surging again, 2:30 p.m. and we were "almost there." More singing and euphoria now, and we hit First Avenue, both north and south blocked now, penned in btween 68th and 9th. "We're here," said Mitsu "We weren't here before, but now we are."

The rally was slightly anticlimactic, as we were frozen, tired, overstimulated, far from the podium, and no longer moving. I truly think it would have been safer, easier on traffic and law enforcement, and more satisfying for the protesters, to have marched on a route. As it was, we took over streets unintentionally, didn't know where to go, marched anyway, but with no protection or room to spread out banners and represent groups, and never got that satisfaction, the coming together of everyone at once, in one direction, energetically forward, channeling energy and sharing a common experience. By the time we got to First, the pens in front of us had thinned out as people went for food or toilets (no port-a-potties, "for security"), or had left after being there 5 hours. So we starte a leapfrog game of waiting at a pen for ten minutes or so until the crowd pressure from those still streaming on from 2nd (we began walking at about 11:30, so think of the people who had yet even to arrive for the rally scheduled at 12!), forced the cops to swing to partitions open and we'd suge forward to the next block. However, sidewalks were being kept open for passersby, so people were climbing the barricades over and bypassing the pens via the sidewalks. Barriers were fallen over, which was dangerous, and bottlenecks around one small opening forced much more jostling and crushing than before. We could see space ahead of us, which made the crush seem pointless.

At one point, trapped much longer than usual in one pen, the crowd surched left to the sidewalk, climbing the barricade and really crushing. I lost my party and then they swung ther barrier in the center open and I was carried forward very fast. I went over to the left and hoped to see my mom come by. If she didn't she could be anywhere. But there they were. It was probably on that block that, trying the sidewalk again, dangerous with ice and utility poles and postboxes and debris, I was caught between a tree on my right, and a crowd on my left, when a young guy with a huge backpack tried to sort of swing me open like a door, pushing by very hard and knocking me sideways. I thought, time to stop, this is getting dangerous. I stood in front of the tree for shelter, we all paused there, and now, finally, we could see the huge video screen of the podium and hear the speeches (sound trucks with loudspeakers were positioned every block on 1st).

Just a not for rally organizers: Fewer speakers. More variety in tone and message of speakers. More songs and humor, less shrill, endless preaching. And for the speakers:: speak slowly, keep your pitch low, enunciate clearly, use short sentences, and don't think you can go on and on really fast and shrill and then end with a rallying cry and expect spontaneous chanting!! Pace your delivery with several mini-crescendos of humor or exortation, let the crowd cheer and laugh, leave then wanting more, and end with a very catchy phrase. They'll chant it then.

Saw Danny Gover and one articulate woman, then one of those "Pink Lady" protesters I later saw profiled on the national news (Code Pink for Peace!" just didn't quite catch on), missed Seger and Tutu, and realized my muscles were spasming and my teeth were chattering and it was time to go.

It was almost as hard to leave as to arrive, with subways blocked off, streets thronged, avenues blocked, and no bistros or open restaurants. Mom and I, exhasted, meandered down as far as 59th and over almost to 5th before a shopkeeper put us on to a small second-story Irish pub, which, even at this remove, was packed with protesters (which they were not prepared for, with one waitress). I'd seen a friend from yoga class amid the huge 2nd avenue crowd; here, the couple at whose house I'd celebrated New Years' walked in. I had to walk all the way over to Columbus Circle for an accessible subway and, after seeing mom off for her bus, ran into a guy I'd worked side-by-side with at the post-9/11 Clarkson relief station.

All in all, the protest was exhilerating, powerful, life-affirming, joyful, a mess logistically, but beautifully handled by the protesters. I can se how mobs work though. If this were a slightly more repressive country, if people had been a tad less good-natured and funny, and angrier, I could see how sheer energy and size could create a mob, I could see plate glass smashed and those stranded cars overturned. I think we should thank one another and give much props for the peace and camaraderie.
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I feel relieved that September 11th has passed. It actually gave me much the same restless anxiety that my birthday last Friday did: wanting to be caught up in something larger than me, wanting community and not knowing the "right" thing, something looming which I was bound to fail to adequately mark, some unfulfilled expectation. I decided to not go down to Ground Zero, as, again, it was a ceremony (and there were so many) that was cordoned off and private so that, even being blocks away physically, one could only 'see' it on television. On the street, you'd just be part of a crowd, anxious and wanting to participate meaningfully, penned by barricades. The night before, many people went to vigils and sings and prayers; I did not. I was all bent out of shape by some cash flow stuff and the total clutter in my apartment, misdirected emotion. It was so wild and windy, completely anomalous weather for NY, gave a momentous and portentous tone to the sunny day. Odd soundscape, too. Quiet in terms of car alarms, shouts, traffic, but again many sirens. So many I had to go outside. The neighborhood had a Saturday feel, lots of people out and brunching at cafes, and wandering with that same quiet, bonded feeling we'd experienced the year before. Quite a few people with videocams and cameras. Gusty winds, dust, and things flapping and banging. Lots of people, looks like, took a personal day from work, so the workaday rhythm was diffuse. Ran into some old friends, seemed everyone was strolling. Gina had gone to McSorley's for lunch and a beer, full, she said, of hunky Irish cops and firefighters, getting soused. She said it was the perfect place for her to be. I went to the park and finished Hiasson's "Basket Case", a fun read about a newspaper obituary writer obsessed by his own death. There was a ragtag memorial concert, pleasantly not too amplified music. Came home and listened to some of the 69 Love Songs. Went to yoga, and, on the way, saw my favorite scene of the day. At Crunch fitness, a ground-floor branch of a chain, through the plate-glass windows, I saw an aquariumful of young, buff Americans, all the machines were full, all running and cycling machines. So that everyone was facing, racing, but not getting anywhere, and gazing at a bank of televisions, each showing one of the major networks' image-montages of disaster and terror. it really said it all to me. The juxtaposition, the entitlement, the way everything has changed and nothing has.

