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Flash Flashback, 9-8: Surviving
Life for a 'Luxury Item' after 9-11-01

By Veronica Dittman
Copyright 2001, 2006 Veronica Dittman

(Editor's Note: The following Flash Letter was originally sent out to the Dance Insider e-mail list on September 15, 2001, and posted online September 21. See also Darrah Carr's Report from Ground Zero, Julie Lemberger's photo essay September 11, 2001, Jay Weissman's Frontline, New York City, Allyson Green's ABT to the Rescue, David White's Bessie at the Barricades and, if you're still seeing clearly, visit the DI's 2001 Flash Archive and scroll down to September for more dance insider reaction from all over the world. Veronica Dittman is Founding Editor of the Dance Insider.)

Dear Dance Insider Readers,

There is a long-standing delicate matter between my respected friend Paul, the editor of this venture, and me. It consists of my defensive insistence that he not print any of my submissions without letting me approve his edits to them. However, in this case, I am trusting him to not let this be too personal, too self-indulgent, or too full of parenthetical notes (but Paul, don't you think an occasional glimpse of the subtext can be interesting? like when someone's slip is showing?). He's asked for written responses from us New Yorkers, but like everyone here, I'm a little strung out and am aware that my judgment is probably wobbly.

We're quickly learning to live in the aftermath. Phone lines are undependable, the subways are undependable, there are 90 bomb threats a day, we hear fighter jets overhead patrolling us but mostly we can't see them, and the air quality is horrendous in places. Just the same, I took ballet with Marjorie Mussman yesterday and the class was well attended (she comes in from New Jersey!), and Stef tells me she took class with Zvi at City Center this week. Friends came over to my apartment last night, and after the now routine exchange of stories and impressions, there was much hilarity.

Among my concentric circles of friends, so far I've only heard tales of luck, escape, and relief, so I'm grateful. But then, there are so many people gone that it becomes impersonal. If ol' Martha was onto something with the idea of collective unconscious, there's such a big hole here that we all feel it. There are fliers made on home computers and posted on bus shelters and lamp posts everywhere, with a photo and phone numbers: "If you've seen this person, please call."

At my worst, I'm scared to drink the water, I'm scared to breathe the air, and I practically hyperventilate when the train stops for a routine red signal. In an outburst of selfishness, I'm scared that I won't be able to get to my doctor's appointment on Tuesday, or that the doctor will be busy with some new disaster. The hardest part for me is accepting that now the structures and systems I'd taken for granted are vulnerable and impermanent. Everything will be different now, unstable. (for once, I would love to be wrong. I would love to think back on this in a year and see myself as a melodramatic alarmist.) It's possible, probable, that there's more horror to come, that we'll live with it. I'm aware that so many other cultures have had to live with this fear, and have adapted, but I arrogantly thought we were immune here.

I find I'm hopelessly in love with the physical, and my tangled theology reveals itself. I've got the Apostles' Creed promising "the resurrection of the body and life everlasting" and I'm drawn to these Zen Buddhist dancing skeletons meant to confront "the impermanent nature of material existence" so that freedom, bliss, and enlightenment can become possible.

After an initial impulse to run like hell all the way to my parents' house in Wisconsin, I don't want to leave. As Fran Liebowitz said in a radio interview this morning, "I need myself here, even if no one else does." I also related to her identifying herself as a "luxury item": my skills aren't particularly useful right now. She pointed out that construction workers and nurses, who never get any press around here, are desperately needed, and it turns out that the stylists and designers are temporarily unimportant.

Sending out good wishes to you all,

Veronica

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