9/11

: THE ISLAND

By

Maurilio Di Stefano


01 of 11: The Island

Every human
tragedy is an
island,
where completely
different
people find
themselves
trapped together
without even
knowing
each other.


02 of 11: The Flying Man

Such a strange way to find ourselves inside the story. Out of the blue, up
here, cool breeze, almost nine hundred feet high from the ground with our feet
dangling out into mere void.
We have a glance down at the sidewalk, at the city, and here it comes true
that fun story about streets as narrow as curbs and people like ants and teenie-
weenie buses like urban beetles on wheels.
So we can’t help startling, and screaming. Little bit beacuse of fear and
dizzy-spell, but for most out of a disturbing revelation: we can’t scream at all.
Our throat tries the hell at it, all our voice-box muscles contract to the spasm,
but nothing comes out. Not a sound, everything’s but silence. Even the remote
hum of underlying traffic seems not to be able to climb beyond the fifteenth
floor.
That’s when we realize we can’t scream at all because we don’t exist at all.
And this is just how we swooped on here, free-falling into the tale without
conveying gravity: because we simply are-not.
We’re just a glimpse, we only are that glance down. We’re not more than
an idea. We’re mist, steam, perhaps the very no-dimensional outlines of some
sky-scraper.
And this is why we can also hover up here, hanging lightweight in no-
concern air and peeking at the Flying Man from right behind his back.
All we need to know about the Flying Man is his skin is dark, he was born
and raised in town, he loves those little gestures he found out he unawarely
took after his father out of that tender dad-son osmosis, and he dreams to
breed lots of children, some day, far away from here, in an island. A hidden,
secluded island, well-concealed from all the evil the world is stuffed in with.
The Flying Man is not a real flying man, natch. But that is how he
sometimes likes to think of himself. Some other times he feels more like an
acrobat, a magician, or why not a brave superhero. Because washing sky-
scrapers’ windows is just some irrelevant detail to him, daresay the less
interesting side of his life.
What he’s really fond of is to breathe the clean air he can find beyond the
fifteenth floor. Breathe the air from his city, that he feels to belong to more
than anyone else, inhaling its essential nature, as pure and neat as no one down
on the street could ever breathe it.
And of course to behold from up-sky the city itself, this huge shiny apple,
the same way street artists do from below creating accurate reproductions only
with cardboard, spray-paint and some dingy spatula.
The Flying Man hasn’t met his companion yet, the one you’d say about:
she’s the one. Least of all he’s been able to pick the right far-away island out
on the map. But he’s young, and there’s still time. You could say this thought
is part and parcel of the wind which constantly lifts his wings up.
You never know when the end’s coming down, right. But still there’s no
chance you think it possible in your twenties, in full God’s sight, in the middle
of such a bright September day.
He keeps smiling to the glass, to his own reflection. His teeth, bone-white
like in every mouth among his people, mirror the sun-glare back. The result is
a complex light-trick which draws through the air uncanny, immediate
rainbows.
The Flying Man’s mind is so mild right now, so subtle, that when he
catches sight of the dinky approaching creature he barely notices.
Fall’s right around the corner. It’s the Flying Man most cherished season in
the year. And he’s pretty confident the bookshop’s salesgirl is going to answer
yes, when and especially if he gathers up guts enough to ask her out.
All of this as if to say practically nothing could spoil this perfect morning.
And even if objects in the mirror could be much closer than they appear,
you would never expect they can get so dangerous. You would never say
they’re aiming at you at full throttle, ready to some untold impact.
Needless to say when you find yourself anywhere like here, it doesn’t
matter how young you are and how hopeful you look. Because it’s not you the
approaching creature is interested in. That little-getting-much-bigger iron-bird
is only destined to the building whose windows you’re so thoroughly cleaning
up.
That means the Flying Man is just one of those many who happen to be
doomed to get in someone else’s way.
Not that any of this matters anyway, because when it hits you’ll be dying of
a sharp and sublime pain that’ll put a right-away end to your awareness.
The closer the odd great bad-bug approaches, rushing at several hundred
miles per hour, the bigger its reflection gets into the glass – which somehow
we know it to belong to the seventy-second floor windows.
The plane’s glare grows bigger and bigger by the instant. It gets gigantic,
exaggerated, until it fills the whole window up; until that same air that used to
quench the Flying Man’s thirst for liberty now chokes him relentless.
The sun goes black, as in an unannounced eclipse. And fall turns up ten-or-
so days – more likely sixty-or-so years, if you asked the Flying Man – in
advance.
This is the moment we understand how bitter to us is the downside, how
stale its flavor.
Being made of sight, acting disguised as pure thought, all of that is
intoxicating: it let us dodge usual physics laws, have the story’s all-time and
all-space available, even fly. But it bans us from doing anything, from
interacting and being able to save that poor guy after having guessed the tragic
ending he’s going to face.
So this is how we leave him, the young black-skinned window washer
who’ll never know he was in love with the bookshop clerk. This is the
moment we’re forced to abandon him: when his arm’s still hanging, his fingers
clasped around his squeegee’s handle, his underlip trembling for a fear that’ll
not have time enough to reach his heart.
This is how we say goodbye to the Flying Man.
We turn our back on him, we despicable cowards, in order not to suffer, not
to enshrine anyway in our memory the obnoxious moment of destruction. Of
passage.
Our eye’s corner seizes one last fleeting spurt: the Flying Man’s extensible-
handled squeegee, still soaked up in soapy water, slipping away from our
hero’s now-feeble and suddenly-flaccid finger grip.
It will barely hold our interest now to know that the Flying Man is a
southpaw, but for some reason this is going to sadden us to death.
Now the microscopic metal hummingbird is not that microscopic, not
anymore. In fact it’s revealing itself for what it really is: an enormous
clattering flipped out death-dispenser.
The squeegee’s rubber blade doesn’t even have the time to touch the
ground, nine hundred feet further down or thereabouts: the first of two twin
airplanes has already struck, the first of two twin collisions has already
incinerated the Flying Man.
Him, whose limbs are made of actual bone, and actual blood, and actual
flesh. Not like ours. Hence his strong aptitude for getting slain.