Later, I watched "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero", which, amazingly, had some fresh views and images.One woman, a Buddhist, made the point that the acts of destruction took years of elaborate planning, coordination, and focused energy. But that, in chaos, instantaneously, utterly without context or expectation or precedent, acts of community and kindness were spontaneous and ubiquitous. I thought that was a beautiful point. How much planning went into malevolence, yet how spontaeous, pure, and direct the nobility of response.

The documentary reminded me of something I'd come to realize, most emphatically illustrated by Daniel Pearl's death. His kidnapping and killing were so personal, so senseless, so depersonalizing; the waste and pointlessness of it was striking. And his powerlessness, in that he was clearly savvy, charismatic, a great communicator, so that who he was could not save him, even as what he symbolized damned him. And the gap between what he symbolized to the killers and who he was as a person was exactly the cultural gap we cannot fathom, cannot seem to bridge in words. And there was absolutely no way that his killing could be politically justified; there were no demands that could be met, there was no grievance he'd created, there was no way he could be held responsible for either the policies of Israel or of the United States. And it was his death that made it black and white for me. That the attack in New York can never be discussed in symbolic terms, either; there can be no debate about whether "we" somehow "deserved it", "had it coming." Whether the impotent rage of the disenfranchized could find no more effective outlet. Whether we got a much-needed "wake-up call." The scale of the attack, and the impersonality of the means... these random people in planes, these other random people at their desks, and the physics of force, momentum, object, stress collapse... these all reinforce depersonalization. The scale of loss and destruction itself becomes symbolic, so that we see "America" having been attacked by "evildoers"... or perhaps they have a point we need to hear? But the death of Daniel Pearl invalidated any discussions of justification for me. September 11 was several thousand such deaths, each one unique and tragic and wasteful, and yet, in the aggregate, seemingly abstract. That very abstraction is the crime. Political discussion and grievances and slaughter are not the same language, should never be cheapened by allowing equivalent weight in discussion.

On an internet bulletin board, I saw a post asking why we took this to be so tragic and important when millions were massacred in Rwanda. Wasn't this another example of our swaggering provincialism? I can think of many poignant and historical reasons why the events are dissimilar, having nothing to do with valuing some lives less than others or with blind nationalism. Similarly, I heard Alan Dershowitz on the radio asking why we feel the Palestinians have more of a claim to nationhood than the kurds or cypriots or tibetans. He said it was because they had used terrorism and somehow bamboozled the world into seeing them as particularly, and legitimately desparate as a result; he found this despicable. Again, I could think of many reasons the Palestinian cause has unique pathos, some of which have to do with Israeli military occupation and civilian deaths. However, I have felt less sympathetic, not seen suicide bombers as hapless, misguided, and completely disenfranchized youth, so much this year, because there is no equation between legitimate grievance and killing random civilians. I was especially turned off by the Palestinians' recent killing of "collaborators." Those executed, women, were tortured into video confessions, their children rendered untouchable orphans, by their fellow countrymen. Really stomach-turning behavior. So I'm pretty much anti-terrorism across the board. The only problem being that it is the entrenched powers who define terrorism as "other" while sanctioning similar acts under rhetoric of national interest and self-defense.

I have a book to copyedit and man, am I procrastinating. The September 11th Anniversary is not just a media event. I'm having real, visceral memories and flashback feelings.

I had written a piece on my compulsive attraction to Ground Zero, but not gotten it published at the various places I sent it out, so it languished in my computer. Friday morning, the editor of the Villager called asking if I had anything to contribute to their anniversary issue, so I started revising. I emailed some editor friends for help (and Mitsu, now in NY, came over and looked at it, validating the opening paragraphs I'd chosen, thanks, M). I want to post the piece here tomorrow. My hope was, by the anniversary, to have a page up of links to all my Sept. 11 essays, called "Impact." Not sure if I'll get it done, given that I have an actual, paying assignment on deadline. Anyhow, I ended up emailing today one of the women who helped me edit the piece down this weekend, and i feel like sharing that email now:

Yes, I sent in that last version yesterday; it will appear in tomorrow's Villager. They printed an earlier essay I wrote about how Sept. 11 reverberated in my vehemently anti-authoritarian neighborhood; there was an outpouring of support for cops and an arty patriotism that combined peace protests and flag graffiti. That was the first time I'd ever been paid for writing (50 bux), and I learned then that I had to edit myself because they have no staff and no time, and I have no idea who ever reads the paper because we have the Times and the Voice and the Post and New York Press.

Anyhow, thank you again for your editing advice, I took a lot of it, in terms of extraneous sentences. Most important for me, you seemed to understand the tone and structure choice overall, which was extrememly encouraging.

As for the anniversary coverage, I think there is good stuff to be found. Last night I watched a PBS special that focused on several firefighters over about half a year as they searched for their friends and attended memorials and continued to fight fires. It differed from the commercial network "hero" specials in that the men talked about being very angry, about how they were bickering in the house, being hostile to the new replacements, yelling at their kids. It talked about their ambivalence about being used as symbols of patriotism for the national agenda, and about the wave of divorces and retirements this past year. Then, PBS had a documentary (obviously a low-budget labor of love) about two undocumented Mexican workers from Windows on the World, and how their families, living in astounding poverty in Mexico, tried to get information, get here to search hospitals, and finally, negotiate the maze of official paperwork in another language for men who'd officially "not been there." PBS is airing "Doubt and Faith at Ground Zero" Wednesday night, that looks to me like the best thing to watch, if you choose to see anything.

