Flying Colors

        I’m sorry but I could write no more.
        There came a point I’m not sure when... but it became too much.
        Thursday I know I was down in the Village encouraging friends to get back to business and helping to put up flags every where.  The streets were gray with smoke and those walking around wore masks and filters over their faces. The stores were empty of staples such as bread, milk and water. Which didn’t bother me as I’ve come to subsist on little else than cookies, cakes, and coffee. I remember once I even fasted for a little over four weeks on just coffee and cigarettes then drove up to the White Mountains. I picked a good sized mountain to climb and set off down the trail with my "breakfast" secured in my backpack. The idea being that I would climb the trail and camp out on the peak and break my fast at sunrise. Mountains as it is have a tendency of looking smaller than they are from a distance and even more so while you climb them. I ended up climbing all day and all through the night which was not too bright of an idea once exhaustion set in right in the middle of a steep rock face. I don’t think I fell much more than 26 feet or so before my foot snagged in a crevice. I was well off the trail long before I started climbing rock and didn’t see much prospect in heading down. Though the thought of just letting my self sleep for a bit dangling off a ledge brought little comfort, (very little), I decided further determination and effort might be in my best self interest. So I freed my snagged foot and started crawling back up. One thing about being lost on a mountain in the middle of the night is that if your destination is the top then up is one of easier direction to determine in the dark. I managed to find the strength to keep going and actually made the summit by noon. Disappointed that I had missed the sunrise I took solace in the fact that I had at least made it to the top of the mountain and could finally stop fasting.
        I thought back to this while I scaled the front of a building to find a point to affix a make shift flag pole. I figured at least I might be OK and manage for a while should things go on like this for some time and food run short. I felt I’ve been through much worse than this and faced greater evils on my own and might somehow manage to pull through somehow. As for the flying colors, I had a few more flags to hang then I was off to the studio to print out more Twin Lights fliers to distribute. I remember heading back to the studio then the weekend turned from gray to black.
        I’m not too sure when it was but I had been rolling down the street and noticing the number of profile pages plastered on the walls of buildings for the World Trade Center Massacre Missing In Action. I saw a familiar face and stopped short. No, I thought, this has to be a joke. It was the face of a young fellow I had met who had just come to some interesting self discoveries. He was having fun with his new life and thrilled with the prospect of everything this city had to offer. I just couldn’t picture him working in the financial district. But I knew he wasn’t the type to have done this as a ruse. Much to my chagrin there it was in black and white, the name that matched the face, that matched the memory and the confirmation that he had worked in the mail room of one of the WTC offices. I couldn’t believe it. He had been so full of life that... that... well, that is gone. I didn’t know him that well or that close that it would crush me but still to have known someone enough to have shared in a conversation about their life and then to see it all lost. I glanced down the wall and there was another face staring at me from memory’s store of perceptive resource. I could remember her complaining of how her shoes were just too uncomfortable and how she just wished she could slip them off. Next to her another face with another name and the fragment of memory to place her that matched her profile.  I stopped looking at pages and turned down the street. Coming back to the studio I passed the Armory and there on the side of a news truck were more WTC MIA Profiles. I decided to test the theory. I would just look at the face and see if anything clicked from their image and not read the profile until I got memory confirmation. After a few good clicks I could tell almost instantly the difference between those I actually recognized and other faces I did not. If the averages were correct it was looking like I might have met at least a third if not more of the victims. I wasn’t about to go down through each and every profile lining the walls of the armory. It would have killed me or worse. This realization was more than I could bare.
        The explanation was printed out in black and white on every profile page. I quite often work as a creative consultant. During the holidays that means decorating. Most years I’ll be solid in decorating from September through the New Year. Most of these people I had met while planning for their corporate affairs, holiday parties, and benefits they attended or sponsored. I quite often would be there helping them set up for their events. And in this you have to understand that many of these companies were like big families. They worked together with a family spirit and quite often enough played together. Though I wasn’t part of that family when we were together they quite often would come right up to me and talk to me as if I was. Though I can not truly say that I knew these people, when your purpose for meeting someone is to be sure that they are happy then it goes without saying that you are concerned with their happiness if not their general well being. Also understand the circumstances by which we met. At times of celebration, relaxation, and merry making. People tend to both lighten up and open up. So I would be there at many of these affairs and many of them would come to me and start talking about some novel experience or stand around in a group and share a joke or some found remembrances. Several times throughout the years I would be standing at the door greeting them as they arrived and verifying their identification and checking their names off of a guest list. It is silly to think that I could recognize someone and recall their name and other information from a quick glance at their drivers license, passport or company employee card. But memory is a strange beast. Trust me that when I say there is a click... there is something in there that triggers... so I look at a profile... I see their name... I see what they were wearing... I remember the silly things they said to me. And I had to stop.
        I had to stop looking at these pictures because it was too much to bear. There were too many of them. With the averages of having met a third or more I just did not know how to cope. I couldn’t write about it but I would have to invent new ways of expression to go along with new ways of thinking. I’m not even quite sure I was really thinking anymore. I tried to talk about it but I’m not sure I sounded quite sane to those I shared this with.
        Though there is no way to best describe how I felt I might draw ample comparison from comments to the press by rescue workers leaving ground zero. When asked to describe the scene down there or what it was like they all said no words could describe it. Simply put it defies description as much as it defies comprehension. There is no way to define the feeling because it goes way beyond any feeling you can compare it too. There is no way to describe your thoughts because it is completely out of the range of human introspection. I was lost for a time.
        I know I went to the bank in the morning and recognized another face taped next to the entrance, but this face was a chat buddy from the Internet. I know I wrote a song at some point over the weekend. Sunday I decided to go out to the park. There as I practiced deeper breathing I came to terms with my self, or what was left that could be self. I reminded myself that I did not truly know these people even though I had indeed met many of them. I also reminded myself that as much as I felt for them I had to achieve some level of perspective on things. That indescribable void that I had dropped into - that is the mind of the madman behind this. The scene down at ground zero as "described" by the rescue workers - that is the workings of his madness. His mind is full of twisted beams of thought and a smoking crater full of soft gray dust and rubble. Madness is a disease just as contagious as any other. Quite often it spreads its self quite the same as any other sickness. Terminal forms of madness such as this need to be rooted out of society and destroyed.
        I know I can not so easily put this behind me because I know what lies ahead. I haven’t even begun to think about my own self through all of this. Silly thing to say I suppose when all I seem to be writing about are my thoughts and my reactions, my experiences and my feelings. Still it is time for me to set to task some form or manner of recovery and restructuring. The flames of the two candles here are burning low.

        Bruce Willis may have portrayed it best. Perhaps the only way to deal with these madmen is to show them you are just as mad as they, if not perhaps a tad bit more insane. Shock the Monkey...