03 of 11: The Seeker

The Seeker is a fourty-nine year old man whom average
people would call a bum. A loiterer, a homeless, a tramp, a
hobo, a beggar. There’s no end to the list of words good to
describe something filthy and dead-weight as much as there
isn’t to the human suffering’s resources one.
The Seeker is whom avarage people would define nuts
as well. If asked to him he’d answer his mind is totally
sound, of course. Even if, as he would state himself again,
this is right what nuts people say about themselves.
The bottom line is his marbles are nothing but alright. He’s just the kind of
man who can’t accept, can’t accept at all the idea of being taken for some poor
deranged animal only because every morning, as soon as he gets up, he strolls
to his favourite call-box and spends till his last quarter dialling all the male
names’ numbers written in the phone book.
It’s clear he does so after having tried anything else you could imagine:
private eyes, TV shows, psychics.
One night he even dared to ask the old black clairvoyant who lives in his
same condo, but she couldn’t get to help him either. She held his hands for
more than a hour, while in the other room someone kept playing drums with
no cutting any slack, but all she managed to do was blabber some fuzzy sorries
and cry one only massive teardrop which got dried up before leaping over the
bulge of her African nose.
So everything he’d got left was the phone.
And why not in the end?
Lots of people don’t happen to pick up. Tons of those who do, hang up
halfway of his sentence – the same sentence the Seeker’s been saying over and
over for years. Others crack up loud, asking if some weird kind of joke’s going
on. Many of the spokesmen are actually spokeswomen or spokeschildren, and
they often wind up confessing I’m sorry, he’s dead, but I don’t think he was the
one you’re looking for, or I’m sorry, he left us too, but I don’t think he was the
one you’re looking for, or I’m sorry, he’s no longer living here, but I don’t
think he was the one you’re looking for.
As a matter of fact they all seem to be sorry. Well the Seeker is too. But
he’s not persuaded at all that he wasn’t the one he’s looking for. How can they
be so sure? Not even death is what it seems, the Seeker knows that very well.
Anyway he can’t complain. Because with life he made some kind of deal,
long time ago. He decided to spend his whole lifetime begging the alms and
spending his whole earning on phone calls. In return, life will neither ask nor
give him anything. Those the terms decreed, that’s the curse he bears.
At least this so-called job of his is not only flops and bummers, as much as
what the Seeker gets from the other end of the wire is not entirely laugh and
refusal.
Because there is this not so slim slice of people who really enjoy the
lingering, the wait-for, the chat part, and get really curious, not to say
inquiring, about the Seeker’s quirky story. Some of them even reached such a
deep level of empathy they got touched, and moved enough to burst into tears
right on the phone.
Crying for a perfect stranger whose call takes our minds off chores and
errands and certainly vital thoughts: what supportive unpredictable deeds is
capable of that same humanity which daily chops their counterpart up…
And sad gloomy words too, faintly uttered out in a dozy southern drawl or
some wadded up northern accent. Believe it or not, apologize words. Sorries
for not being able to help.
This is something the Seeker got used to very quickly anyway. He can’t
indulge in any pensiveness or low-spirited distraction. He’s got a work to get
done: find out where his father is.
This is why all he’s concerned about is his vast collection of shabby little
journals. Threadbare pages crammed with scrawl whose chaos only the Seeker
could get to the bottom of. That’s where he every day jots down first and
middle and last names, addresses, numbers, phone-call times and dates, and
where he thinks it someway worthy short notes about the conversation.
Fact is we may be kind of intrigued by two or three trifling details picked
out of the Seeker’s life.
For starters, he’s always loved to stare at the eraser wiping chalk-dust off
the blackboard, watching all the words and lines and scribbles go dead. All of
them, indiscriminately. Blank slate any minute you wish for it, just say the
word and let that flawless graceful gesture come alive. He finds it
astonishingly heady, the illusion of a chance to start over and over again right
on-demand.
Second, despite people in the subway often shrink and back off from him
due to the stink coming out of his clothes, the Seeker manages to sync his
heartbeat in unison with the rhythm pumping out their walkman’s headphones.
This his new wrinkle not to get to feel alone along his tiresome quest.
Last, we may find interesting the fact the Seeker lost his father at the age of
three. Some quite unidentified family problems, some pretty obscure mommy
murmur, then next thing he knew was his father was gone.
Same old: on a bright light day he went out and never came back home.
Alive, at least.
A quick funeral, even quicker burials, a not-so-sad wife. Game over.
And the kid – the one who’s not yet become a man, leave alone a Seeker –
the kid grows up, and learns, and loves, and loses. But he never misses the
chance for some good chatting face-to-face with his daddy. Or should we say
with his tombstone…
Right in those hours of day, time like sunday at noon or workdays early
morning, when the kid knows people are busy everywhere else but graveyards
so they’ll leave the two of them alone.
A young boy and his father, chatting by no talk, meeting in no place,
hoping that some day.
And never sadness in the kid’s voice speaking to the stone and the murky
soil and the treaded grass. Not a single tear. Just nude resignation and grown-
up awareness of how screwed-up things can get.
Then, abrupt, the hurricane.
This one had its name starting with G.
The better part of the graveyard hill crumbled down and fell apart.
Uncovered caskets sliding downhill, rot’s stench given off free, authorities
crowding up.
How funny… The hurricane had mowed no victim down, and yet the day
after got tanked up with corpses. So helpless this mankind of ours turns out to
be when Mother Earth claims out loud her need for death.
And yet no limb, no bone, not a fabric shred crops up from the kid’s
father’s coffin. The kid who’s still far from being called the Seeker, the father
who’s now far from being called dead.
All that the coffin reveals to have been holding for years before its lid got
smashed up like a nutshell by a buzz-saw is just a bunch of rocks. As if to say
the headstone hasn’t been at all the only stone the kid’s been chatting with
during the past ten years.
For the record, not average rocks, not plausible stones. Pebbles, indeed.
Round, plump, glossy-white river pebbles. Stones which if asked what they
had to do with that neck of the woods, they in person would have naive told:
little or no.
So, being his mother dead too and being the Seeker an only child, that’s
how his obsession got to blossom and grew up healthy until turning into
compulsion.
Phone calls. To anyone. In order to locate a man that could be really dead
by now. Or could have migrated to the far side of the world and changed his
face or even his sex, as far as the Seeker has been able to get to know till now.
Same old theme doesn’t go on at all in the Seeker’s mind. Nothing like I
know he’s alive, I feel it, or My mother had been hiding such a orrible secret
from me all that time long, or Maybe he did it for us, he did it to protect his
family from something really bad.
Nothing like all this movie-stuff. Our haggard vagrant hero just itches for
seeing his father again because he used to love him so much, and he
remembers how fun it used to be the time they spent together and there could
be still lot to share between the two of them. That’s all.
His father. The man whose face the Seeker can so perfectly recall he could
draw it down by heart with both eyes closed. And he can’t draw at all, not
even with straight-edge and square-ruler.
But today’s a different day.
The Seeker’s best/only/pseudo friend is an Indian guy who runs the call
center where our hero’s used to make his whimsical phone calls. The Indian
guy likes to make fun of the Seeker. He keeps on saying that no sound-minded
man would ever squander all the money he can spend desperately trying to
track down some ancient allegedly-still-alive phantom from his past, no matter
how happy the memory of it could appear.
But today it’s different.
The Indian guy hasn’t been seeing the Seeker in days. He was quite
concerned about him, to be honest. The Indian guy knows very well how
frequently hobos end up hurt, banged up, or worse.
But when in this wonderful glaring September morning he glimpses at the
Seeker cheerfully strolling down the sidewalk in front of his call center, the
Indian guy gets what’s going on right away: the Seeker’s long quest has come
to an end.
The Indian guy has got a strange cold way to share his friends’ joy. Let’s
say you would never call him an enthusiastic type. But what the Seeker
catches sight of in his only pal’s little brown eyes is more than enough to him,
so he lightly whispers one only word to him: Thanks.
After having done so he turns and leaves, never to enter again this or any
other Internet Point throughout the rest of his on-Earth life span.
That’s because five days ago, we can believe it or not, the right person
answered the right call. So unlikely, we feel like yelling. Sounds ridiculous.
But if someone spends twelve years of his life talking to a false grave, then
bets his own life on random phone calls and for other thirty-four years doesn’t
seem to stop hoping, well that’s a man who deserves to defeat statistics.
So five days ago, to the Seeker’s usual bizarre question, Hello, I beg your
pardon, I’m looking for my father, we all believed him dead but truth is we’ve
been crying up on a bunch of stones. Is that maybe you?... five days ago,
exactly, the right man answered.
Because when somebody pops such a question no one on the other end can
even think to escape. There’s no getaway, no misunderstanding in front of a
question of that sort. The most specific and less mistakable quiz in the world.
And where else could have run the Seeker’s father if not to an island? In the
only one among the fifty states which is a bunch of islands…
Well, his dad only told all of this to the Seeker’s ear indeed. Because life
likes to act haphazard, and the right call caught the Seeker’s father just a few
hours by-car from here. Just some hundred miles North, where he was visiting
a sick friend. As if to say the right person could get to answer only because he
was closest to the wrong phone.
Fate’s made up of coincidences, coincidences make the fate’s will our only
possible present.
A lot of question to be asked, a lot of smiles and hugs to be given in order
to make up for the lost time. In one word a lot of catchin-up needed.
But not over the phone, please. That isn’t what the Seeker’s been begging
the alms all that long for. Phone-calls were meant to lead him to his father, but
now that he found him that’s not enough anymore.
This is why Seeker’s dad is going to catch a flight and come to join him in
the Big Apple, where he will try – even if maybe not get – to explain. But that
doesn’t matter: the Seeker never felt like blaming, all he wants is to get to say
hi.
Nevertheless this is why and this is how we like to leave the Seeker. Just
like that, same as we recently did with the Flying Man.
We abandon him – we double-cowards – in the happiest moment of his life.
After all we’re allowed to suppose this would be anyone’s life happiest
moment: the second luck turns over and hands you up what you’ve been
striving to reach for a lifetime.
We leave him like that: serene, smiling and – pay attention – scented, as he
strolls down the sidewalk lending his back to his only friend on Earth.
That’s right, the Seeker’s never going to see again his Indian pal. Flip-side
is he doesn’t know why. Not yet.
As he steps beyond the building’s corner, the Seeker gets almost hit by a
tapered uncanny object free-falling from up the sky. It looks like one of those
long-handled brushes that window washers use up high clinging on to
skyscrapers glass-walls.
The object harsh-strikes the sidewalk paving. But no one, neither the
Seeker nor anyone else in the world, will ever hear the thud. That’s because it
goes swallowed by the supreme crash of the first plane that’s just dug his way
up into the North Tower’s belly.
This is why we’ve left the Seeker the very moment the Flying Man’s
squeegee was still hanging, the very moment before the first attack.
A moment the Seeker still can’t imagine his father is going to never show
up: because he’s in the other airplane, the second one, the one that’s destined
to hack the southwarded twin-sister’s stomach and make her fall and flap and
collapse to the ground once and forever.
The most sad and rueful thing, to us and everyone else, is no fake funeral’s
going to be celebrated this time, and no coffin’s going to be filled with only
stones and pebbles.