I think the thing about coverage here is that it's much more human, on a smaller scale; it's a local story. The WTC had housed the television transmitters for the city, so, not having cable, I (along with millions here), had only two channels. One was local, and the newscasters, usually relegated to covering crime and feel-good stories, were suddenly on the front line in a war zone. And they really rose to the occasion. The thing was, being based here, their stories were both more detailed, less prone to abstraction, and echoed that bewildering mix of scale that we all were experiencing. Like, they'd report on the timeline of the hijackings, and then they'd give a bulletin that St. Vincent's Hospital wasn't accepting any more blood, and then a call for volunteer ironworkers to show up at the Javitz Center, and then Guiliani giving a news conference with freely crying top cops and emergency personnel, and then a report on which subways were running and which roads were blocked and which schools were closed and the students should report to this other place...

The national news was much more about overview stuff and immediately "attack on America" and "American Fights Back." I can tell you that, here, we could have given a shit about fighting back. It just did not compute. I mean, people were wandering around putting up flyers describing their wives and kids, people were forming gigantic lines to volunteer for everything, people were handing out water and bringing bags of anything they thought might be useful to checkpoints and distribution stations. The national news reporters, for the most part, were doing their stand-ups from a further geographic remove than I was experiencing. So I'd be in all this futile activity and chaos and bustle, where a call for "visine!" had 25 overadrenalized volunteers ripping open cartons and running around, and then go home and hear these sanitized reports of "the volunteer effort" or something that didn't at all capture the scope and mess and redundancy. Also, close to the site, you could see that, for days, there was no order, there were no supplies, and there was no communication. The emergency command center had been housed in a destroyed building, and, since people might still be alive, all of the procedures and care for evidence and hierarchies were just out the window. No one was in charge. There was all this food and water and donated emergency equipment and it was heaped around the perimeter, no vehicles could penetrate, the guys inside were using their hands and makeshift crowbars. We would load up a grocery cart of supplies and walk it down to another pile of dust-covered stuff, and still it wasn't getting to the people who needed it.

It was a huge lesson in the inability of the media to convey the on-the-ground reality of things like war and disaster. There was a surreal triangulation between direct experience and then going home and seeing exactly where I'd just been standing sort of interpreted and divested of all its human complexity. I think part of the ground zero compulsion was an attempt to erase that alienation. I mean, the world is obsessing on these few acres of space, and it's right down the street, how could I not be there, how could I just receive images?

Rereading my piece in the light of the two documentaries I saw last night, I felt again (and I had had so much trouble with this, over the months), that I had missed the point. The way the deserted streets felt, everything dark and trashed and the overpowering smell of rotting bodies and burnt electronics, omipresent sirens and people, really, in varying levels of shock, which took the form of hyperactivity but also this very slow, numbed, affectless conversation... It was like martial law or a post-apocalyptic film. I think the main difference in writing about it here, and talking, too, is that everyone has a story, everyone has a set of intense episodes, we experienced it, not collectively, in a way that can be codified and wrapped in neat paper, but in a fragmented, disjointed series of personal moments. But also profoundly alone. I felt like were were a bunch of atoms, all off-kilter, bouncing off of one another, all of the social conventions and habits of work and routine did not apply. Nothing felt like the right thing to do when you were doing it, it was restless. Conversations, especially, did not flow. People were either like zombies or control freaks. And it was a full two weeks before I overheard anyone on the street talking about anything else. I mean, the first time I heard someone going, "Well, then she said bla bla and I was like...," it was startling. And the first time I heard music coming out of a passing car instead of news.

For me, most of the writing, even by name-brand folks and literary luminaries, those first few weeks, just didn't work. I think, like World War Two, which people are still coming to terms with (I just read Ian McEwan's "Atonement," which has a truly amazing section about the evacuation at Dunkirk that's so visceral and disturbing and captures arbitrary destruction and chaos and then the tidy, heroic way it was reported), the writing about Sept. 11 will mature with time, and explore more of the nuances and contradictions. I had wanted to convey one idea: that there was no "inside", that the closer one got, the less any understanding applied, that it was a site of absence, that all of the media focus and frantic activity created a false sense that there was a geographic and temporal 'there' . There were like a million 'there's and there was no there.

Sent this to the Times::

This is in response to Safire's most recent "On Language" column, "Blog." I've always respected Safire's etymological, if not political, expertise. In fact, I wrote him a letter when I was 11 or so, protesting the grammar of Tom Petty's "I Need a Lover that Won't Drive Me Crazy." (I argued it should be "who" as the lover was probably a person and not a thing.) Safire did not reply.

However, how, with his staff of researchers, could he have so misstated the culture, purpose, history, and etymology of "blog"? Leaving aside the snide crack about "average but opinionated Joe or Josie"s chronicling their minutiae... (Over 3 years of blogging, I've read and met some crackerjack bright, informed, creative, and activist bloggers, contributing to our society's dialogues for free, as opposed to cranking out columns to fill allotted space.) There has been a vociferous, and quite easy-to-find discussion on the web, occasioned by the recent publication of two books on blogging by prominent bloggers. People dispute the genesis of the form, the weight of certain bloggers' contributions and tech innovations.

But what is universally acknowledged is that the word "Blog" was deliberately coined by Peter Merholz in 1999 in his weblog Peterme.com. "Weblog" had been the word to describe the form. Peter announced "I am now going to call it we-blog (pronounced wee-blog); 'blog for short." It's history, and it's easily verified with a simple web search. Why do people persist in rewriting even recent history when grassroots phenomena finally "earn" acknowledgement by major media?

Thanks,
me

Addendum 7-1: Searched Google for "household hints stain remov*" and got this academic essay on little known women poets of the Renaissance.

