interior castle

the night we bought our plane tickets to new york city i had a strange dream. i dreamt that we were on a little motorboat cruising around manhatten. the sky was red like the sigur ros video. as we made our way north on the southeast side i looked left through the streets-like looking down alleys of corn when driving by a cornfield. we were going pretty slow and i felt like we were going to dock soon when I noticed a pile of refuse stacked against a hydrant on a street corner. I strained my eyes and noticed that it was all abandoned shoes.

a few weeks later i sat awake watching in horror as the events of 9/11 unfolded. the screen showed people running in panic. one shot was pretty chaotic. the cameraman himself must have been running. during his filming he rounded a corner and slowed down. on the ground before him lay a woman's slingback. just a single shoe. the forgotten dream came rushing back so forcefully i had to control the urge to throw up.
many family members worried that we would be in danger, going to new york so soon after the attacks. but new york needed us. we continued with our plan- to spend Columbus day weekend in the city. flying so soon after 9/11 was strange. there were army guys with machine guns posted strategically and other army guys with menacing dogs roaming about. our babysitter announced that she brought some jeans that were too long but she was going to cut them once we got there. she shoved a pair of scissors in her purse. i looked at her. her innocence was still intact- just by a thread though. i was going to have to break it. i wanted our trip to not have any hiccups of that kind.
once on board i had to struggle to keep from racially profiling people. i scrutinized every face as they boarded and on my way back to the bathroom. it was a long flight. when the pilot announced tha we'd be landing soon i was so relieved. i looked out my window on the right of he plane. we were heading up the hudson and new york lay just below us to the right. i didn't know much about the layout of manhatten then, but i needed no one to tell me where the wtc towers once stood. the air was thick with dust. from the air it looked like a construction site that had gone wrong.
one of the days we were there we got in a cab and asked the cabbie to take us as close to the wtc as possible. he dropped us off and we walked a block or two over. on the ride i began praying. when i saw the enormous twisted metal my prayers took on a more helpless childlike feel. i prayed for the workers. i prayed for the lost ones. i prayed for our leaders. i prayed for those families who lost dear ones. i prayed for my children. i looked at them in the stroller, oblivious to the evil.
we left feeling choked up. the dust and raw emotions over powered us. the countless pictures of lost ones. once we loosened up and were joking about being lost. when we turned a corner our merriment faded quickly in the face of a fire station. posted to the wall were pictures of the fallen. i took out my tupperware container full of chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies and handed them to a fireman just inside the bay. he said "thank you" but couldn't take it because if the anthrax scare. i mourned yet again our innocence and prayed our country would find it's freedom again.