Living disjointedly in time, apparently, I woke up thinking yesterday was September 10th and, as I read the morning paper, realized I was out of step with time. Yesterday was the sixteenth anniversary of 9/11 and I had a deep heaviness fall on me as I listened to a young woman on NPR who had been born after that day and for whom it is an event heard about in history classes, not something she can return to in her mind as so many of us can, particularly if you were in New York City, Washington, or Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
It’s not often I go there in my mind and today, for the first time, I haven’t felt an emotional ouch of the kind I have every other year. Much of that is that I am monitoring Irma as friends and family are enduring her as she moves up the peninsula. My sister and brother-in-law are without power but seem okay while I have friends not yet heard from in Jacksonville which is suffering “historic” flooding.
Yesterday was not dissimilar to that day sixteen years ago; bright sun, hardly a cloud in the sky, warm, waking on a day that seemed God had made to put smiles on our faces.
So, it is I ended my day with a moment of silence, thinking on the thousands that died that day and all the many, many thousands more that have died since in the ripple of effects of 9/11.
For perhaps the eighth or ninth time, I re-read the last few pages of “Call Me by Your Name,” a novel by Andre Aciman, a brilliant and, for me, painful read. It is the story of seventeen-year-old Elio, son of a professor, living on the Italian Riviera who has an affair with Oliver, a twenty-five-year-old graduate assistant to his father.
Andre Aciman’s writing is so exquisite it is hard for anyone who works with words to read because that kind of beauty is so hard to achieve and I know I will never achieve that kind of beauty in my own work.
It was also hard for me to read because during my 17th year I had my own Oliver, though we never consummated our affair. On a sunny, spectacular Minnesota fall day I walked into my first Spanish class of my freshman year and there was Marvin, my T.A., a man slightly taller than I, exotically handsome. He looked Latin, as if he walked out of Andean village.
He was from Queens, who had been in the Peace Corps in Chile. As I came into the room, he greeted me with “Hola, rubio!” “Blonde one” and that is what he called me during the year. And I am not sure how it was I became friends with Marvin but I did as well as his two closest friends, Maryam and Caroline.
We had dinner together at the old Nankin restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, a palace of Chinese deco and good food. Marvin and I talked through the night on many nights, wrapping each other in words when we probably wanted to wrap our arms around each other. Maryam lived in Mexico when she was not in school and was addicted to Coca-Cola and we made a hysterical search for a real coke one winter night, tearing around in my Acapulco Blue Mustang. Place after place served Pepsi and that was no alternative for a Maryam in need of a fix.
Early on, Caroline and I sat drinking coffee in Coffman Union and she suddenly looked at me and said: why am I telling all of this to a seventeen-year old? But we told most things to each other and I loved them all and Marvin most of all.
Not seducing me was his way of loving me. And I remember the last summer, drinking Cuba Libres and hearing how he was not coming back to work on his Doctorate but leaving for New York to become a rent boy, which shocked the other three of us.
He left one day, leaving me with a sadness that still can be called up in my heart. Caroline went on to more grad school; Maryam back to Mexico and that magical year slipped into the wake of my days, coming back to bittersweet life as I read the story of Elio and Oliver, remembering a time when I had an Oliver.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 09 11 2016 Fifteen years later…
September 11, 2016It is almost but not quite twilight on the creek. I am sitting at the table on the deck, looking down on the creek as it reflects back the trees, the fading light of the day, the glint and glimmer of life on the creek. Far away, I hear a plane, heading toward the Columbia County Airport. Swathes of sunlight illuminate my neighbor’s yard; the air is coolish and there are hints of fall upon us.
It is September 11, 2016, fifteen years beyond the event that has changed all our lives.
It is a hard day for me. Not as hard as it would be if I had lost someone in the Towers. I did not. At that moment, as many of you know, I was living two blocks north of the evacuation zone. I will be forever at the corner of West Broadway and Spring Street seeing the aftermath of the catastrophe of the first plane hitting the first tower. Forever I will be there. It only takes a moment and I return to that spot.