Other recent absorbing surfing included:
Memo to Media Monopolists (echoes that excellent NY Times magazine article on the dinosaur thinking of the music industry, was in a special issue devoted to music.)
Information Monopolies (by Representative Bernie Sanders)
The First Amendment: We can all get sidetracked in abstractions and situation-specific ethics, but this page from the American Library Association reminds us what it's all about. The amandment, commentary, and links. Great information to bookmark for the Fourth of July.
The Patriot Act. Congress jumped on the security bandwagon post-September 11 with this broad legislation. Forget hearsay and rumor, read the act yourself and check out the excellent links.
The ACLU's Patriot Act page. More analysis from those watchdogs of civil liberties.
The FBI wants to track your web trail
Intellectual Freedom. What is it? How is it being compromised? What is being done?

So I'm cleaning the place. This seems picayune, perhaps, when I'm unemployed and not making art. But I've been going full tilt for week now, with perhaps a week to go. This is only a 250-square foot space. Perhaps about the size of your living room. And I have the detritus of my entire life here (minus, okay, clothes, books, cds etc. with ex-bf in Berlin, a set of dishes and glasses and several boxes of childhood books and college papers in my brother's attic, and college books and toys/momentos at mom's). And two of us live here. Was supposed to be a stop-gap situation, but we could pay three times this amount in NY for the same amount of space, so the choice I made 9 years ago now that this apartment was a good starter place in Manhattan has sort of become the only place I'll ever have in Manhattan.

So I wasn't getting a job, despite several interviews, and I was in some sort of limited thinking/ limited activities/ limited space deadening loop. And I was almost distraught with the chaos and squalor and not being able to lay my hands on anything or throw on some music or find a given piece of paper. Very self-dramatizingly I announced I was Giving Up on Everything. My s.o. expressed his concern by bringing me an incomplete set of Tony Robbins' Personal Power 2 cds, which skipped in my computer cd player which has been broken for over a year, can't find the install driver disc in the damn piles of crud. Tony is very enthusiastic, and if you're really depressed you just want to shout "shut up! shut up! shut up!" There are also homework exercises, necessitating keeping a "success journal" which reminded me of all the lists of resolutions, brainstorming, journal and useful-info notebooks, and computer files which were meant to move my life forward.

I started browsing on Amazon for get-out-of-rut books. There are a staggaring array of books to help one live more fully, communicate more effectively, operate more efficiently, feel more authentically, prosper more prosperously, organize and clean without freaking out, live in the now, seize the day, give and receive, breathe and be still. It was a slippery slope, as each one I looked at linked to like 5 more and I opened 'em all in separate windows and simultaneously read excerpts from like 20 books on procrastination, dreams deferred, habitual ruts, the poverty mindset, and the like, each of which seemed to begin "You've bought many books and attended many seminars but nothing seems to work. But this system..." I limited myself to the number of books that cost equivalent to one therapy session. They should arrive tomorrow and I figure I'll have like 6 journals-and-exercises regimines going as I evaluate my internal stories about money, time, success, space, decisionmaking... I can't wait to manifest and free myself of old models and stuff and plans to live in the now.

But meanwhile, prompted by the sort of perfect meltdown that only severe PMS, 90-degree heat, unemployment, and a blissfully unconcerned packrat cohabitant can induce, I began tearing the place apart last Saturday. I was nominally looking for the coffee grinder, which, three days and heat exhaustion later, cohabitant admitted he had taken to another geographic location. At that point, I would have asked myself why I always become involved with charming sadists were I not that very day on the lesson in Personal Power 2 where Mr. Robbins cautions that your infinitely cretaive mind will answer the questions you set it, and if you ask "why does this always happen to me?" you'll end up with more answers that drive you to despair.

I have the always inspirational Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui (so clear, simple, and well written), so I began. One of my main problems is the Everything Syndrome, which becomes a logistical reality in such a tiny, crammed space. It's like one of those Chinese puzzles where if you move one thing, you have to move everything because there is only one bloc of space to accomodate motion. So while I'd like to limit myself to, say, the bureau, the winter clothes in the bureau must be switched with the summer clothes in the shelf above the door, which can only be reached by a chair that doesn't fit in the entryway so that the hutch must be moved... By Monday I had stacks of stuff over head height piled in chairs and against walls and every storage space was crammed and nothing was truly "junk." I was sobbing and throwing things and called my mother at work. This was after I called Mitsu the night before for some Buddhist perspective (which was calming and generous. Mitsu emphasized that while the books and teachers who emphasize we create our own realities and urge us to focus and visualize to the better do have some insight, the larger picture is that things are not as they seem. It's not that we are making a bad reality, it's that we are not seeing what's really true. Mitsu said that being alive itself, just surviving as a human, is infinitely complex and miraculous, and that the difference between a life like, say, mine, and that of the most successful happy person imaginable is only like 2%, not 100%, and that difference is just a slight attunedness of balance and a more true seeing of the what-is. Thank you, Mitsu.)

My s.o. is becoming a Buddhist. Unfortunately he's still at the newly-converted level that is less enlightened than smug. "I'm not attached to these things," he claimed calmly, as I implored him to help me with the high shelves, do some vacuuming, and stop equating 'cleaning' with putting his gigantic cd collection back in its cases and reading old art magazines. (Thus triggering my fantasy that the easiest way to clean clutter and free up space in my life would be to load all his junk up in a huge box and call Goodwill.) This reminded me of another ex-lover I called once who calmly informed me that she'd started therapy and was now happy to report that she'd gained the insight that I was totally fucked up and everything was my fault. "And how long have you been in therapy?" I asked. "Three months," she said. "Uh-huh. Well, next year you learn that it's all actually your fault," I said. I really hate the newly converted; they're such fascists.

