New York City actually seems a lot farther away than that. I again peer at the Atlantic over my teal iBook laptop and take comfort in the roughly 5 million water miles I can see without a skyscraper. Hopefully it's enough miles for me to finally write and release this essay, enough distance and time and alcohol and karma and catharses to finally shake me from the nondescript, histrionic paralysis I've

Over the entire two-week trip, I think we spoke about 9/11 for less than an hour. Just a few pre-bedtime minutes after the English CNN loop and before Italian soccer highlights. Mom was settled and before we left we had already done everything we could to make NYC all right. Hospitals had too many blood donors. The Red Cross had too many volunteers, but they took our contact information for future efforts. Relief would be needed when we returned.

Occasionally there are involuntary flinches. My aunt Jan gets them too. She likens the reflex to footage of a shell-shocked Bobby Kennedy taking shelter from a popped balloon. Our jaded, city-dweller involucra have come undone. It's an unraveling vulnerability that spurred many of my friends to forsake their NYC career goals and retreat to the safety of their hometowns in Kentucky and North Carolina and New Mexico.

"Got anything to say about NYC, post apocalypse?" wrote Albert, Editor-in-Chief of the Drexel Online Journal, in an email to me on October 18th, 2001. I said yes, thanks, solidified the contract terms and took to the city streets like little Jimmy Eager-Beaver tackling quite a '50s pickle of a piece. Just the kind of abstruse, disembodying challenge I needed to earn fine marks from old Mrs. Dooly.

Some topics in this essay:
September It's, York City, Red Cross, I'll Jake, Third Street, Cape Cod, Jimmy Eager-Beaver, Overall Sept, Lexington Massachusetts, NY T-shirt/bumper, york city, *** essay, week september, september 11, mental note, thanks solidified, who've experienced, thanks solidified contract, solidified contract,