The barista at the Austin
Street Starbucks in Queens has heard from one of her friends
who worked at the World Trade Center, but not the other. Sheused
to work around there.
"How are you?" she greets me as I come
in. "I'm fine. How are you?" "Good."
It's the conversation we've always had, so we have
it. I order.
"How are you?" she says distractedly
as she rings me up. "Okay," I say, but this time my
tone says, "How good can anyone be?"
"And you?" I ask. Then she tells me about
her two friends.
***
Tu Yu says: Those expert in attack use inundations
and fire according to the situation. They make it impossible
for an enemy to know where to prepare. They release the attack
like a lightning bolt from above the nine-layered
heavens.
Sun Tzu says: During the early morning spirits
are keen, during the day they flag, and in the evening thoughts
turn toward home.
***
"Hello?" I say last night. The phone
has not rung all day. We have DSL, which has stayed up. Email
has gotten through from friends and family, but no one's been
able to call.
"Keith, it's Scott Peer."
Scott is an acquaintance, a guy who makes sounds
for synthesizers out in Pennsylvania.
"Scott!" I exclaim. "Hey, how you
doing?" and hear even before his subsequent pause that my
tone is inappropriate. I like Scott, so I know how I'd normally
respond to hearing from him. I'd sound pleased.
So I sound pleased.
There's a pause.
"I'm all right," he says finally. "How
are you?"
"We're fine. Kathleen has blisters from walking
from midtown to Queens,
but we're both okay."
A relief, he says. He can breathe more easily.
Now he's got to try to reach two other friends. "Who are
you trying to reach?" I ask. "Maybe I know something."
Like there's any chance of that.
He tells me. I don't.
***
Ho Yen-hsi says: When the Yen army surrounded Chi
Mo in Ch'i, they cut off the noses of all the Ch'i prisoners.
The men of Ch'i were enraged and conducted a desperate defense.
T'ien Tan sent a secret agent to say: "We are terrified
thst you people of Yen will exhume the bodies of our ancestors
from their graves. How this will freeze our hearts!"
The Yen army immediately began despoiling the tombs
and burning the corpses. The defenders of Chi Mo witnessed this
from the city walls and with tears flowing wished to go forth
and give battle, for rage had multiplied their strength by ten.
T'ien Tan knew then that his troops were ready, and inflicted
a ruinous defeat on Yen.
***
I'm on a private mailing list for the ad business.
Yesterday, someone suggested that everyone go out and give blood.
I can't give blood; I have multiple sclerosis. If anyone hears
of anything where I can contribute my writing, composing, or
indie short film skills, I responded publicly, I hope you'll
remember I posted this.
This morning, there's a single response, excoriating
me for looking for work and "scamming on other people's
pain," telling me to pray instead of thinking of work, and
suggesting that if I don't have a God, I should get one. I respond
very poorly, off-list, telling that person she's a f***ing fool,
and where to cram her holier-than-thou attitude. And then I mess
it
up, and my response goes to the public list. I send public and
private apologies and expect to be kicked off the list. Luckily,
the original is caught and deleted by the moderator.
I lashed at someone on an AOL message board, too.
I must behave better and allow others to express their rage and
grief in ways that aren't natural to me.
***
Sun Tzu says:
- Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred
battles you will never be in peril.
- When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your
chances of winning and losing are equal.
- If ignorant of both your enemy and of yourself, you are certain
in every battle to be in peril.
Li Ch'uan comments: Such people are called "mad
bandits." What can they expect if not defeat?
***
Mark and Lorna are safe in Brooklyn. Charlie's
at home in Queens. Denise got stuck out on Long Island. Shira's
in Cuba, where, unless she manages to rent a JetSki with an extra
tank -- which, honestly, I wouldn't put past her -- she may be
staying for a while. My writing group is starting to check in.
A sometime co-worker emails all her friends: An
American Airlines boarding pass fell into her bag as she came
up out of the subway on her way to work. Confused, she walked
through floating debris toward her office building. Then there
was an explosion. She ran for the subway, which hadn't stopped
working yet. In the car, she and another woman were too hysterical
to tell the other commuters what had happened.
I'm glad you're all right, I respond to her note.
Let me know if your birthday thing is still on, okay?
My cousin Susannah lives in Chelsea. We haven't
heard anything yet.
***
Freelance graphic design pays my rent between novels.
The day before the attack, I was asked to airbrush the twin towers
out of a photograph because my employer didn't own them.
***
The TV asks how this could happen--how this kind
of preparation and coordination could happen within our borders.
***
Sun Tzu says: Should one ask, "Can troops
be made capable of such instantaneous coordination?" I reply,
"They can." For although the men of Wu and Yueh mutually
hate one another, if together in a boat tossed by the wind they
would cooperate as the right hand does with the left.
Sun Tzu says: The wise general sees to it that
his troops feed on the enemy, for one bushel of the enemy's provisions
is equivalent to twenty of his.
Sun Tzu says: To use fire, some medium must be
relied upn.
Ts'ao Ts'ao comments: Rely upon traitors among the enemy.