4 of 11: The Daughter of Gaia

 This back-and-forth thing through space and time is quite exhausting, as
we’ve already figured out ourselves. But every good story demands exertion
and self-denial. The risk of coming out too less sincere is way too big.
We’re still in the city, of course. This huge glass-and-concrete apple where
the Seeker’s dad is doomed not to ever land. And we’re back again in some
unspecific time before the first collision. A time when no whasher’s squeegee
has yet beaten the ground before the feet of a smiling bum.
There’s an unidentified lat at an unidentified floor of a building that by now
we got familiar with. It’s the Seeker’s condo, but that soon to be devastated
guy has never been further from our thoughts than now.
In that flat, that’s where the Daughter of Gaia lives. And that’s where she
persists in accomplishing the only mission she feels she was born to: play the
drums.
All is needed to be known about the Daughter of Gaia is she’s young,
healthy, her muscles as strong as iron, her silhouette worthy of Olympians
envy. And her skin’s dark. Even darker then the Flying Man’s. And quite more
sweaty. You could tell hers is ever-sweating skin, out of the dedication and the
sucide-accuracy she constantly pours in her rhythms and her immortal melody
only made of beats.
Being her the daughter of Mother Earth, this in fact what Gaia means, she’s
provided with such a perfect pitch she can tell her drumheads’ harmonics apart
by the half of semitone. Even if any tone-deaf and off-key mean to her just a
different way to vibrate.
There’s nothing not meant to be read as music, she believes.
She always plays in the same room soaked in dimness. Just her, lonely and
black as if she’s the last lava coal on Earth. And she always plays nude, buck-
naked, as newborn. With both eyes severely shut. Eyes which when opened
reveal two disquieting pearl-grey irises of a tone never seen before. A winter’s
day sky shade, when snow’s still a promise and chill’s a dismal threat.
The Daughter of Gaia lives alone with her grandma, an old and almost
blind clarvoyant from Africa landed here many years ago. The same
clarvoyant the Seeker questioned one day.
Any time the old woman happens to dream of a single-eyed puppy dog
someone close to her dies within a few hours. Same oracle-like premonition
seems to affect her granddaughter, although what the Daughter of Gaia usually
sees in her foresee-dreams is a puppy with both eyes clockwise twirling
around.
When they have this kind of dreams they always have them simultaneously.
When that happens, she and her grandma stare at each other in their flat’s
hallway, exchange a deep gloomy wake-up glance, then swiftly storm out
separate ways, both ready to get the bad news soon.
Shall we call this precognition, prescience? Is any of that stuff reliable at
all? Well, perhaps. We could really use the term amalgamation though.
Mixture, merge, blend-in. Or synchronous rhythms. Yes, this last one does
really nail it, doesn’t it? Especially in such a city as the one this September
morning is going to behold this grand unrighteous tragedy we got aware of
previously.
Even if she was born here and here are her roots, her friends, her
everyhting, the Daughter of Gaia frequently thinks about traveling to her
family’s island. The vast, wild island off the South-East African shore.
We’d better mention today she’s thinking of it pretty hard indeed.
Because this morning there was something particulary wrong, a quite off-
key omen you could say, in the look she exchanged with her old grandma –
who seemed to be much older and surely more tired than usual when they met
in the hallway.
Either knew that either has dreamed last night, of course. But for the first
time they had this yearn for talking. The strong and itchy need to put it in the
right words and say it out loud. Something very uncommon, as we’ve already
got. But both their dreams were way too different from usual last night. And
both these women are perfectly aware that worse of the known death is only
the unpredictable one.
It turned out what her grandma saw in her last night dream was a puppy
dog with a normal pair of eyes. As for the Daughter of Gaia, what she saw was
a puppy dog whose eyes were panic-whirling in opposite directions, one
clockwise and the other counter clockwise.
All seeming to yell: ominous.
All seeming to refer to: pair, couple, double.
In one word: twin-death.
Well in that case the only way the Daughter of Gaia knows to face such a
deadly presage is anyone’s same-old: keep living. Life set against death. Wich
to her means: play.
This is why all she does is seat back behind the drums and start over like a
banshee.
Then the explosion.
The first one. The first of the towers getting hit.
But the Daughter of Gaia keeps on playing. Can’t stop. She’s never been
able to.
So she plays. All naked and pour-sweating and temporarily blind. Playing
drums never got this satisfying, nor this painful. Being bathed in sweat’s never
been that liberating, as nudity and blindness never got her feeling so
uncomfortable and vulnerable.
It’s like some sort of giving birth, yes. Joy in return for pain, the life’s light
in exchange for the loss sorrow.
The only thing she knows is she can’t stop, this morning less than ever.
Neither when the first plane stabs the first tower and the thunder goes in
unison with that powerful bass-drum beat under her naked black feet, nor as
the second plane slices the second tower up and the burst out shakes the whole
condo down to its foundation in unison with the art attack which puts the
Daughter of Gaia’s grandma to sleep forever.
Because still the only thing she knows is she can’t stop. Ever.
It’s a disgusting feeling now, raising up from her coiling bowels.
In the deepest deep of herself the Daughter of Gaia is so dirt and yet so
fulfilled now. It’s like feeling ashamed of herself while at peace with the
whole universe. Pretty similar to a part of yourself getting shreds of delight out
of being raped.
Because any sound, any noise, any clank and ping and clatter and cry is to
her nothing but music. Simple, pure nature’s voice in some sort of disguise.
Mother Earth as dreadful and ruthless as she can be yet spruced in one of her
countless beautiful outfits.
Are we really going to blame the Daughter of Gaia for what she is and
always has been? Not really.
All we’re going to do is watch her.
Watch her as the first tower’s fall makes fat blood-drops flood out of her
nose. Watch her as the second tower’s collapse causes to her the most violent
and untamed orgasm in her life. Thunder of death in sync with her violent
drumming: here’s the uncontrollable result.
That aggressive pleasure, stirred in with overwhelming guilt-feelings, hurls
her body backwards and digs her off of her drums stool.
So the last picture from the Daughter of Gaia’s life we’re bringing away
with us is this one: her body slouched down to the floor, the parquet wooden-
tiles still slushy with her sweat, her womb recovering from a devastating thrill,
her soul spiked with purple grim stains, her grandma lifelessly resting in the
other room.
What the old lady – which out of deduction we could name the Mother of
Gaia – will never get to tell her granddaughter is the rest of her last night’s
dream. The other part. The one in which a young girl, young and manifestly
afflicted with Down Syndrome yet totally interactive and somewhat self-
sufficient, was smiling to a tree about twenty feet far from her. One of those
child mock smiles you give out while playing hide-and-seek. The you’re-not-
even-remotely-close-to-get-me kind.
Then, still in the dream, the grinning face of the girl quickly shifting to
some kind of strained dreary grimace. Not any cunning requested to detect the
new depicted feeling: grief. Not for the tree, that’s quite clear. More likely for
someone’s beyond the tree, maybe behind it. And who’s that clown who
rushes over to her dropping at once both his red round nose and his role and
starts helplessly trying to console her?
Well, here’s to us one of the greatest flaws of being spectators: if it’s true
we can know everything and pick everything out any moment, it’s true we’re
able to do so as long as that everything’s encompassed in the story as well.
Otherwise, case in point the Daughter of Gaia’s grandma’s dream meaning,
best we can do is a great whole nothing.
At least for now.
 This is why we stay put and only stand for what we get to know – sound
and rhythm, drums and dreams, sweat and regret.
At least we’ve come lo learn about the dual nature of the Daughter of
Gaia’s intercourse with music, and of the curse that’s always been dwelling in
her ears and she’s never going to get rid of.
Next thing we know is we’re out of here.


