i am grateful for….
1) a quiet tuesday.
2) how, like with the cancer, each year i get from the initial explosion feels like a delicious achievement, but also a false comfort that things will be ok forever. but right now i am loving that comforting moment of distance, both in the cancer which may have been initiated that day, and in the relatively safe state of our city.
3) for lizie and denise and michele and paula. lizie: thank you for sharing the papaya with me and so kindly showing me the crazy ropes in that giant company. denise, thank you for your blazing devotion to god and the palpable love you had for your daughters. paula, thanks for your kindness with the copy machine. michele, for the fleeting smiles in the ladies’. thanks all of you for teaching me that every moment matters, even at the copy machine or putting on lipstick over the sink. that each soul we meet does something to our soul. and that somehow makes us irretrievably, irrevocably, never alone.
4) it not being my time that day. for whatever reason, i got to be late, got to run away, got to stay away, and got to recover from the cancer. there has been more death and loss in my life this year and each one makes me wonder why i’m still here. and whether i’m doing what i’m supposed to be doing with my time, the time i have that they don’t. i don’t know the answer, but i feel blessed to be able to worry about the question.
5) not having to commute today. i can feel the city’s somber tint from here and that, for now, is plenty.
6) being able to see from our balcony, the city. i hate the freedom tower, i’ll say it. it symbolizes to me all that is small about man, what happens when the money-mind has no room for the soul-mind. in this new york survivor’s never-humble opinion, the bold and true thing to do would have been to let it be pasture, park, peaceful. and i look at that middle finger at the base of the island, ever-crawling to completion, and i think, “oh, my.” but with just the one now, i can close one eye and see the city as it was, manahatta. filled with lakes and streams and dense forests and fields. for a blink i can see it with less, which gives me so much more. to rewind, to see it all before.
7) getting interviewed the other day by a really excellent u.s.a. today reporter. she found me online and a couple of weeks ago asked about my experiences, how we remember even when so much time has passed, how that remembering changes, how it does not. she wrote this. here’s my bit:
Brooklyn resident Valerie Reiss will take more time to contemplate the day: “It’s important to step into the spirit of quiet remembrance.”
On the morning of Sept. 11, she was running late for her temp job on the 100th floor of the south tower. From the street, she saw flames. As she hurried away, she heard the second plane hit.
Reiss has clear memories of the rising gray dust and the open pit that remained after the buildings fell. But she focuses instead on how people rallied to help each other in the aftermath. “I want to remember our collective ability to take care of each other and love each other,” Reiss says.
8) inhaling hate, breathing out love. tonglen.
9) how our hearts might be a little more tender, a little more open today.
10) the angels. the human angels, the other-realm angels, all the angels. that day showed me that they’re here, doing their best to fill fate–all that happens, all that perhaps must happen–with love and light. amen.
om shanti, shanti, om. blessings to your heart. may all beings be happy, may all beings know freedom’s true joy. may all beings get to rock the light of who they truly are. may all beings be happy. may all beings be free. may all beings be awesome.
