At Starbucks, Queens, NY
September 12, 2001
by Keith Snyder
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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. She
used 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 upon.
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.
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