05 of 11: The Glass Woman

We find ourselves caught by the sharp sensation of having been shot out,
really far indeed, and really out of the picture at first glance.
We get pretty soon that this is the kind of distance only time can generate.
A lot of time, plenty of water under the bridge.
This is the future, that’s the first odd thought which crosses our mind. But
that is out of habits, just because of the way we got used to think about
ourselves.
We are the story now, can’t never get to overstress that. We are the
everything. There’s no more future nor past now. Only a boundless unrolled
present we can draw on as much as we like. Even if all we’ve got is what’s
inside the circle, what’s inside the circle is endless like the circle didn’t exist at
all.
So here we are, magic and marvel, watching the Glass Woman and asking
ourselves how come she got that old that quick.
Something in the air of her room leads us to think she perceives time the
same way as we do, a wherever and wherever time, open and accessible. She
feels like that too, no doubt, even though she’s in the story and not the story.
Perhaps that’s because of that past time’s handy gimmick. Past time: the
only time you’ve lost and yet you still possess.
All we need to know about the Glass Woman is that she’s hugely fond of
that releasing puff vacuum-packages exhale the moment you let the air in – if
you asked her she’d tell you it’s nothing to do with the puff, that’s all about
relief.
She’s obsessed with the thought of chewing things and throwing them out
the window, not necessarily in that order.
And lately this dream of her’s been going over and over again for lot of
nights.
 There’s a tall concrete building in front of her. It casts a threatening shadow
over anything in sight, including her, and there’s no sun beam getting through.
It’s probably a condominium. And a bunch of young girls, as beautiful as
lonely, appear each on her own window, lean out, take a stealthy look at the
underworld, then finally toss one clean white fresh-washed-up bed sheet out.
For the record, like all of this wasn’t disturbing enough, they always do that
strictly in turn. It never happens in the Glass Woman’s dream that two of those
young women let fall down their sheet at the same time. Actually no one of
them ever happen to appear at the window before the previous totally holed up
back inside. As if they know they’re sharing the same building and yet don’t
want to take the chance of run across each other’s peek. Or worse, maybe none
of them really know there’s someone else in their same condo.
Fact is they never miss to use the occasion for lingering on, dull and mute
and unblinking staring at the Glass Woman. As a matter of fact it must be
because of those bleak glances she got that old that quick.
Now the Glass Woman is in her nineties, and spends the better part of her
daytime looking out the window from behind the glass. No matter how hard
she tries to focus on the streets down there, the pedestrians, the cars and the
lights and the autumn leaves crumbed up by their fall and puzzled by the
wind… her mind-eye’s tail is still all onto her reflection.
She’s been posing like that for so long you can’t separate anymore the pane
pockmarks from the wrinkles on her cheeks. Needless to say that reflection of
her slowly took on a life of its own in the Glass Woman aged and tired mind,
so that it got a name of its own too: the Glass Woman, that’s it. They’re both
called like that, now. Either is the Glass Woman. You could say they’re twins,
why not. So hard is to tell them apart. And if it’s true her reflection can be no
more without her, well in the course of time inverse became true as well.
That reflection came alive. And grew stronger, and younger. A younger
version of herself. Let’s call it a second chance. A parallel world where this
twin, the stronger one, the one still far from turning into glass, insists a little
bit more. A twin universe where she has him convinced to stay home, with her,
and not to go outside and back up his brother and get accidentally killed in the
first tower’s collapse.
There must be such a place, this is what her glass twin keeps telling her. A
place – a time, whatever – where her husband decides to stay home and some
tasty everafter takes place for once.
There’s no day God gave her the Glass Woman hasn’t spent in regret.
There’s no day she can help recalling that September, that sunny day, that
early morning phone-call that thrust both her and him out of their dreamful
black-blind R.E.M. sleep. Both naked and sweat-drizzled – not for playing
drums, just out of not long past love making – and sound asleep close to each
other because neither was supposed to be working that day.
Then the phone-call, yes. The fate itself disguised as her husband’s brother
calling out for help. And he getting up in a rush, taking a quick shower and
dashing off home after not a single kiss, but only a smile that furrowed the
pink birthmark on his chin lower-side. The pink birthmark – maybe
strawberry, he’d told her during their first date – which had always been her
favourite part of his face.
There’s no day God gave her the Glass Woman hasn’t spent regretting and
recalling that September morning. Even if now she’s old and hunched and lost
and skinny.
What else more?
Perhaps we’ll like to know she never got married again – she’s never been
the replacement type – and now she leaves in this endless austral island where
language is much the same but vehicles steering-wheels are placed on the
wrong side.
The Glass Woman’s mind is not that merciless though, its torture not really
unceasing. There are clean spots every now and then. Moments when she
gratefully doesn’t seem to recollect that last image: his smile, his pink
birthmark crinkling on his chin, then his back, and finally nothing. Her
husband easily pushing his way through the upcoming day and off his earth
life.
Moments, that sometimes drift down into hours, when she actually forgets
about the last time she saw her husband. And of course about that crazy,
illogical letter she got from him that night – the only thing that kept her alive
until this remote future, on closer inspection.
What helps her make it through her long elderly days? Her puppy dog, of
course. A sweet labrador lady she named Gaia out of some murky tantrum. A
sweet labrador with both her eyes of an intense, glowing pearl-grey.
The color of grief, the Glass Woman thinks.
The tone of repentance.
The shade of remembrance.
But now off we go. We got enough of it.


