Please Stay "Tribute in Light". The World Needs You: Sept. 11, 2008

via Flickr’s lindsaypunkMessage from Anne:

Dear friends, this post was written last year on Sept. 11.

Anne of Carversville has evolved from a personal, self-indulgent but questioning journal last year, where I was only thinking about returning to my “sassy activist ways”, to a full-blown website, talking to investors about web TV with the biggest companies in the world.

We believe that the time is ‘ripe’ for thoughtful, global, curated, artistic, sensual activism with a focus on women and children. We care about men deeply but reject many common males values. Like Muhammad Yunus, who loans money to women, we believe our greatest hope for the future, lies in helping the world’s women.

Lubna Hussein was my Sept. 11 focus this year, but she’s out of jail — which doesn’t mean the problem is solved at all for Sudanese women living under Article 152.

I will be writing today about two severely burned women who survived — Stephanie Nielseon of NieNie Dialogues, who I first wrote about last year in The NieNie Dialogues: New Connections in a Digital World, 9-9-08 and Kim Phuc Phan Thai, who dramatized the agony of war and destruction in this famous 1972 photo.

The 1972 photo of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl, Kim Phuc Phan Thai, running through the street naked suffering from napalm burns became one of the most unforgettable images of the war.Not only did both women live against enormous odds, they are leading productive, loving lives.

Having committed myself to quite a lot of mischief in the last year, I will find a way to weave women’s rights into my journal essay, but essentially it will be a message of hope, and the need for caring, thinking people to focus on global community-building. Anne

These were my thoughts last year at about this time, today September 11, 2009.

“Please stay “Tribute in Light”. The World Needs You

Anne here, perched on the 19th floor at Ground Zero, drinking French Roast since 4am … thinking about the day we Yankees got our faces slapped, in that awesome, shockingly bold gesture called Sept. 11.

New Yorkers hate redundancy. We rarely look back … Blackberry-addicted, alpha spirits, rushing into the pleasant cacophony of our next big opportunity.  Perhaps the majority wants Tribute in Light to never visit us again.

I fit in perfectly here most days, running with the wind at my back, caressing bare legs, even in winter. I escape to the water, because it calms me. There is no midnight chill yet, leaving my September shoulders exposed at dinner last night.

October approaches, but I choose to ignore her stilettoes clicking on the pavement. Her profuse beauty does not trick me; Wagner follows.

A Fine Day In the Neighborhood

Tribute in Light 2006 rehearsal, Flickr’s seth_holladay

Helicopters drone above my window … hovering, breathing, watching, protecting me. The mayor will be here soon, and my hair’s a mess.

Ah, yes … one of my beloved yellow water taxis is crossing the Hudson, spewing white capuccino foam on mild waves.  I brought the espresso maker back from Carversville … to live here now, facing Portofino.

The dirty-grey sky evaporates into smidgeons of blueness, delivering the possibility of a glorious day for our tear-shedding. In truth, she hasn’t decided yet, being sort of a mixed stew up here.  To weep, to smile … she doesn’t know her own mind today.

Let’s ask Mr. Rogers:

It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?

It’s a neighborly day in this beautywood,
A neighborly day for a beauty,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?

I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you,
I’ve always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

The small Tiffany clock is meticulously focused, steady in my concentration. It is time now. Funny, I don’t believe I’ve ever listened to her tick before, not in 20 years. My senses are acutely aware this morning.

Times stops our grieving, unless you weep a bit every day, letting it out slowly. The vintage photos I inexplicably bought in London on Sept. 5, 2001 prompt these bedside reflections.

Surely, I’ve told you about my black and white time captures:  a tall, elegant, 70s woman facing the Twin Towers from Portofino; the raised arm and steady, steely grit of my Lady in the Harbor; that crazy Parisian bicycle with its heart-shaped tire.

Can a person ride anywhere in life on a heart-shaped bicycle tire? Perhaps only in Paris.

There are two flickering votives, anchoring my handsome, masculine memorial to Ground Zero, They are not as fancy as the Guards at Buckingham Palace.

Tonight, I will pray for the world that engineered our mess. We are not half as clever as we think.

In Tribute

I’ve taken way too long to arrive at the topic for today: “Tribute in Light”. Once I form the words in my mouth, writing them down on paper, then my adored changes his essence.

Sorry for being coy. I write about the Sept. 11 memorial “Tribute in Light”, my neighborhood’s piercingly glorious Icarus, drawing me tonight into the heavens with false hopes of redemption. He intends to leave at dawn, his visits shorter still with every year.

Yes, my friends, he has become a one-night stand Romeo. They are reading the names outside my window.

Tribute in Light will not catch me off guard this year … pretending not to feel the silky, apricot sheets sliding off his taut, toned body. I hate a man who doesn’t say goodbye, but I’m a woman who learns from her mistakes.

Her Majesty and I have set a trap. This year, my fabulous bolt of light will kiss quiet, sleeping eyes, unaware that his exit is doomed.

You see, I’m in cahoots with my fabulously beautiful, pink silk drape. This year Madame Polonius is waiting to capture “alpha lover” in the vestibule outside my bed chamber.

“What fun, Anne!” she laughed, explaining the details of her brilliantly-conceived plot. “You will have your white knight for breakfast, along with your French Roast.  Leave everything to me.”

I’ve learned never to underestimate the determined focus of a shockingly pink curtain, when she hatches such a daring plot as this one. Tribute has no idea of the powerful forces lying in wait for him tonight.

Thankfully, we dames have gotten smarter over the years. I will not let go tonight, not without a fight.

Tribute won’t escape my 23 stories of rock-solid, century-old carved limestone.

Silly man. I have lions, eagles, and American Indian chiefs at my disposal. Ace man will not race up four flights of stairs to the copper mansard roof, then bolt airborne like Superman. onto the Deutsche Bank building.  

On Guard, Tribute.

Mine is the building that lived, the Little Engine That Could. We are not some pop-star beauty queen headed for rehab. No, no. Our inner structure is sounder than that of new generations.

The Towers fell, but we lived to see this morning. We wounded buildings offer survival lessons.

Ms. Majesty will lead the stealth attack tomorrow. There is no reason for Tribute to rush away from me, like a soul-lacking Wall Street trader. Our hearts don’t run on autopilot in this building, wildly thrashing an iconic institution like United Airlines of 75% of its essence … simply because Google grabbed the wrong newspaper page.

Ms. Majesty and I love Rhapsody in Blue.

Taken Sept. 11, 2006 by Flickr’s madmaxnyc

We are steady and full of substance at Ground Zero, living in Cass’s castle … a good man’s safety net. Better to thrive here, soaring  higher still, with us in your foxhole.  Don’t be blind, like our new Governor, his voice rising above the honking.

Come to Me Tribute.

 … let’s make the most of this beautiful day,
Since we’re together, we might as well say,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won’t you be my neighbor?

Won’t you please,
Won’t you please,
Please won’t you be my neighbor?

Amen.

Love forever,
Anne

Update on Fri, September 12, 2008 by Anne

How he escaped is irrelevant. Ms. Majesty and I rallied hard … and we are tearful to report that we lost Tribute, once again. The skies are grey in the harbor today, and we are cloaked in sadness once more. We fear that one year, he will be gone for good … forgotten and outdated, no longer needed to inspire us on the other side of mourning.

Love, Anne