In Memoriam
Brian P. Katz
Buzzards, the
last on the list of dead, fly from cliffs to buildings as if routine, circle in
the clouds that will take more lives than the lives squashed and squashed in
piles. There is much madness but no discerning eye and when the news repeats
from various, amateurish angles, a film so real it takes on a fifth dimension, and deep-sixes the
vanity of capitalism which becomes the artery of freedom, behold the remnants
of something more than flesh and spirit, shoveled onto barges destined for
Staten Island and the largest dump in the world -- final resting place?
* * *
We've heard the stories, we continue to hear the
stories, and tragedy mounts tragedy in the person and her family and his
neighborhood. I knew a woman who died on September 11, 2001. She worked high up
in one of the Twin Towers, and after the plane plowed into the building like a
malicious magic trick, she was cut off from the bottom. I have this image of
her making her way to the roof, handkerchief over mouth, covered in soot,
thinking of her family, her friends, her godchildren. She stands on the
observation deck, the normally high winds unnatural on this late summer
morning, waving her white handkerchief at the helicopters; and then, from one
of the highest manmade points, she jumps into the sky.
* * *
I have a penchant for overreacting -- ask Maria, my
wife, or any of my close friends, or even my mother. When the Yankees, two outs
from winning, lost the World Series, I remained distant from the news for a
week -- I couldn't deal with the mere mention of the conclusion and condemned
my students, as lightheartedly as I could muster a response, for mentioning
anything remotely baseball; and it was just baseball, a game. I was like this
before September 11 -- petty, self-absorbed, misanthropic -- but I've became more
pathetic in my exaggerations with the "it could have been me"
syndrome and the "I've been on the flight" response even if I've
never actually been on that particularly numbered flight from New York to Los
Angeles. My overreacting is a response to my self-absorption, my
self-absorption leads to pettiness, and all the things that are petty collect
like junk in a drawer. My city was bravely falling apart and I was thinking
about myself, my demise, my bold death, my not being around to witness the
birth of my daughter because I was on that plane.
Petty, strictly defined, because the little things are
important. A few months ago someone sideswiped my parked Volvo 240 Classic. [At
times I am defined by my car.] I accused everyone on my block for denting the fender.
I even blamed my wife with the old, "How could you not notice this?"
as if she were somehow responsible for being out on the street, without my
knowing, between the hours of 12 to 6 in the morning, staring at the front of
my car. Mind you, it was she who brought it to my attention -- I probably
wouldn't have noticed for a few days. The real problem with my nitpicking
obsessiveness is that I don't remember when I started to give a damn about
cars, or for that matter, a damn about anything but my own paltry existence.
Self-absorbed, because I am a writer and, you may have
already noted, this editorial starts out as an "In Memoriam" but now
centers on me. Obviously, society is to blame for me being this way.
Misanthropic, not necessarily because I am but because
I want to be. This is a trait I have been mostly called by others. I suppose it
has something to do with my mood swings, my insistence that everyone is wrong,
and my conservatively liberal beliefs. In truth, it is because I am often bored
by others [-- a defining, crotchety old man statement].
My priorities are rent asunder. I have my morning of
the attacks story, the "I couldn't write for weeks" line, and the
"everything seems so unimportant" response; I have no great new
opinion, no gem of wisdom to offer. I am a thirty-one year old writer expecting
the birth of my daughter and trying desperately not to overreact to every
little ache and pain my wife experiences. A sneeze. "Oh my God." A
cramp. "Should we go to the hospital?" I am a writer, an average to
good one on a regular basis, and my implicit failure as husband, friend, and
son will soon be explicit failure if I continue to modify my existence with
proof that I am "petty, self-absorbed, and misanthropic."
* * *