06 of 11: The Empty Maker

Any man’s story is a story about love, whether we like it or not.
But the love of this guy, of this few-words slender man we’re about to
meet, is some love of all-of-its-own kind.
It’s still love, of course. But there’s more to it. We’re talking about art, too.
And obsession, worship, dedication.
Devotion, fancy that, to empties.
Not containers, just Void.
Yet-to-be-filled reality pockets.
We’re back into the city. It’s again here and now, which means neither
tower has been torn apart yet.
We’re back into the city, that still doesn’t know it’s very soon going to be
gashed with two twin wounds, when a man all dressed up in brown – he seems
some kind of average workman, and maybe he really is – kneels down to the
sidewalk and starts fumbling about with his tools.
We’re pretty close to one of the park gates. That’s where you’ll find him
most of the days, drawing down on the pavement his needy as much as
suggestive artworks.
He’s one thing with this city as much as the Daughter of Gaia is one thing
with music, and just like her he spends most of his time up to the only thing he
feels he was born to: street-painting. And empty-making, of course. Creation
of absence, if that makes any sense to us.
We can’t know whether the Empty Maker deliberately chose to work in the
street or not. Maybe he was forced to. Or maybe he couldn’t find the way to
carry out his art well enough to make a living. But we don’t really care.
The only thing we like is watch him doing what he does and how he does
it. Just like the only thing he sketches is the city itself. The city the Empty
Maker feels to be part of right as the Flying Man does.
Well, he’s got something more than the Flying Man on his side indeed. His
complete name initials happen to be N.Y.C., and being that given we don’t
really feel like spoiling such a delightful fate-pun asking what names those
three letters stand for.
The big city is his only subject, his only model, his only muse.
And that’s it. Because the city has always been his home, and always will
be. So the least he can do is reward her by making her the only theme going
along with his whole life. And the only way he knows to do that is the same all
street artists early get to learn: silent, concentrated, theatrical, with a smidgen
of mistery and an everlasting grin pictured onto their mouth. The smile of
someone glad of not having any daedline nor schedule and yet concerned
about what and if they’re going to have for dinner.
All we need to know about the Empty Maker is he loves to work every day
in that same spot, right in front of the park’s gate from where he can glimpse
at the bridge entrance. The same famous bridge that dozens of turists and
locals walk through any day.
As for him, the Empty Maker stepped on it only once, one day not so long
ago. He halfway strolled up, stopped right at the bridge’s precise center, and
there dropped down into the rolling water a glass bottle. An empty, you must
be thinking. Well not exactly.
That bottle did contain something: a small piece of paper. Where the Empty
Maker had previously jotted one only sentence down. I’m going to marry the
woman who finds this bottle.
Then he came back to his part of the city, to his familiar place on that same
sidewalk spot as ever. That’s because he’s one of those guys to whom bridges
are more than enough just the way they are: steady. And ready and walkable
and chanceful.
The thought of being allowed to walk that bridge through and leave
whenever he wants means to him more than anything. Don’t ever wish for
anything nice to be granted to you, because when it happens that’s the very
day you can bet you’ll never get to it.
The Empty Maker’s craft is ultimately much simple. But if we like to
scratch a little bit beneath the surface and read the hidden cipher we’ll get to
learn more than expected about this world and human nature.
All his necessary is quite plain, and nothing like wondrous. A bricklayer
putty-knife, a white paper reel, a rusty and grubby tool-case full of any-color
spray-paint cans, and some sort of surgical mask, just to make sure the
repeated inhaling of varnish fumes won’t cut such a no-right no-duty life
pleasure off too early.
Different shades of paint, together with the different angles and
perspectives, are the only source of contrast among all the Empty Maker’s
drawings. As we’ve come to know, he only depicts the city as it is, each day
identical to itself. So the only hope he has for someone to buy his works relies
on some viewpoint switch.
When all has gotten set up right before his eyes, that’s when the Empty
Maker is ready to start.
First he solemnly puts his mask on. He rips some white paper off the dusty
roll and unfolds it down to the pavement. Then he stolidly, dramatically takes
all his time for picking up the right spray can, the only color that’ll match his
mood and fit in. No choice is ever really random in life.
That’s the very moment people – children for most – start gathering around.
After that first part of the ritual, the Empty Maker starts spilling color down
to the paper frame under the attentive looks coming from the snoopy audience.
He sprays paint all over the paper, filling in and up any dot in it, over and over
again, back and forth, until it all looks to be a monochrome uniform
background.
That’s what he’s doing right now too, in front of our bewitched eyes. He
literally overfills the entire piece of paper with the same color, which this
morning happens to be blue-black. He soaks the paper in varnish as he wanted
to choke and unmake all the white in the world.
Few quick sprays in fact, and the paper already looks like it had come out
of the paper-mill that blue.
Eventually he can get to the grand finale, the part he loves much more than
all the others.
He gets rid of the surgical mask and reaches and grabs the putty-knife and
hefts it and holds it in his left hand. Then he finally starts making empties,
creating void, this strange kind of southpaw art of his own.
He rubs paint out off the right spots. Fast, nimble, lethal. Lines, squares,
circles. Suddenly the white’s sprouting up again.
It’s not the same white as before, though. But after all so it goes for
anything in life.
We’ve got no time at all for wondering about what’s going on, because it’s
all done long before we get to understand there’s no trick, only the city’s
outline.
The optical illusion sudden turns into finished portait. Each removed paint
line becomes a skyscraper, each diagonal becomes a slant bridge’s tie-rod,
each little square returns to white and takes the form of a bus, a cab, a lit-up
window.
The Empty Maker enjoys his moment, gloating without bragging.
Some among the onlookers chat with each other, some others compliment
or clap. Anyway the Empty Maker doesn’t let anyone but buyers and children
come closer. If you asked him why he’d answer it’s just because first ones
bring money and second ones carry the right questions.
This is his time to be curious. Who’s going to leave, who’s going to ask for
the price and buy one drawing or two, who’s going to pretend they’ve got not
cash with them?
However, there’s always someone who gently tosses some money and then
leaves without asking anything in return. World can’t actually be called a bad
place until there’s anybody who likes to gaze at street art and children smiles
coming alive.
That is just how the Empty Maker made it through until now and how he
intends to proceed.
He can’t even imagine that a woman really got to get his bottle. A young,
beautiful and cocoa-smelling woman who lives in a island very far from here.
Fact is she’s got not that much money and he didn’t really write an address
down in his message – which is no big deal anyway, because he put his initials
in the footnote, just as a sign, and they can perfectly tell her where to head to.
But he doesn’t really think she’s ever coming over.
The Empty Maker’s deal with life is not much different from the Seeker’s
one after all. Don’t ask, take what comes over and smile on.
That’s why his heart doesn’t miss nor hasten any beat when the first
explosion shakes and tousles and scars and mars this September morning city
face. Neither does it happen after the second plane’s crash.
In fact the first moment he really feels upset is the instant the South Tower
collapses.
What now?, he thinks. And keeps on thinking, and standing, and waiting.
Paralized. Well-aware that after two smash-ups and only one fall it’s not that
hard to guess what’s still missing.
Then the North Tower collapses too.
 Isn’t that strange?, he asks to himself. The first beaten is the second going
down. It sounds pretty and creepy resembling that twin-birth issue, doesn’t it?
Don’t they say the first twin formed in the uterus is the second being
delivered?
Well, the only question we’re able to answer is his first one. What now?
Well now the Empty Maker has to do the only thing he’s left: to go against
his personal tide.
He thinks he can do that, just for once. He thinks he can bear it. Today he’s
going to grieve along. Today his city deserves it.
So here’s ‘what now’: for the first time in his life the Empty Maker will
turn into the Full Maker.
He picks back up the blue-black spray can and fills back in the two straight
oblong blanks in his last drawing which stand for the twin towers.
He never did such a thing. It makes him feel terribly sad, and gloomy, and
somewhat guilty.
His beautiful city’s never going to look the same, to be the same. Neither
will his works.
And his foreign bride, supposing that anyone has recovered his bottle
message, sure she’ll never show up. Even if she’s real, she’s certainly going to
get hell scared of coming over. She’ll watch the news on TV, as everyone else
in the world, and soon will get dead frightened.
Well he couldn’t know but she’s real, as we have come to discover. And
she’s relly got dead frightened. So it seems they’re both going to be wistfully
staring at countless moonlit nights with no believing in each other arrival and
yet missing each other’s embrace.
Could he maybe blame her for that?
Everyone’s going to fear that other planes will strike, that other skyscrapers
will vanish, erased by the huge and pitiless never-resting God’s spatula.


