2001-09-17 - 1:10 p.m.

My building was evacuated on Thursday at noon due to a bomb scare in Penn Station. And up until then, I'd been holding it together pretty well. I left the office, knowing that it was nothing, that this would be going on for weeks, maybe longer. But something about being out there, again, on the sidewalk, surrounded by hundreds of people, with sirens screaming down the street - I headed down Sixth Avenue with tears streaming down my face, and called P, who insisted I stay on the phone with him until I got to the store. I walked in and P's dog jumped on my lap, and I stayed in that position for a few hours. One of the girls at the store left, as she is an RA for a dorm in NY that is currently harboring all the displaced students from the downtown dorm. As she left, with tears in her eyes, she stopped to pet the dog, and said "You be careful out there, you hear? You're only a little dog." Which made me cry a little, because she, too, is only a little dog. A student herself, overwhelmed by the responsibility of displaced international students.

P and I went to get some lunch, and stopped by St. Vincent's volunteer center. Then he went back to work, and I headed out to a few local hardware stores and bought flashlights and batteries, then to 14th street to buy socks and towels. I went back to 11th Street to drop them off, and ended up sitting on the steps with the volunteers, putting batteries into the flashlights and opening the socks, to be distributed in individual bags to the rescue workers. It was nothing, but it felt good - good to be doing something, anything. Good to have a destination and a purpose, instead of standing around staring blankly at CNN.

On my way home, I passed the firehouse, which is festooned with banners and signs and letters, and piled with flowers, ringed with candles that take up the whole sidewalk. I've been looking at it every day, watching the pile grow bigger, watching people wearing masks standing in front of the door, heads bowed. And then Thursday afternoon they listed the names of the firemen missing from our station - seven. Those fireman - I didn't know any of their names, but they walked me to the corner to my apartment late at night, and one carried my giant coffeemaker for me when he saw me struggling, and when I walked down the street one summer night a thousand years ago, tipsy and wearing a tiara, they came outside and sang the Miss America song and laughed when I gave them the pageant wave. All those people.

I don't want to talk about how I feel, I can't. And it feels pointless. I have been trying to record what I see, instead. I've been taking pictures of flags and the firehouse and the view down 7th Avenue, now. Of my neighbors, standing on the street corners talking. Evan coming out to the sidewalk to hug me, telling me he's been taking a head count and the block seems intact. It's getting worse for me, though. More real. For everyone I know.

I left the city this weekend, and went to see my parents on Friday. It was so strange to be in the suburbs, where things seem normal. Normal as can be, anyway. Normal compared to here. The boyfriend and I drove to Boston for a wedding on Friday night, and the weekend away did me a world of good. Although the whole nation is in mourning, life in Boston goes on as regularly as can be expected - people shopping and talking and getting their hair cut - in sharp contrast to here, where my neighborhood is still struggling. And while it was a dramatic relief to get away from the in-your-face devastation, some strange part of me felt a pull to come home, to be back here in my city.

This morning I stopped on the corner for cigarettes, and saw a sign for a fund for the families of the fireman from our squad - I stopped, and wrote a check for the amount I planned to spend on tickets to the Make-A-Wish Food and Wine event, and turned it in to the doorman at the St. Germaine. I feel the dread settling in again.

This will be my last entry about this, I think. I can't write about it.

And I'm not sure I can write about anything else yet either. I've been getting a lot of new servers on my stats - hey, sign in, will you? I'd like to hear from you.

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