I was the last person I knew to switch from a rotary telephone to touch-tone. (Hey! It wasn’t that long ago!!!) I’d probably still have a rotary if it weren’t for all those answering services that force you to punch in who you want to talk to.
“Press one for customer service. Press two for the location nearest you. Press three to scream into the telephone.”
How I used to love that rotary dial noise: brrrrrwwwwweeeeehhh … rrrrrrrhhhhhhhaaaa …
Admittedly I had a lot more time back then.
What can I say??? I’m ruled by nostalgia! I get misty-eyed at the sight of an 8-track tape.
Yes, yes, I know, darlings. None of you remember 8-track tapes. But can’t you appreciate the pleasure of hauling around a cassette the size of a video that hissed through every song?
Hmmm. OK, it needed a bit of improvement.
Anyway, as a writer, I’ve always had this huge need to see my words wind up on the printed page.
Don’t know why, because clearly folks who are like me, who aren’t exactly mainstream, are much more appreciated on the web than by the hordes of old-school editors in the print world.
So … as with all of my clearly passé notions, it took a concerned friend to coax me along.
In my case, it was Nancy, aka Jill Matrix.
I was on my annual self-pity whine about how I dreamed of writing a weekly column about anything I wanted … a column that would wind around and around whatever subject thrilled me at the moment … a column … that … that …
Well, thankfully, she stopped me, or I’d still be sitting here whining and not writing.
“What you need is a website,” she said.
To which I replied … but I don’t know how, where, what … helpppp … etc., etc.
She said, “Hang on.”
And in about five minutes she had created a website for me at blogspot. Whatever that is.
“What would you like to say?” she asked.
And as at all great moments in my life, I was struck absolutely dumb.
“I’m Rossi. Welcome to my brain,” was all I had in me.
But I recuperated, natch, and having a site that I could finally pour my manic, rambling self into seemed absolutely freeing.
I wrote two columns in the week prior to September 11, 2001.
The first was just a light, rambling rant about my day.
In the second, which I spellchecked at 8 a.m. on September 11, I wrote about how I loved noise and hated quiet. I wrote that quiet made me feel like 1,000 bankers were sitting on me. I finished the rant and e-mailed it to Nancy (who fixes my shockingly flawed punctuation).
As I was sending the e-mail, I got a phone call from a client to tell me that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. Shortly after, the phones went dead, and my life and everyone else’s were changed forever.
As you’ve probably read or can read from these archives, I watched the towers topple from my roof. I paced Manhattan trying to help and trying to make sense of it all. At times, I went into a very dark place.
My cute little weekly rant became an echo of the countless images of death, hope, terror, wonder, sorrow, warmth that were unfolding around me.
I wonder who I would be today and what I would be feeling if not for this new friend in my life, this thing that listens to all I have to say … this site.
Hours after the towers were murdered, I wrote about it here.
The day I joined a group of New Yorkers cheerleading for the rescue crews on the West Side Highway, I came home to transcribe it for these pages.
When I finally found my way down to ground zero and found myself utterly speechless, Nancy gently suggested I describe it for this waiting canvas, and I did.
I tried to explain the eerie, haunted feeling of being in a room filled with 6,000 people on Yom Kippur, when the rabbi had us stand and look at each other, to try to comprehend what the numbers missing in the WTC would look like, if they could all stand up, now, from their dusty grave.
I began to count on this new haven as the one place that I could safely purge all the visions burning inside me.
What I hadn’t counted on was what came back.
First there were the e-mails I expected from my friends.
But then it grew. The friends of my friends began to e-mail me. Then their friends. Then their in-laws.
Nancy put a link on her site, so that her readers could read about my WTC experiences, and I began to hear from them, too.
I began to hear from other people who had read a link on still other sites.
The letters were wonderful.
"Thank you for sharing your amazing experience."
"My heart and prayers go out to you."
I received an e-mail from a young woman in Calgary, a total stranger: "All we hear over here is terrible news. Your story was the first one I have read about hope. Thank you so much. I am sending it on to everyone I know."
I received an e-mail from a Jewish man in San Francisco thanking me for the Yom Kippur story. He sent his warmest holiday wishes.
I received a joke in the mail from someone who just thought I needed to laugh.
I know it’s madness to say I felt loved by these strangers, but the feeling I got when I read their e-mails was just that … a waft of love.
As I begin to emerge from these weeks of bottomless sadness, I feel grateful that I have had this place to document and preserve everything around me and to share it with anyone who could find me.
What a strange time to be a newbie on the web. … What a perfect time.
I’m an old-fashioned girl. But I guess, when all is said and done regarding this new-fangled thing called the wild world of web writing, there’s nothing more old-fashioned than people reaching out to each other in a time of need.
And there you have it.
