 Sketchbook Entry circa 09-11-01 (click on image to enlarge) A few days after 09-11-01 I had composed myself enough to begin writing and drawing in my sketchbook journal again. This was my first entry after the 911 Terrorist Attacks.On 09-11-01 I was in the process of moving Sophie and I from my apartment in Astoria, Queens to my then fiancés house in Valley Stream, Long Island, where I was that morning. At first I thought the images I was seeing on TV when the first tower was struck, were of a terrible airline accident. I was shook up but decided to board the LIRR and subway into Queens back to my own apartment. I never made it there that day. As the city became paralyzed, passengers were all put off the trains and told by screaming mta personnel, who were running up and down the train platforms, “We are under attack! Go home!”
 Sketchbook Entry circa 09-11-01 (click on image to enlarge)
A few days after the attack I went to Manhattan to Soho to pick up a much needed paycheck. The air was foul with a terrible odor that I will never forget. The awful smoke from ground zero could still be seen billowing up. Fire trucks with loud sirens blaring were everywhere, and other huge trucks, draped with American flags were hauling huge chunks of debris from Ground Zero. Police were restricting access to downtown unless you had ID that stated you lived there–which I had because I used to live in Soho. When I crossed south of Houston Street everyone was wearing a mask to protect themselves from the foul air. There were even people sitting in outdoor cafes, sipping lattes with masks on! They would lift their mask every time they would take a sip of coffee! I remember despite all the sadness, smiling at that and thinking, “Now THAT”S commitment to a return to normalcy!”
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 Sketchbook Entry circa 09-11-01 (click on image to enlarge)
This cartoon seems so hokey to me now. Me sitting in a church, marinating in grief, and being brought to tears by witnessing a strapping firefighter crying like a baby over the loss of so many of his friends. The cartoon seems hokey now because of what I am thinking in the thought bubble, “If we pray enough, can we change this reality?”. Though it was my sincere thought at the time, it now seems like such a ridiculous thought–so naive and so cowardly. I was so overwhelmed with sadness and I was having so much trouble accepting the reality all around me. There was so much grief. So much sorrow and loss. So many stories of tragedy.In the days that followed, as I moved around the city, the flyers began to appear. Heartbreaking pleas for assistance in finding lost loved ones who were in the towers at the time of the attack–as if hundreds of people had somehow escaped death and were wandering around the streets of the city, dazed and unable to find their way home. Those were such desperate hopes. Soon to be desperate grief.
 Sketchbook Entry circa 09-11-01 (Click on image to enlarge) |
The cartoon on the left sums up night after night of the medias coverage of the attacks. Horrible, sad stories–still being recounted now on the anniversary, ten years later. People did move on with their lives, but that doesn’t make the loss any less permanent.My then finacé Donna, and her sixteen year old son Mitch were having a very hard time processing what was happening. We all were. We would sit and watch newscasts every night and felt like we were waiting for the other shoe to drop. The city was full of national guard troops carrying rifles. The media made it sound as if another attack may be imminent.The cartoon on the left is one that I am now embarrassed to have drawn, as the sign on the newsstand counter reads, “Ahmed is out fighting the Jihad against you American Devils–please leave money on the counter.”At the time, I was so terrified and angry that I got sucked into all of the fear mongering and slipped into paranoia and mistrust of anyone from the middle east. Though this cartoon was meant to describe the paranoia of many others around me who I had been observing, it definitely indicates that my thinking at the time as just as despicable.
 Sketchbook Entry circa 09-11-01 (click on image to enlarge)
Then came the anthrax scares, as depicted in the cartoon on the left. The cartoon on the right was my first attempt to get back to my own normal, by trying to observe parts of the world around me that existed outside the grief, sadness, and fear that had been the milieu after the attacks. I had begin to think the world had become a serious place where cartoonists were no longer relevant, and was unsure of what then, my place would then be.
 Sketchbook Entry circa 09-11-01 (Click on image to enlarge)
On the left, a drawing showing my doubt about what to do, where to go. 9/11 had also destroyed my livelihood. There was no need need for humorous illustrators or teaching artists who taught kids how to draw funny pictures. Publishers put all new projects on hold, and parents wanted their kids home after school–not in after school art programs.I lost everything I had. I was stone cold broke and had no prospects for work. A distant friend called to offer comfort.I finished moving out of my apartment in Queens, and moved in with my fiancé in Valley Stream, Long Island. Our relationship too was now hanging by a thread, and would ultimately be doomed. How much the stress of 911 had to do with the end of our relationship is unclear. I needed help.
 Sketchbook Entry circa 09-11-01 (click on image to enlarge)
In the months that followed 911 the religious freaks were out in force, and people seemed to buy into their rants more readily than usual.As for me…I felt I needed to speak to a counselor. My livelihood gone, my relationship spiraling out of control, I sought help wherever I could find it. And it simply was not there. At least, not in any real way.Ultimately, of course, I moved on with my life after 911. It did change me however, just as it had changed so many others.Though people may have changed in different ways as a result of that experience, I felt, for me that the way I was changed was that I was simply hardened by it. Those people who died that day, some in such awful circumstances, of course are not the only ones in the world who have suffered. People all over the world suffer everyday and die in wars and famines and disasters. For Americans and especially New Yorkers, 911 brought very close to home the harsh reality of the world we live in and it’s potential for terrible horror and sadness that can take place anywhere, anytime.
As an American I lost my innocence that day as so many others did. America was no longer a special place where people could live in both freedom AND safety. I know at least I never will feel that way again, as that day will forever be in the back of my mind and held with sadness in my heart.
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