Damn, but That Man Can WRITE

Thursday’s Bleat. Excerpts:

South of the WTC site is the Deutsche Bank building, now wrapped in black fabric, abandoned. There was no one here, and there were no sounds. I’ve never ever been anywhere in Manhattan where it was this quiet. No horns, no voices, no car alarms, nothing. Absolute silence. The wind had picked up, and was rippling the shroud over the DB tower. All the ripples went up. It looked as if the building was still shedding souls, and they were running beneath the thin dark blanket, looking for the way out.

—

I walked around and saw the other giants of lower Manhattan – 40 Wall, Cities Service. The Woolworth building. One after the other – giant monoliths old and new, gargantuan towers assembled in the sky by human hands, each one just another piston stroke in the motor of American commerce.

—

The men who brought down the towers did nothing more than take a hammer to the tooth of a sleeping lion. Oh, you can do that.

But you can only do it once.

—

I think this was the New York trip I wanted all those years I was a dorkboy in Fargo, reading ancient New Yorkers and wishing I could be a bitter alcoholic at the Algonquin.

Just tell us when the book comes out, James. I’ll be buying it.