So, without any live human support and with the helpful books in the mail, I relied on emails from wonderful friends (H says "get the fuck out of there!") and Flylady; a website/mailing list that someone posted to a publishing web board in a discussion about creative blocks. I highly recommend it. It seems like something I'd ridicule. I mean, I get emails that tell me to " fix your face" or "hug your dear husband." It's for overwhelmed housewives and it's got that slightly Christian, slightly cutesy (lots of abbreviations) tone. But the woman is really, really nice, you can tell, and the best thing is when she shares testimonials from people who are doing it and they're so damn moving, people are facing so much in their lives and doing the best they can. And although it's all about keeping house without letting that run your life, what it really teaches is how to partialize daunting tasks and let go of perfectionism and let the beginning be now. It's kind of Zen that way. Every time I get an email that says, "You are not behind. You can jump in whereever you are," I feel like someone gave me a repreive.

Another thing that's come up is a little less self-judgment. There are some objective things that make things hard. Like that I have to schlepp stuff to a laundry instead of doing loads each day. Like there are several things, like the coffee grinder, that I did not "lose" because I'm so fucked up. Like the at least 20 degree slant to my floor which makes things (and me) fall over and makes home yoga unbalanced. Like no money for little repairs or dry cleaning. Like an apartment the size of a postage stamp that necessitates climbing on furniture and contortionism to reach the books, the videos, the records (move couch, move stereo speaker, move albums piled on top of album rack, select record, put everything back, play). And the upshot is I don't think I'm that disorganized or procrasitnate-y; I think that logistics make some things unpleasant, and then daunting, and then a cause for self-blame and regret.

I'm not going to get into my whole riff about junk mail except to say that I'd be willing to spearhead a class action suit against direct mail campaigns. Direct mail puts corporate America's desire for growth by way of me buying their products and sevices squarely in my lap; it forces me to contribute to needless waste, it takes my time and energy and attention to sort and separate and remove my identifying information (can't just pitch it in the mail area, have to take it upstairs and sanitize my identity from it), it masquerades as bills and checks and legitimate busines correspondence, and it contributes greatly to my sense of chaos.

But I defy anyone to fail to kick-start their project, clean their house, or do the damn dishes, with the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs playing Crazy for You (over and over) and FlyLady's supportive email coming over the transom.

My close friend Suzanne was in town for just a weekend to attend the funeral of our friend John. John had been a surrogate parent for Suzanne for the decade (mid '80s to '90s) she spent based in New York, with side journeys to get married (in St. Paul, 2 years) and live with a crazy dancer-choreographer (Mexico, 1 year). John and his partner Bill were the anchors of a group house in Park Slope in Brooklyn that felt more like a community oasis that you might find in Berkeley. There was a big old grand parlor with fine furniture and china, a formal and informal living room, a study, five bedrooms, a lovely backyard with flowers and chairs and a water sculpture, and what Suzanne used to call the most restful bathroom in the world. It wasn't a fancy bathroom; just spare with a claw-foot tub, a couple of plants, and a simple chair for clothes and towels. With the window onto the back and its view of the Manhattan skyline, it presaged spreads from something like Living Simply a decade later. But the house also gave off a sense of some long-lost Brooklyn townhouse lifestyle, which John and Bill played up with fancy dinner parties, lavish Christmas feasts with evergreen boughs and roaring fires and sherry and a big tree in the front bay window like some vision of genteel urban holiday of yore. For awhile they ran a salon in the parlor where their wide circle of friends performed Sunday afternoons and we all had wine and snacks. Suzanne was the only of their ever-rotating group of young artist roommates who lived on the top floor with them, in two tiny rooms facing one another across a hallway. I loved the severe spartan-ness of Suzanne's rooms; the front one with just a round table for writing and a chair, the back with a mattress and soft colorful fabrics. The house was a sanctuary for me. We spent hours drinking red wine and drawing tarot cards, talking about the dance world and our big plans. We rented foreign films and watched them in Bill's study as he flitted in and out. I'd come over and sit in the garden, even if Suzanne wasn't around and John or Bill might bring out iced tea. We made dinners in the big kitchen or joined other housemates and all ate together. When I made a large site-specific piece for Prospect Park with like 15 dancers, all in white, and it drizzled and everyone was cold and muddy, we all went to the house and had cheese and wine and laughter while our clothes washed and dried right there. I recently ran into a friend who had been in that piece and she commented specifically on how wonderful and cosy that after-party had been.

It seemed like everyone eventually came through the house; I myself had been there for an after-performance party before I even met Suzanne, one of Sara's pieces (Coney Island, maybe?). Later, Suzanne and I and Nathan would rehearse (i.e. lie around on the floor and stretch and talk) in an empty front bedroom, by candlelight,. John and Bill, after fifteen or so years, and tired of maintaining a large, rundown house and the instability of rotating housemates, lucked into a condo right on Prospect Park. I'd been there just last year when Suzanne came from Switzerland with her partner and two daughters and stayed with them. We had another lovely dinner party and John, who was often tired and rundown, was sparkling and funny and kind, as always. The funeral was a big Catholic Mass. John was not very old, really, just 15 or so years older than I. In fact, he must have been my age when we met. How quickly life passes, and how important the quotidian sharing of small experiences, often what is remembered as just the background of larger ambitions and personal dramas. I really have not felt so at home, so known and welcomed, as I did when Suzanne and I were the closest of friends and John and Bill her fond American family.