07 of 11: The Misunderstood Hero

There’s a reason why we’re calling him Hero, and there is another one why
we’re calling him Misunderstood.
Of course about fifteen hundred lives would still be walking this Earth if he
hadn’t existed. But if he wasn’t born at all, would this story be any way
possible? Would we be here, made of sight and spirit and will and curiosity?
Probably not.
Definitely not.
That sucks, it’s something we all agree about. But it’s true too.
This is why Hero. Because he’s everything, even more than us.
He’s the story itself and together its writer. He’s our Lord here in this
situation. He’s the offender, the terrorist, the pure evil, but he’s the only thing
that caused all of this. That caused us.
He’s both director and actor, puppet and string-puller. He disposed
everything like on his own private chessboard, but isn’t it true he’s a pawn as
anyone else? Isn’t it possible he’s been fooled, even that he’s repenting?
Perhaps some part in him is even wishing all could be undone.
This is why Misunderstood.
Why in the world do men always need sorrow and pain and death and
insanity for feeling like telling a story anyway?
He slowly raises up from his seat, with no delay nor hesitation. Then
swiftly everything falls into his complete control.
We don’t feel that much like staying with him. Yet there are some short
points that maybe we should know about him.
He’s thoroughly convinced that the world is placed descent-wise. All is
slope slant and downhill, to his eyes.
He’s also persuaded that human age should be counted up by death’s date
and not by birth’s – if you asked him he’d answer life’s all about potential and
prospective, not about past and waste.
And last, after having heard that some African tribe men copulate with
earth out of some sort of fertility favour gaining, hard to believe but he tried
that too. Many times he did. But no bloom and no life came out of it. Maybe
it’s humanity itself that’s got totally sterile, thought the Misunderstood Hero.
However, despite what he’s been hoping until last night, this thought doesn’t
seem to be helping him to throw himself into death’s lap.
He’s master and ruler here. Both victim and slayer, lamb and death angel,
bleeding and tourniquet. Martyr and Sorcerer, Prophet and Messiah. What a
thankless role to act: to be the only one giving life to this tale and yet being
forced to reap all those innocent crops in order to do that.
Everybody’s got a mother. Everybody results from labour, blood and
distress.
Everyone in the world will think of the Misunderstood Hero as a dog, and
we get it. And the same goes for his fellow, the one who’s right now hijacking
the other plane towards the South Tower.
But like it or not he’s the only reason why we’re here today.
That’s why we leave him like that: drooling, pitiful, but kind of dreamy, as
he wonder about this amazing heavenly island where lots of made-for-him
women are supposed to be waiting and yet where more likely he’s going to
find himself totally and terribly alone.
One last thing though: how weird happens to be his last thought in life…
 The big city. Dazzling and outstanding as it appears seen from the plane’s
cockpit, framed by the pensive shroud of an expired-summer day, she looks
like a splendid picture. The motionless sill-life sketched out by the skilled
wand of some stray street-painter. Too bad two vast empties are soon to
replace those twin buildings.
This is the Misunderstood Hero’s first – and last, of course – trip in a
cockpit anyway. But wherever he went to fish this last thought of his, be sure
it’s scaring the creeping hell out of us. Goosebumps doesn’t even begin to
cover it.
Let’s hope he won’t mind if we skedaddle.


08 of 11: The Watcher

We haven’t moved that far this time. Neither in time nor in space. And
that’s again because we can.
We know everything about this story world. Every now and then of it,
every after and before, every meanwhile. Maybe it’s beacuse of that that our
smiles and our tears are being unceasingly stirred together.
From where we are, three or for seat-rows far from the unsettled man the
world’s is going to misunderstand very soon, we can easily sneak a peak from
behind the Watcher’s shoulder. Just as we already did with the Flying Man in a
time that’s yet to come, if anyone’s following us.
The Watcher’s reading one of the last chapters of a paperback novel. As
bookmark she’s always been using a photograph of her daughter. If her
husband was on this plane with her he would be certainly sound asleep right
now. The moment the plane takes off he dramatically falls asleep, ever – if you
asked him he’d answer he’s about surrender and acceptance, nothing to do
with jet-lag.
But today he decided not to follow his wife’s throughout her mission. He’s
retired, he’s got plenty of time, but he was simply too drowsy to make it to the
airport this morning. So he just said his wife Go without me, do you mind?
Words not so different from the ones the Glass Woman’s husband’s brother
pronounced few minutes ago on the phone, in a part of this story that we’ve
already come to know grabbing it from a long-distance future. Words meant to
save several lives, if uttered today.
Luckily for us it’s the Watcher we’re interested in. Her and her paperback
thriller novel and her ill daughter, who’s afflicted with Down Syndrome and is
now hitting the road some pretty much miles below together with her busking
mates.
Do we really want to know more about the Watcher? Of course we do.
Even if we got already warned that this could be someway the worst chapter
ever.
The Watcher is fifty-five. She’s still a very good-looking lady in spite of her
peeking out menopause and the constellation of trouble she can never really
get to leave behind. And she adores those asian-tasted and astronomic-bound
words like parsec, azimuth, zenith, nadir, and so on, because for some queer
reason they’ve always been capable of making her feel like inside a Bible tale
taking place in a distant island, or maybe up above in some moonscape land.
Although handicapped, her daughter’s always been smart, sensitive and
independent. And her greatest desire’s always been to be free to go alone with
her busking friends. Clowns, musicians, acrobats, jugglers, any kind of street
artist you could point out. Those people always managed to make her so
happy, and make her look so normal.
So what else could the Watcher answer but yes, in the end?
And so she did, along with her husband blessings. At one condition though.
Let their little girl live her own life? Totally positive. Let her go alone? No
way.
That’s what the Watcher’s life has become since her daughter turned
eighteen and flew off: stakeout, surveillance, tailing. Far in the distance,
hiding behind any tree and any corner, spending unseen the most tender
ambush-time the world will ever come to know about.
Nevermind anyway. It’s always in outskirts and sotto-voce that miracles
like the most to occur.
Nothing could have ever been possible if her husband – read also her
accomplice and ally – didn’t let her quit her job to pursue this watching thing
full-time. Now that he’s retired he likes to join her most of the time, even if his
sleepines led him to stay home this morning, and this way saved his life.
As for his wife, she normally gets her work done sitting in her station-
wagon. But this huge busking festival her daughter’s going to attend the day
after tomorrow led the Watcher to catch a flight this time, and this way cut
both her life and her mission off.
All the Watcher was up to do was to get to that busking festival venue a
couple of days before her daughter did, maybe have some rest in a quiet motel
room and do some checking up on the place. Well, it seems her meticulous
method is going to cost to her a little bit more than quitting her shadow-
guardian job.
When the man gets up and everyone on the plane starts guessing that this
flight will never land, there’s only one thought running through the Watcher’s
head. A memory, indeed. Not her whole life, as they like to say, just the
memory of a hot summer afternoon.
She’s sitting in her car, eating some fast-food take-away lunch and sipping
up her soda, so similar to a stakeout cop, when it happens again. She loses her.
From the spot she parked in she can’t get to catch sight of her daughter. This is
not the first time that happens, but every time the maternal instinct brings the
fear on and covers her with dread.
She’s about to overreact, incapable of thinking that maybe her daughter just
went to the bathroom or she’s off for buying some stuff for her and her travel-
buddies, when a hand grabs her forearm and a blond head slips into the car
through the open window.
The Watcher gets no time to scream, her throat’s gone dry.
Not that she really feels like screaming indeed, because the blond hair
belongs to a smiling girl. A smiling girl who’s drool-kissing the Watcher
cheek.
The Watcher looks at that smiling face, those bulky eyes, that daughter over
whose head weighs the most gruesome dilemma a mother could ever find
herself mixed up in: would it be better if I passed away before her, as nature
claims, or if she died before me, so that I will have never really left her?
Needless to say we can see very well how wrong either option would feel.
The Watcher forgot everything about her soda and her sub now, because
she’s too busy in giving ear to the longest and clearest speech her daughter
ever got put together.
“Thank you mommy for what you do. I always known you do it. One
different mommy would let me not go, but you let me. I like it. It is like a
warm blanket you know. You can keep do it if it make you well. My friends
don’t see. But I see. Thank you mommy. You can keep do it if it make you
well. Or you take some rest if need. I take well care to me.”
That’s why silent shy tears are pouring down her cheeks in this now and
then, on the plane the skyjacker’s just redirected towards the South Tower.
Thank you mommy for what you do.
You can keep do it if it make you well.
I take well care to me.
The Watcher’s third to last thought: I’m never going to find out how this
thriller novel ends.
Her second to last one: I’m never going to see my husband again but he’s
going to live at least.
Her last thought: of course you can take well care to you, sweetie.
Her last thought is directed to her daughter. Of course it is.
So for the nth time life has answered on our behalf: it’s her daughter the
one who’ll survive longer. And the Watcher is much more than ok with that.
As her mind gets totally blank and fades into black and her draining
watching task finally comes to an end, we happen to sour-and-sweet say to
ourself two last things.
First, it seems the Seeker’s father won’t be the only beloved parent not
getting to land today.
And second, what a whimsy! A mother like her, so strong and so sweet,
compelled to abandon her little girl with nothing more in her mind than an
ungrammatical goodbye quote.
You’re right, it’s quite more sour than sweet.
We could really use some time off now.