As the first and second Towers fell, people ran down my street, screaming. I watched them from my windows. Late that night, I sat on my bed, never having felt so alone as I did that night, my partner of the time, Al Tripp, stranded but safe on Staten Island, while I listened to the screams of fighter jets overhead.
It seemed that in some way, the world ended that night. At least that’s the way if felt on Spring Street in SoHo on September 11, 2001.
It is now fifteen years later. I am living in the house Al and I purchased on the 8th of September, 2001. We had come to Columbia County looking for a place and found the cottage, the first place we had looked at. We looked at several others and then decided, as we were filling up the car with gas, we should buy it. We had a list of thirteen things we wanted. This place had twelve.
Now, all these years later, I am so grateful to be here. When Al Tripp and I separated, he suggested we sell the place. I bought him out as I could not imagine my life without the cottage. It is and has been and will be my refuge.
And I am grateful we bought it before 9/11 because after then, the Valley became alive with people fleeing New York. There are several people I know who live here who came after 9/11 and have not returned to the city since.
We have all been changed by 9/11. It is the horror that looms over our lives. But a generation is growing up that never knew 9/11. They only know the world that has grown since then. This is their reality. Mine is that I know the before and after.
On this day, I always feel particularly alone. That day is scoured in my mind. Al was trapped on Staten Island, where he worked. I was in Manhattan without him. Friends encouraged me to join them, which I did. But as the evening went on, I found myself needing to be in my own space/place.
I walked from 14th Street home. Arriving there, I sat on the bed, a stunned man, listening to jets overhead. That is the most visceral moment I have of that day, sitting on my bed and hearing jets overhead and knowing the world would never be the same again.
It is almost but not quite twilight on the creek. I am sitting at the table on the deck, looking down on the creek as it reflects back the trees, the fading light of the day, the glint and glimmer of life on the creek. Far away, I hear a plane, heading toward the Columbia County Airport. Swathes of sunlight illuminate my neighbor’s yard; the air is coolish and there are hints of fall upon us.
It is September 11, 2016, fifteen years beyond the event that has changed all our lives.
It is a hard day for me. Not as hard as it would be if I had lost someone in the Towers. I did not. At that moment, as many of you know, I was living two blocks north of the evacuation zone. I will be forever at the corner of West Broadway and Spring Street seeing the aftermath of the catastrophe of the first plane hitting the first tower. Forever I will be there. It only takes a moment and I return to that spot.
As the first and second Towers fell, people ran down my street, screaming. I watched them from my windows. Late that night, I sat on my bed, never having felt so alone as I did that night, my partner of the time, Al Tripp, stranded but safe on Staten Island, while I listened to the screams of fighter jets overhead.
It seemed that in some way, the world ended that night. At least that’s the way if felt on Spring Street in SoHo on September 11, 2001.
It is now fifteen years later. I am living in the house Al and I purchased on the 8th of September, 2001. We had come to Columbia County looking for a place and found the cottage, the first place we had looked at. We looked at several others and then decided, as we were filling up the car with gas, we should buy it. We had a list of thirteen things we wanted. This place had twelve.
Now, all these years later, I am so grateful to be here. When Al Tripp and I separated, he suggested we sell the place. I bought him out as I could not imagine my life without the cottage. It is and has been and will be my refuge.
And I am grateful we bought it before 9/11 because after then, the Valley became alive with people fleeing New York. There are several people I know who live here who came after 9/11 and have not returned to the city since.
We have all been changed by 9/11. It is the horror that looms over our lives. But a generation is growing up that never knew 9/11. They only know the world that has grown since then. This is their reality. Mine is that I know the before and after.
On this day, I always feel particularly alone. That day is scoured in my mind. Al was trapped on Staten Island, where he worked. I was in Manhattan without him. Friends encouraged me to join them, which I did. But as the evening went on, I found myself needing to be in my own space/place.
I walked from 14th Street home. Arriving there, I sat on the bed, a stunned man, listening to jets overhead. That is the most visceral moment I have of that day, sitting on my bed and hearing jets overhead and knowing the world would never be the same again.
Tags:9/11, 9/11 Anniversary, Al Tripp, Claverack, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, New York, Soho, Staten Island, Twin Towers
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