2003-03-22 - 11:40 p.m.

No, we spent the day in Soho, shopping and drinking coffee and eating lunch at the Cupp1ng R00m, and on the way back we crossed the park. The police presence started blocks away, and by the time we reached 3rd Street, we could see the blocks surrounding the park, crowded with news trucks and cops. We crossed in, and the marchers were gathering, cheering in the end of the line.

I am going to keep my (conflicting) opinions out of this, and write about it as an observer.

The crowd was large, a good mix of ethnicities and sexes and ages, lots of hippies, young and old, and more than one zealous activist in his sixties, with wild gray hair and spit flying from his mouth. There were signs and balloons, and a group of lesbians wearing pink triangles, scrawling on the blacktop with pink chalk 'The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own' There were 'No Empire' placards, and 'No Blood for Oil' and 'Bring Our Troops Home' and a few crude approximations of our fearless leaders names, (oops, that's my OPINION, isn't it? Damn) and then there were others that seemed to be consolidating their protest, with signs that read No War - Health Care. Hmm. So suffice to say there were a few other factions, protesting their own causes along with the war, and there were a LOT of kids. NYU students, college students from all over the city, I guess, and punks from the suburbs, the kind with 80's pink spiked mohawks and tartan stovepipe pants with zippers. A few Rastafarians, moving through the crowd distributing the occaasional dime bag, barely slowing down.

There was a group of brace-wearing, fresh scrubbed college boys in Set0n H@ll sweatshirts, carrying signs that asked "Would Saddam let you protest?" They were embroiled in a shouting match with one of the aforementioned spit-spraying, graying activists, and they were clearly and overwhelmingly outmatched. They voiced their opinions, earnestly, standing in a little knot, while their opponent shouted and gestured, reeling off statistics of wars this kid probably hasn't even learned about yet. Vehemently defending civil rights, and the force of peace and love on earth, and you had to feel sorry for the kids, they didn't stand a chance, and they were just trying to be a little patriotic.

And the punks, standing on one of the park benches that encircle the central fountain, fighting with a middle aged man with a straggly ponytail, who stood across the pathway from them. As we passed by, one of the punk girls shouted, "Why don't you do us all a favor and go fucking shoot yourself." People yelling at each other, and fighting, throwing punches and rolling around on the ground.

So it was a little disturbing. And then the cops, all the cops, in a double line, in riot gear. All those horses moving down the quiet street. It's surreal, is what it is, and the worst part is that I notice it, but I don't FEEL anything. I don't feel scared, or nervous, or even awed by it. It just IS, it's the way things are now, and I guess we're adaptable. But every night now, I stand at the window, and I try to memorize what I see, what this looks like, the landscape, the people moving freely on the street. Because I now feel the shadow of two years ago, when I looked out the window and everything had changed, irrevocably. And there's no question, it's changed. Ask a NYer that's moved away and come back.

And the other day, as I walked past the ceramic tile memorial to 9-11 that hangs on the fence on Greenwich Avenue, the sight of which usually raises my spirits, I had a thought. I looked at all the tiles, from all over the world, We Love NY, from France and Canada and Puerto Rico and Tennessee. And I wonder, who sends memorials to Israel? Or Palestine? Or Irag?

And now I will give my opinion about one thing. The civilian casualty report. Everyone is debating the civilian casualty issue, one camp says we're being careful, one says we're killing many, and everyone is rating the success of the campaign by this conflicting information. And I have a little reality check. Civilian casualties. Happen when you go to war. You should have thought about that before you went, no? Understood that no matter what kind of spin you put on it, no matter how proudly you say only 1 civilian dead, only 10 or 50 or 400. But only one is no comfort to his mother, is it? Death is the price of war. And that's the bottom line

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