What's with the abundance of gerund-plus-name punny titles: Judging Amy, Crossing Jordan, Watching Ellie. They resemble but are grammatically dissimilar to, say, Leaving Las Vegas, Saving Private Ryan, Punishing Kiss, Enduring Freedom, sparkling water, or wanting out. While wearying, the list is hardly exhaustive. Why not Losing Patience (a bittersweet comedy about a wandering Alzheimer's patient and the people who love her), Currying Favors (madcap adventures of the family Favor and their magical tandoori oven), Taxing Timothy (a CSI-style IRS drama. gripping, ominous.), Courting Miss Astor (period drama about unsuitable suitors vying for the hand of high society heiress. lush, atmospheric.), Shrinking Violet (shy but stunning jailbait discovers her superpower -- changing size at will), Grounding Sam (widower named Sam struggles to bring up his teen daughter, Samantha, while battling methamphetamine addiction and running his crop-dusting business amidst terrorist alerts), and Tasting Victory (plucky Victory moonlights as a specialty call-girl while putting herself through sommelier school).

Artspost: First, I went to see both nights of "69 Love Songs"; the Magnetic Fields at Lincoln Center. They played them through in order, with simple orchestration. Everyone was hoarse by the end of the second night. The audience was warm, there was a lot of breakage of the fourth wall and informal byplay that broke the stiffness of a concert-hall venue. It was quite a treat.

Two Texting-resonates-with-the-Zeitgeist clues, both, courtesy of the Times:

1) On February 1, I wrote: "It's very frustrating to read bits and pieces of what I've observed in print, knowing that those writers have legitimacy, get paid, had a sense of rightness and purpose in their observing, while I'm flailing about without context, unemployed. In dance, I used to feel impinged-upon when I read about a piece using fairy-tale imagery, a certain autobiographical/wry voice, things that I felt were 'my' territory. In writing about outside events, the timeline is shorter...the material is carbon-dated, and access to similar work is instantaneous ... I have this theory about art, though, that works against the tenats of 'journalism'. I was not much interested in the insta-art responses, whether visual or performative, this fall. Good art about important things (a tautology) takes time, should take time. Good writing about important things varies in tone and outlook; there are various types for the different time-relationships the writer has to the subject."

From March 3, NYT: "Meanwhile, the actual events of crisis are communicated far more directly today than at any previous period in history. In 1937, it took a couple of days for Picasso to hear the news of Guernica; today, he would have watched it unfolding live on television. This immediacy and its accompanying glut of images and information is itself a challenge to artists. One difficulty in making art about Sept. 11 is that it is hard to create anything that rivals in magnitude the live images that so much of the world spent days obsessively watching on television.

In the face of this new reality, the demand that art respond literally, directly and rapidly to crisis contains an underlying note of panic: an urge to demonstrate to a broader public, through a definitive statement on something of great social moment, that art is indeed necessary, that art can still make a difference, despite a growing fear that it is not and cannot. ...

In today's total society, [Adorno (and I just bought his collected essays a few weeks ago)] wrote, "even the most extreme consciousness of doom threatens to degenerate into idle chatter." That "idle chatter" is what artists really have to worry about: the cloud of effusive, emotional responses that arises, like dust, in the wake of a crisis event. The task of the artist is to find, train and shape a voice strong enough to rise above that idle chatter — which is a process that is as highly individual as artistic inspiration."

2) A long long time ago (early 2000), I linked to "World of Awe," a lovely hypertext project. It's now in the Whitney Bienniel. This, from a Times article on the (nonaffiliated) whitneybienniel.com:

"Yael Kanarek, a New York digital artist, took a rocky landscape from her "World of Awe," one of the online works in the official biennial, and adapted it for Mr. Manetas's site. She said the digital medium's malleability made it possible for her to participate in both exhibitions, adding, "True, one is a bit stiff but all- powerful; the other is experimental and lively." Either way, she said, "I'm with my peers on both sides."

Mr. Manetas insisted that his site was not intended to be viewed as an alternative biennial, an Internet-era version of the Impressionists' Salon des Refusés ... Mr. Manetas wants to make two points, neither of which has much relevance to the Whitney Biennial. As the site's collage function is meant to demonstrate, digital technology can empower nonartists to do creative things. In this environment, where anyone can piggyback on the work of others, Mr. Manetas is also concerned that the enforcement of copyrights will hinder expression.

Even if one accepts his statement that the site is not a direct attack on the Whitney, just using the address WhitneyBiennial.com implies an element of criticism. Peter Lunenfeld, who teaches media design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and served as one of Mr. Manetas's curators, acknowledged this. With online art featured last year in high-profile exhibitions at the Whitney and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, he said, the Net was losing its shaggy aesthetic.

"People are starting to get a sense of portentousness and pretentiousness coming out of the museum community, because that's what museums are good at," he said.

WhitneyBiennial.com is meant to restore some spontaneity to the Web. So, he said, `it's disingenuous to say that there's no critique involved," even if it is low on Mr. Manetas's priority list."

Also in the Bienniel is the work of an artist who gathers small bits of text and data from the harddrives of people who download her software; the software then floats randomized snatches across the screen. I have a file called "found" on my harddrive, which is uninvited text, images, and html files that even Norton Clean Sweep won't delete from my cache. Periodically, I move all the shards to the "found" file, with the intention of forming "found-collage pages." (my web skills are not up for this, which is the only reason I've not done it). I have animated porn banner ads, buttons, images of every genre, geometric shapes, zillions of arrows, part of an interview with Michael Ondaatje, etc.

It's February, a time of rest and preparation, according to the wise and wonderful Nathan Whiting.

