MORE WEEDING

I like Christmas. But when my sister spends the day helping me weed out my stuff, I pare down my decorations down to the size of two small shoe boxes. More CDs are pulled. Polo shirts that I've had for ten years... gone.  Old automatic cameras (cheap give- always from the nineties) these go too.

I pull out boxes of sheet music and silly musical theatre scores. They're expensive but they're not right for me anymore even if I could still sing.

As we're pulling out music, photo albums are un-wedged from the the shelves in the bottom of the 19th Century secretary my parents gave me (from my great grand parents house in Janesville Wisconsin).
From these shelves, I find the album of photos I took the day of 9/11.

My sister takes a break. She sits in a club chair and goes through the album carefully, with the kind of focus one might have for a never seen High School year book. There is grim attraction.

As my sister gently pages through the book of photographs, I rattle on about my IKEA experience.
I'm about to tell her that I think the key to IKEA, the key is... as my friend Olivia suggested, the key is to master the catalogue.  There are no whimsical impulse buys at IKEA. It's all strategy.

My sister is not listening to me. She is deep into the images of the photographs.

"Charlie, this is intense."

"I know... right?"

"My G-d, where were you? Is that town hall? Were you right by Town Hall?"

"Yeah,  I was like blocks away..."

In the photos, everyone is wearing masks. I am not. - (I'll be fine. I don't get health problems. My body is perfect).

"It wasn't like I was in a cloud of smoke. I wasn't... I wasn't coughing. I mean, I think the cloud of dust,  I'm not sure, but I think it was moving a different way."

"Still, it was incredibly toxic down there."

(pause)

I think my sister and my mother have had conversations about the dangerous effects of being around those buildings on 9/11.  And everyone was trying to get away from the tragedy. I walked to it. I walked to it with my camera. There may something contemptible about my taking photos. Something naieve and resolute. My mother asks me again and again if I think I could have become ill from wandering around downtown  taking pictures on 9/11.

"No, I don't think so. No. I do not think that is the case." I tell her.

My sister says "I would have been one of the people who left the city after that. I just was waiting for something like that to happen to New York.  I'd get this panicky feeling being stuck for a half an hour on the D- train."

(I've never had those feelings).

"It was surreal" I offer. "I've never experienced the city like that I don't think it will ever happen again."

"Let's hope not"

"There was no noise, no air traffic. No cars on the west side highway. The population was reduced to just the manhattanites that were stuck on the island. All the bridges closed. There were no TV commercials.  I could smell a metalic smell in my bedroom. It was a surreal in a terrible way" (really- when I think about it).

________

My sister leaves me with a paper shredder, a new mat for my kitchen floor and some homemade stew.
I thank her. I appreciate this.

I bike to Church and see my friend Setterly greeting from outside the chuch.

"Haven't seen you in a while, how you doin'? she asks me as I lock up my bike.

"I'm GREAT!"

I really am.