On a Morning Before the Whole World Changed

Broken people, 9/11 neighborhood…Ten years ago, for example, just yesterday really, I climbed up subway steps grimy with the soot of a million shoes before mine.

Photo by Deborah Julian / Fine Art Street Photos

Within the weave through which we’re all rippling and turning, those happy dropout days in the Sixties are nearly as fresh as smells rising up from the ocean and leaking into our apartment this morning.

The sleepless eye tracking everything calculates along the margins. Time accumulates on a razor sharp plane.

Cataloging the ramblings, dreams, repetitive meals, loves, losses and acres of words as distant memory is a convenience, the accepted method for keeping files in order, easy to access for future discussions and trials, comparing this thing to that without getting stuck in time, unconscious, but shuffling and reshuffling the deck in the search for meanings inside the web.

This goes on all the time.

All of the past is the same kind of raw material, make of it what you will.

Along the Street in My Neighborhood of Broken People

On John Street, sunbeams came through every break in the construction.

There was never much traffic on the awkward, narrow grid downtown. I jaywalked to the other side and started downhill toward Water Street.

My desk then, clunky Wintel clone and all, sat on cheap carpet in an energetic office on the tenth floor about half-way down the slope.

More…

My 9/11 Neighborhood of Broken People | HubPages

Featured

AVAC: Where the Pipe Curves

Observations from the part of the meeting most people stop listening to. Notes about maintenance, responsibility, and who was in the room.

Eleanor Rivers Jan 16, 2026

This is the final installment in my notes from the December 2nd, Operations Advisory Committee meeting, following “An Emergency, Apparently” and “Rust Is Funny Until It Isn’t”.

Uncover the Story →