"DISTURBED
I'm lost in the dark,
lost in many colors.
Confusion grabs
a searchlight's phantom flashes.
Lost in blue
a bat would scream
and measure dotted answers.
A silent owl slips
through maples
without bottom. Who searches?
Whatever I am
won't find a way easy.
I turn again.
Insects scatter. Days disrobe
and fall dead,
but remain a map without rest"

wow, Nathan has a web presence (but not computer).
"Poet Nathan Whiting (This Slave Dreads Her Work As If She Were A Lamb Commanded to be A Musician, Hanging Loose Press, 1980) also simplifies the submission process by numbering his poem groupings, with the titles of all the poems in a group listed under a corresponding number. He keeps this list of numbers in the same notebook that contains the original, handwritten versions of the poems, where there is little chance it will get lost. Each time he sends a group poems to a magazine, he records the magazine's name next to the appropriate number.

Whiting tends to send out five or six poems at a time. If a magazine accepts one or two poems, he'll sometimes simply add one or two new poems to the grouping. If magazine accepts several poems from a group, he's likely to merge the rejected poems with a few unaccepted poems from another group.

Whiting lists the magazines again on a second sheet where he records the date sent, group number, date returned, comments, and an approximate date to send to that magazine again (or he could enter "never" here). This process makes resubmitting to magazines almost automatic, because editors often give a clue as to when they'd like to see work again. If he gets an encouraging note from an editor, he'll want to resubmit sooner. For other magazines he'll enter a question mark. Going through this list periodically, he can spot what magazines are due for new poems. He's also developed a color-coded process to spot things more easily: if a magazine rejects all poems, he puts a black pencil line through the entry; if a magazine accepts one of his poems, he puts a red line through the entry and if magazine is not currently reading manuscripts, he puts a blue line through. He places a purple check next to the entry if he's saved an editor's note in a separate correspondence file."

as for me, I think I'd best stop putting the cart before the horse. it is time to clean my flat, take yoga, shred outdated lists, and act with clear intent. I have some computer and website maintenance to do and also a new freelance assignment. I need to return some letters, make some phone calls, polish some writing, and focus. Preparation, for Nathan, is not acting (also dovetails with merc retrograde in capricorn. this week, merc will go direct just as Saturn goes direct and the chinese new year follows. all of these symbols reinforce one another; proceed slowly, with integrity, attend to unfinished business, and clear a space for the new.) Preparation is a pause, a gathering, a combination of organization and intuition heightened by practice (preparation is dance class, as opposed to applying for a gig).

And, also from nathan:: More pride, less ego.

In the spirit of not posting only demanding text, I offer the following relaxing links:
Feminist Stripper, recommended by Lily Burana, whose writing I like and who turns out to be a character from my past.
Satire wire's Mo Bettah Evil Axes, um, satire
While I liked the list of (odd) results I got on google when I typed spiral jetty salt shower coin, I was looking for this page, part of Temporama, a travel project documentation site. I like the sensibility, curiosity, and the fact that the writer auctioned off all his/her belongings on eBay as a conceptual art project. Then he went around and visited the winning bidders and took pictures of them with his former objects.
So this woman posts to the knitlist that we can check out her scifi novella, and I do, and it's actually really really good. I was engrossed. And I really dislike science fiction.
The halfbakery project is subtly designed. (carpe demi haha) A good place for those game show ideas you never got around to becoming a tv exec so that you could produce.
In Passing, an overheard conversation site. Has anyone made a directory yet of the found text/ found artifact/ found images sites online?
Before I got into weblogging, I was an obsessive chathead. And one of the truly funniest people in chat (who I later met) is an old hippie turned web designer. And I stopped in sometime in October and ended up saving a few of her comments. Copyright her, and she rocks::

Bunni V: I think we should give citizenship and a free plane ticket here to any Afgan woman who brings a dead husband to the ticket counter

on anthrax: Bunni V: I"ll die if I get it for sure cause I'd cut it into lines

And, finally, an essay on proximity and community, which was a segue, but due to low audience participation, polling is now closed. Thanks to the gracious and generous Ruthie's Double who presented me with a seven point path to personal fulfillment. Votes were 4-0 against taking the writing workshop, 2 said votes being virtual and 2 from real-life friends.

The holidays felt like a 2-week vacation for the U.S.; everyone seemed to take the Friday before Christmas off for a five-day weekend; last Wednesday through Friday were skeletal workdays, and then another 4-day weekend through New Years'. The time passed very quickly; went to Macy's the day after Christmas... total mayhem, absolute plunderage, racks overturned, shoe department looked like people had just thrown the shoes up in the air and let them fall like expensive confetti. I bought a pair of said shoes, as my regular work/walking shoes wore right through the heels creating a very steep edge which continually caught on stairs and sidewalk cracks, courting disaster. My new shoes were the only basic (non-neon highheeled psudosneakers, non stilettos or upper east side matron pumps) thing on offer, although they pretty much look like bowling shoes in a two-toned brown motif. Remember when a pair of basic black Doc Martins was all you needed?

The following day, a van plowed into the back of a city bus on that same corner in Herald Square, squashing and killing 7 pedestrians.

Last Friday I went back to Ground Zero having heard the rumor that a public viewing platform was opening. An international crowd of 50,000-plus solemnly walked the circuit outside the fence. The platform did not open until Sunday, and although I wanted to get up at 6 and be one of the first on it (for journalistic coup), it was dark and cold and I slept on. The Times reported that the actual first person was one of those people who makes a career of being the first in line for major openings and events; he arrived at 5 and waited for 4 hours.