09 of 11: The Concentric Dreamer

This is the only one among our heroes who goes the whole hog without
noticing at all. Not a hint, not a clue, not a single step down the path leading to
the truth.
Pure nonsense, yep. But that’s just how it is. And God bless this guy, even
if he doesn’t seem to give a damn about what’s happening to his city: because
he’s the only one who’ll maybe thin our burden down and please us with some
delight.
All we need to know about the Concentric Dreamer is he sleeps for the
better part of his daytime because he’s got a night job, he’s older than how he
feels inside, and he loves the moment he fades into unconsciousness, the
moment all the city’s waking up.
We could say he’s pretty much the wrong-direction type and he enjoys
being like that.
How long has been his strange way of dreaming going on? Maybe not even
he himself could answer that – supposing we got to wake him up, which is
something quite hard to accomplish.
All he remembers is it started when he was a little boy, and it’s always been
the same way ever since. Never got better, never got worse. And never healed,
if we feel like speaking of it as a disease. It never really led him to any big risk
indeed, but it surely makes him feel uncomfortable, awkward and kind of
hovering in a state of constant confusion.
Bottom line is his dreams are no more and no less than a never-ending
chain of Russian Dolls. Each one has got another one nesting inside.
No big deal, we could say. But some nights can become really damn long.
In the morning, a few minutes after he comes back home from work and
gets undressed, he falls asleep. That usually takes no more than half a minute.
Then when he wakes up he feels like his sleep lasted no more then a bunch of
minutes. Well same is for many of us, isn’t it?
But let’s take a closer look now. At what’s happening today by way of
example.
 He wakes up, rubs his eyes, swings his naked feet out of his bed and stands
with some effort. As he tries to pull his slippers on, the cold tip of his right
foot toe lands on an even colder surface.
The Concentric Dreamer looks down at what his toe’s just nudged: one
dead woman. Little further, another one.
That’s it. Two women corpses. Their eyes shut, their dresses on, they seem
to be sleeping. Of course that doesn’t make them less disturbing.
No fear nor awe fly at him though. Only gentle, light amusement.
He can’t really tell he’s dreaming while he is, but there must be some inner
part of him who stays aware and prevents him from blunder.
He’s not a murderer, nor any kind of criminal. So how the hell two women
corpses wound up in his bed-room, he wonders.
And that’s the trick. Phrasing the question is enough to unveil the mirage.
He gets he’s in a dream, so the only thing he does is smile and go back to
sleep.
More time goes by. He awakes again. Rubs his eyes, swings his feet, stands
back up. Looks down, already prepared, already content. No corpses anymore.
Nothing on his bed-room floor but the floor.
He pulls his slippers on. He hobbles yawning out the room and towards the
bathroom.
When he opens the bathroom door he gives a start and flinches back.
There’s not his bathroom there, nor anyone else’s.
It’s raining, in fact. It looks like some tropical forest. Colorful parrots,
liana, wild animal calls. What is that? And where? Must be some remote
southern island. And what’s there yonder? Plantations of cocoa? An Aztec
pyramid?
Oh, give me a break, I’ve never traveled to such a place!, thinks the
Concentric Dreamer.
And here goes the trick again. You formulate just one skeptical thought and
it’ll all be gone.
Does it work like that only about his nesting dolls dreams? Captivating pop
quiz.
He smiles and dozy limps back into his bedroom. He falls asleep again in
less then ten seconds.
Third one. No corpses, no forests. But what about that drawing hanging on
the kitchen wall? It’s delightful, seems to be some kind of street-painting
artwork, and it definitely depicts his city. White buildings sketched up on a
blue-back background.
But the Concentric Dreamer doesn’t recall of having bought anything like
that, not really.
Smiles, back to his bed, snoring again.
Fourth one. No corpses, no forests, no paintings. Then here she comes: her
wife kissing his still-sleeping lips. Cute, honey. Except for the fact I never got
married. Not even engaged, for that matters.
 Smiles, back to his bed, snoring again.
And eccetera and whatnot and all that jazz, what have you?
Same old every day, same delusional awakening. No big deal, you’re right.
But it can get very exhausting. Sometimes to wake up is bliss, some other
bummer. Generally relieving.
At least they’re never scary nightmares.
Eventually it always comes to an end. A moment arrives when he’s finally
sure he’s awake and his dreaming chain is all over. How can he know that?
Because that moment he can track the whole dream-chain back, which
happens to be impossible as he’s still inside any of the dreams instead.
Anyway, didn’t we already figure where all of this is going?
Yeah, that’s right: fifth one.
No corpses, no forests, no paintings, no wives.
But, wait a moment, look at that. There, far out the window. Alright, pal,
there you are. Unbelievable, huh? What a strange one this time. Both the twin
towers gone, vanished, out of the picture as they never were there. You know,
you’re a piece of work dude. You really rock. Now please go back to sleep,
and when you’ll be awake – I mean, truly awake – go see your doctor. This
stupid story’s been going on for too long now. It’s time for you to face reality
for once.
Yep.
This is what’s just happened inside his mind.
He’ll have to get to his work place to really understand his last dream was
in fact his awakening.
But we’re not allowed to put him up to more than we’re allowed to
interfere with the story, no matter how strange it can get.
The Concentric Dreamer’s still asleep when we move out. And it’s a really
good chance for us to say goodbye.
Goodbye forever, indeed. Our presence is not further requested here
around.
That’s because next two, the last ones, are just letters. Either written by a
man about to let himself go. And you don’t want to intrude into dying twins
issues.
Plus, what a romantic and kind custom used to be this writing letters
thing…
Ok, ok, we’re really going too far now. Both in space and time.
So let’s stick to what we’re given, fix what can be fixed and read about
what can’t.