Sun Tzu says: - When the fire reaches its height, follow up if
you can.
- Water can isolate an enemy but cannot destroy his supplies
or equipment.
***
We live in Queens, several miles from Manhattan.
It's a 20-minute trip on the express bus or a 40-minute subway
ride 
from Queens Boulevard
to midtown, where my wife works. Today I feel self-important,
sitting here at a Starbucks, a few miles from the war, with my
Walkman radio on 1010 WINS,
tapping away like a foreign correspondent, sitting with an iced
drink next to a bright, uncovered window. Three days ago, I downloaded
a fun little control panel that makes my Macintosh clack like
a 1912 Underwood typewriter. I love it. I've turned it off.
***
I'm glad when I see the explosions in Afghanistan.
They appeal to my sense of efficiency. I'm disappointed to learn
it's not a US attack.
***
Sun Tzu says: The reason the troops slay the enemy
is because they are enraged.
***
I pull the earbuds out and turn off the Walkman.
There's discussion going
between a bald, goateed guy in his early fifties and a couple
of Asian girls with accents. I join it. It spreads until everyone
who's managed to get a table in this little front section of
Starbucks is involved. The bald ex-serviceman and I both think
America's been naive to this point, and that the attackers did
everything right. The country won't be able to go on until
there's retaliation, he says. "Nobody will be able to concentrate."
It won't be a surgical strike, we agree. It can't be. They're
too far underground.
I don't remember exactly -- it was a comment of
some sort about us being different from them -- but I find myself
talking about how the people who did this weren't inhuman, that
they had families, pets, favorite foods, that they woke up that
morning afraid, that if we think evil looks like a slavering
monster, and keep watch for that, we won't recognize it when
it
knocks on our door, that these were people, that making the enemy
inhuman is what every nation does when it goes to war, that they
do it to us--that we're demons; that we do it to them--that they're
inhuman. I talk about the swastikas painted on my house in North
Hollywood when I was a kid. I don't
remember all that I said, and some is cribbed from things I've
said before, but when I stop, there's silence, and I'm trembling,
and the ex-serviceman is flushed, pinching his closed eyes, and
one of the two Asian girls looks back down at her newspaper,
but her eyes are puffy.
I'm not overcome with emotion, I don't think, but
I'm shaky and I keep passing my hand over my face.
And I want their countries obliterated, and so
does the ex-serviceman. And I'm upset that I want their countries
obliterated, and so is the ex-serviceman. We both go ahead and
say it: Now I'm no different from them.
The flight attendant at the other window table
explains that crews are trained to respond to terrorism in various
ways, depending on the situation. All the training has to do
with negotiation, retaining control, personalizing. This must
have looked like one of those situations. Stay calm and negotiate.
The passengers and crew who brought down the Pittsburgh
plane figured it out.
***
Sun Tzu says: Throw the troops into a position
from which there is no escape and even when faced with death
they will not flee. For if prepared to die, what can they not
achieve? ... In a desperate situation they fear nothing; when
there is no way out they stand firm. Deep in a hostile land they
are bound together, and there, where there is no alternative,
they will engage the enemy in hand to hand combat.
***
The middle-aged woman at the table nearest the
kitchen area says we shouldn't harbor hate groups in our own
country. We know who they are, she says. One of the attacking
pilots went to a flight school in Florida, she says. They're
foreigners, she says, and we know who they are, and we shouldn't
just open our arms and let them be here.
"Where are your people from?" I ask.
"Foreigners," she says. "But they
didn't--"
The ex-serviceman and I jump on her. "Every
country in the world is trying to stop terrorists," I say.
"Nobody can. You think we're going to succeed by keeping
lists? What are we going to do? When they show up at the border
with a Terrorist Group ID Card, we turn them away?"
Her
eyes flash. "Don't make jokes--"
"Changing the Declaration of Independence,"
the ex-serviceman says. "For every one you stop, there's
another one," he says.
Black Panthers, she says. Did you let them stay
and--
I don't know, I say. I wasn't around. The ex-serviceman
laughs. "Nah, nah. That was my generation. They were financed
by white people," he says. "Abbie Hoffman. What are
you gonna do, arrest everyone who raises a black fist? That's
speech against the government."
She turns half away, wants to tell us how wrong
we are, doesn't have the argument ready, turns back, shaking
her head, settles for "Well," and a dismissive flick
of the hand.
"Freedom of speech for whom?" I press.
She's too angry to remain here with us. We're too
wrong. She leaves before her anger makes her uncivil. We chased
her away. Hurray for us.
***
Chang Yu says: Mencius said "The small certainly
cannot equal the large, nor can the weak equal the strong, nor
the few the many."
***
This is me giving blood.
book
was published in 1996. Show Control stars Jason Keltner, electronic
musician, and his friends Robert and Martin, who have a knack
for getting into trouble and get involved in adventure, espionage
and mystery. Mystery Scene said it was "a highly impressive
first novel of rare quality," and readers agreed. The success
of Show Control landed him a contract with Walker & Co for
his follow up novels Coffin's Got The Dead Guy On The Inside
& Trouble Comes Back. Visit keith online at 