I went down at 2 pm, the line stretched 4 blocks up Broadway and then circled almost entirely back on itself around another full square block. At first I just wandered around soaking up the almost frenzied voyeurism; then, as penance for my sloth, got on the end of the line and shuffled forward as the sun waned and the wind-chill drove the temperature into the teens, reaching the platform at 5pm. We were given less than a minute on the plywood walkway. Police shouted "no stopping! don't block the walkway!" to people who'd waited almost three hours for this moment and struggled with cameras and maps, trying to orient themselves. I saw far less than I'd seen both on the ground inside the perimeter the night before Thanksgiving (when I waited almost three hours for the chance to take a Red Cross 'walkabout') and, two weeks before that, when a kindly cop escorted me onto the family viewing platform on the West side. There is, literally, less to see; all of the destroyed structured have been fully dismantled. More than that, the regimented, generic 'tour' experience creates unbridgeable distance. Although interviewees professed emotion and catharsis, I felt more estranged from the event and the site than when I stood at the Canal Street cordon (10 blocks uptown) in the first week of shock. But I did need to do the public tour to sort of create the circle or cycle of the site's symbolism.

Last night I performed in front of an audience for the first time in, what.. three years. New Years' Eve my friend Heather called from L.A. in high spirits and a sense of unlimited possibility. She told me I should break the ice, get back out there, even go to Open Mics if I had to. So the next day was bloody marys and a leisurely brunch, tidying the house and watching Topsy Turvy (Mike Leigh's Gilbert and Sullivan tribute... excellent). I went at about 2:30 over to St. Mark's Church to the annual 12-hour poetry reading to see if there were any slots available. No, and $15 to get in. But the alternative reading (there's always, in every organic, originally egalitarian annual event that becomes a scene, a growing history of slights or disgruntlement against the 'institution' that creates an 'alternative' event), which used to be a small, anarchic event at Jazz of the Streets, was now at the Knitting Factory, and profiled as a 'Voice Choice' for the day. After much bloody maryage over hours and the very long movie, it was dark and cold and 10 pm when I decided fuck it, rather than putting off onto a list things like "get out more. participate," I'll just go down for the end.

I walked down (it's at the very southern end of Soho, truly, if you go 2 blocks east, you're solidly in the government/courts/police plaza area). I walked in and there was this table with cd's and chapbooks and I signed up for the open mic. There were 150 scheduled readers, and they were running a good hour behind. The MC's.. both the one onstage and a second one who came in for the final hour... sucked. Back in '96 I MC'd a performance benefit/festival in this space; I used to know eveyone on the scene. Now, it was the same vibe and same scene dynamics.. but all new people. As usual, the range and intensity of talent in New York is astounding (and remember.. this was the alternate reading.. the 'real' talents, 12-hours'worth, were at St. Mark's). Also as usual, showcase formats have a deadening effect on the texture and uniqueness of the performers. The 3-minute limit was so strictly enforced that people rushed; you hardly glommed on to a given reader or singer's cadence, vision, or 'voice' before they were replaced, leading to a sort of tv-soundbite-sampler feel. A woman who did a surprisingly fine poem about a childhood friend's suicide was gonged off the stage just as the piece culminated in the moment the man threw himself from the George Washington Bridge; several singer-songwriters had their mic turned off right in the middle of the rousing refrain (including the guy who'd mc'd the previous hour)... and these were the invited performers. Add to this the sort of suffering-through vibe of an audience composed almost entirely of people waiting several hours to read themselves and each of their few friends waiting to hear them so they could leave... well...

I knew just 2 performers, two of the best, veterans. Joel, aka, Baron von Blumenzack, aka ZeroBoy, was there in a faux-fur vest and white cowboy har, roaming restlessly around, pissed off because he was supposed to have gone at 10:30. He did a sort of year-end wrap-up sound collage; he's unique and a fine performer if you ever get the chance to see him, well worth it. His sound effects are all from the mouth; he did news soundbites, the countdown, crowd noises, sort of mimed a dejay and slowed down/distorted the effects as if the whole thing was pretaped. He has gotten nothing but better in the last few years; he's supposed to be profiled in this coming weekend's Post. Matthew Courtney was there; he just read a few quotes from famous authors of yore about the human condition, ending with Aeschylus? Euripides? on courage. Matthew was an art star of the spoken word in the '90's, appearing on MTV and touring; I've been in a seies he curated some years back. He is very at home on stage, and very compelling, with a sort of retro, urbane understatement of faint irony, always styish shaved head and fitted black suits. He's also a better MC than almost anyone for these events and, as I've noticed before with seasoned performers, there was a visible relaxation in the room once he took the stage, a sort of relief and trust from all the striving, rushing. He took his time, made some asides and bon mots... I think there would have been a riot had the singularly insensitive flag-waver dared time him out. (I say insensitive because he would flag people who were clearly ending their pieces, not allowing a few seconds' grace or dignity).

Open mic was last, which meant that people who'd signed up at 4pm had waited eight hours already. The mc went down the list and took the first four people who were still present. I went out to the bar for a beer. There's a video monitor of the main stage at the bar, so performers and audience members know when what they came to see is going on. We watched a few rant-stylists (with sound turned off), and then the mc came back on with the list. I rushed around to the theater just as he was reading off my name (last on the list). "I'm here" I said. Went back and downed my beer, watched a rant-poet refuse the 3-minute limit and get pushed off the stage, shouting fuck you!, and went up and speed-read my 'Dear Dr. Scholl's" letter. I knew from the radio segment that it was 3 minutes and 15 seconds long, so I was editing as I went, and nowhere near as calm or rhythmic as the piece deserves. The timer waved the flag at the penultimate sentence, so I skipped nuance and read the last few words.

There were actually people there, as the final hour (scheduled for 11-12, although it was now 12:30) was given over to Surf Reality theater collective people. We stayed to hear Reverend Jen (who Heather had mentioned last night on the phone to me as running a good, non-slam open mic) describe her Troll Museum (funny and nice). I got introduced to her boyfriend, Nick Zed, the experimental filmmaker, who said "We just made a film; "Lord of the Cockrings." A woman came over to me and said "that was great; you made me cry." She then got onstage and belted out "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Walked the cold deserted streets home thinking, plus ca change, plus le meme chose.