10 of 11: The First Letter

Hey there lovely brother,
I wonder where you are now.
It’s almost funny. Now that I’m finally ready to write to you, I can’t seem
to find any word. It’s the first time I gather enough courage and look, I’m
running out of ink.
I know you know how I’ve spent my whole life. When I wasn’t regretting I
was busy in recalling you. Not so hard, after all, huh? Every time I look into a
mirror I see your face. Or what your face would look like now anyway.
I suppose that’s quite common issue among two twins. What’s not so
common is one brother dying in the other’s place, I guess. I really chose the
worst day ever to get flu, right? I’ve always been a bad timing guy, sure you
remember that.
You remember that wherever you are now.
Look, I really don’t know what to say.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I know that’s not original, not really, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to stand
out to you if you figure how hard and long it’s been for me to get here.
You can’t imagine how many times I woke up in the dead of night damn
sure I had already written to you this letter. But then I would grope around
fumbling for my bureau top and find nothing. And that was the moment I used
to return to my bed, go back to sleep and dream again.
About you.
You, lonely and lost, but smiling, sort of serene I daresay, and wondering in
this beautiful virgin island.
Those dreams used to be so vivid I wake up soaked in sweat and convinced
you were still alive. Of course you were not.
It’s been going on like that for years. Sometimes they nested one into each
other, I mean like one dream into another. I kept waking up feeling like I’d
really written this letter and/or you were still alive.
But neither matched the truth, not at all.
What can I say? I’m so sorry, brother. For you and for her. I know she’s
leaving far away from here now. Hope she copes.
At our age we get so fragile, so thin. Like glass. But it’s still a shame you
couldn’t make it through. I keep wondering if we’d still look so the same. I
think we would, don’t you?
If only we weren’t so identical! In that case I wouldn’t and couldn’t ever
ask you to attend that meeting in my place.
We’re not that different from those towers, are we? Two twins, one a little
bit different from another because of that birthmark – as for the North Tower
it’s the antenna spire of course – struck at almost the same time and yet gone
down with so big delay.
I guess it goes the same way for everything in life. Friends, lovers,
soulmates, even for the life itself. It’s not the fall down part that scares the hell
out of us. Separation is the real beast.
Remember what we used to singsong about your chin birthmark when we
were kids?
Low your chin
and no one will have seen
you were the different twin.
Still sounds quite fun, doesn’t it?
Well, what is less fun is sometimes I catch myself fantasizing that your pink
birthmark has always been nothing but what it was: a mark, right. Sort of a
stain, a brand to remind fate you were the doomed one.
Maybe I like to think so out of my need for absolution.
Am I silly and mean, aren’t I?
My hands are so shaking, brother, so weak. I’m very old now. And even if
I’m not that’s how I feel anyway.
You know, an old man’s like an old cat: he knows when his time has come.
He can sense it, almost smell it. It’s in the air. But I couldn’t leave without
getting to write to you.
This letter.
My first letter, my one and only.
To you.
My beloved kin, my faithful reflection, my unfair victim.
I know.
I know it wasn’t my fault.
But if you ever come to read this, please make sure to send me in answer
your forgiveness, would you?


11 of 11: The Last Letter

Hey you,
 I… I know this is weird but… I’m right here.
I’m still around. Somehow.
All is wait here in the island, darling. All is stillness, all is numbness. And
mist, and fog, and soot, and rain. Hazy faces meandering around. Weak
fingers, minute eyes, frail bones. We’re getting feeble, growing thinner.
People don’t talk much, and nearly no one is hoary. Yet still I want you to
know I’m going to be with you. I will be the pencil’s line you scribble down
on your diary pages every night before your sleep. I’ll be the pencil too, its
grey soul of lead, and your very words.
People here don’t feel like talking beacuse there’s nothing much to talk
about. All is blurry in the island, and opaque. They say this is the land of
confusion, of vagueness, of undefined. But you’ll figure it out yourself by the
disconnection of my words, so hard to put together.
I’ve been told you’re letting yourself fade away and get sad and old too
soon. Well maybe I can even accept that, but you stay aware it’s your-young-
self I’m talking to. It’s you, now, this September evening, I’m writing to. The
you who’s still crying, the you who’s still seeing my back rushing out the door
because I’m going to cover for my unwell brother in that meeting downtown.
I know you’re not ready to let me go yet. I know the only words your mind
seems to acknowledge right now are barely three.
North.
Tower.
Collapse.
But I need you to remember that I will be your pen’s ink, your sweet milk,
your fresh water, your warm blanket. Alright?
I’ve heard people saying this island is a walk-through place. Some kind of
sorting and clearing area. For people who weren’t suppose to be here. In fact
they’re mostly young men, young women and children.
So many children, honey. It’s devastating.
They seem at peace though. The look in their eyes is serene. Awe, I’d say.
As they were gathering around those captivating street artists that let only kids
get closer.
Souls who got here beforehand, ghosts who need time to get used to be
gone. These are going to be my travel companion. But all of this becomes
immaterial if you keep in mind that any of your rain will be nothing but my
tears, any of your night nothing but my sleep.
You know sweetie, I’ve got plenty of time here. So I’ve been doing some
thinking. You want to know what I’ve come up to?
I think that every human tragedy is like an island, don’t you agree? A
fenced, isolated place, only made of land and space and spirit and time, where
completely different people, I mean perfect strangers, find themselves trapped
together without having ever met before.
And there they go: they link. They sympathize, they support each other,
they start taking care. They share. Even if what they’re sharing is just the
tragedy itself.
So my point is: why do we – or should I say you by now – why do we
always wait for disasters and destruction to lend a hand to each other? Will
you help me get that, hon? Well maybe you can. I reckon I’ve never been that
good at things of this sort.
I keep thinking about my twin brother. He’ll get so convinced he’s got a
hundred percent share of guilt about what happened to me this morning. If
only you could tell him not to bother. I know him, he’s going to misspend his
whole life over remorse.
If only you could talk to him…
But you can’t. Did I make that clear enough?
You can’t talk to anyone about this letter, ok? I mean it. Ever.
This is the only one condition. The voice that told me I could write to you if
I felt like, well it’s been pretty clear. It told me if you break this only rule, if
you even slightly caress the idea of revealing to anyone about this in the
deepest corner of your heart, my letter will never be delivered.
I’m sure you understand.
I really don’t know where I’m finding my words, or my ink for that
matters. But I’m running out of time I suppose.
What else can I say?
I love you.
I really love you.
Always did and always will.
And I’m really going to miss you.
I know it’s tough.
I’ve been told one day far from today you’ll turn into glass. The Glass
Woman, this is how they’ll call you. But you have to listen to me: you will
pull through, ok?
I will be the water of every sea you swim in. And you will deep dive and
sink without ever getting drowned. And we’ll be together again, as one only
liquid sexless creature forever lost in the shapeless tide of time.
Colors don’t exist here in the island. The say that’s because of the urgency.
Colors need calm, you know. Just as love.
It’s much more crowded than I figured here. All those poor children. But
they keep on smiling. Did I already mention them? Maybe I did. All is
growing so fainter.
Very soon no one among us will care anymore, that’s what that voice told
me too. It sounded so soothing and reassuring I believed it.
The island is so stuffed in with children because it’s the place where people
like me get, they say. It’s sad, I know, but it’s still nice to be compared to
children. People who passed away earlier than scheduled, I’m sure you get it
darling. So who more than children?
People who weren’t supposed to be gone so soon. Fruits that got picked
during the wrong season, but still juicy. What a waste. Unjust issues, you can
think of us like that if you like it enough.
Us, doesn’t it sound fun? I mean: us. Who’s us? I’m already talking as if I’d
always been part of the island.
But I’m going to be fine. And so are you. Believe me. This is just a passing
place, a transit time, a transfer state of existence.
I’ve been told in the place we’re going to time won’t make any sense. Can
you believe that? A place with no time. Or a time with no place, who can truly
tell the difference?
Look, I can sense the more I write the more bewildered I get, so maybe I
should go now.
That has to be because of this constant drizzle. It comes down with no
pause and getting to taste it with the tip of your tongue makes you feel like
you’ve filched some particles off god’s flesh.
So there’s nothing to be worried about, ok?
Think of yourself as a very lucky woman, for someone – or something –
just gave me the chance to say goodbye. And stop thinking it could have been
different. It’s only been a phone-call, and off I went. You know how it works
with twins. They exchange favors and trade places because no one ever
notices. Sometimes we do it – we did it – only out of fun. You know how it
works, of course you know.
Smile, my love. Laugh. And live. Live on. Never surrender. Ever.
You’ve got lots of days to get through, but not a single one will pass
without me. And I’m confident this letter will be delivered. I’ll be in it. I’ll be
the letter itself. And the words too. And the envelope, and the paper, and the
time you’ll spend to read it and the terror you’ll feel and the tears you’ll pour
on it.
I will be the soap you’ll bath and wash yourself in.
I will be the sound of your phone ringing.
I will be the rhythm of the music you listen to.
I will be the glass of the windows you’ll watch the world through.
I will be the drawings you’ll love.
I will be your clown.
I will be your oddest dreams.
I will be your first and last letter.
I will be your twin, now and forever.
Your wait, your search, your hope.
Your promise, your memory, your love.
Me, as I am now, made of air and water and grass and soil, made of the
very island I’m going to wait for you in and where we’ll live together until the
end of all ends in a time which does not know time and a sun which does not
know hurt.


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