Connective Cube

I’ve delayed writing about 9/11 on the 20 year anniversary. When was that. 09/11/21. 20 years, seriously? 3 years later goes so fast, plus another week.

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An Instagram ad in 2024 on my feed.

9/11 is when I go through some emotional catharsis or epiphany. Okay, that’s many days. What’s different about 9/11 is that I had the pleasure of living in the exposure zone. How does technology know that I lived a few blocks south of Canal? Is that cough something I need to checkout? Is that a persistent itch over my lungs? My fat cells, is something still lingering there from the air?

I avoided the dust cloud, 2 blocks down by the time we evacuated.

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Flit a thought here, flit a thought there, my brain flits like dandelion seeds that tumble around like little dust specks that come from dryer lint.

I’m a deadline champ. I’m not a deadline champ.

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I ran away uptown walk walk walk walk walk walk up Lafayette, then Union Square. I had 3 days of no exposure below Canal. Then another 90 or so.

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When I left New York geographically in 2010, I figured the distance would help. I had to leave New York and move on – I was getting too angry at anyone who held their new iPhones to the beaming twin towers. Twitter in general pissed me off, it seemed like popularity contests and brand-as-self that I still feel squeamish about. I still have a hard time thinking of myself as a curated brand that says all the right things on command that’s full of style and substance, don’t go off-brand.

Organization continued to present itself in new challenges, and I had a second room filled with furniture people gave to me that I had no idea how to arrange properly, at the time. Money was low, but not out, and the recession brought out even more tense tendencies.

Interviewing for a coffee shop in Red Hook, I spoke to the owner about how gentrification was present in so many places in Brooklyn, and that I was writing about it. I didn’t get hired. Somehow, I realized opening a coffee shop dream would never be about improving a neighborhood that I’m not from.

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A year or so ago, I walked by my old dorm on Lafayette after a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge with people I love. The second floor that used to have a balcony overlooking an empty lot now has a large condo building. No more 40s from the deli for the teenagers and post-teenagers.

Was this ever an exposure zone?