from the more things change dept.

doing homework on a sunday with football on in the background.

god that takes me back.

except for the fact that im showered and wearing legitimately daytime attire.

btw, if you think a brady post isnt in the works, i have a bridge to sell you.  half off!

plastics and wire in your kiss; the breath of eternity on your lips.

seven years later.

ten lifetimes ago.

seems like it was yesterday.

i always think of emk on this day; it was right around then that we got close. my experience of nyc during that time is inexorably linked to her. lo and behold, she emailed me as much this morning. that was comforting; to know we'll always share that. and that period is also tied to palm; we had just started living together. from our roof on fourth st, we had an all too good view of the unbearably large plume of smoke.

i remember the makeshift memorial that literally thousands of new yorkers contributed to in union square in the following days. my dad took some old stuffed doll my sister had, wrote 'the brins care' on it, adorned it with some other thoughtful artifacts, and placed it amongst the other tributes.

if you werent here, ill tell you. the city came up aces.

anyway, i couldnt help sharing some remembrances, but the main pt of this post is to make a couple of recommendations.

there are myriad historical records of 911. but im more interested in the impressionistic records; the ones that capture those lives, as opposed to those events. i single out two.

the first is the album the rising by bruce springsteen. nowadays it's just rare to hear a concept album, let alone one as resonant as this. is it any wonder? teams of firefighters and policemen, ie lunch pailers, perished while helping to save people during a seemingly ordinary workday - in springsteen's own backyard. talk about the right man for the right time. the album is exquisite. it captures loss so poignantly that to this day some of the songs put an empty pit in my stomach.

the second rec is don delillo's novel falling man. it's about a survivor of the towers and his family, in the aftermath, and it also touches upon the jihadists, from their persepctive. i chanced upon it in the airport on my way to moscow over the summer. couldnt put it down. i recently gave it to emk. as she said: what a fucked up day. and no one that wasn't here when it happened really gets it. the book gets it.

ok, enough preachy preachy. but it had to be done.

rip, my classmate. god knows how many times, during our four years at stuy, she looked out of a window and gazed at the towers. i know i did it hundreds of times myself.

still unreal.

quote 36.

sometimes it’s necessary to slay a beautiful theory with an ugly fact.

-dr. charles hirsch, chief medical examiner of new york city

thank you miss power.

dinner at jg melon's with lee. (i had never had their burger.) we sat outside, on the corner of 76 and 3rd.

midway through the meal, a team of police cars converged a few buildings up, on the same block on 3rd. their sirens were off, but their lightbars rotated ominously. they remained in the middle of the street for a while; we asked a waiter what was going on.

'someone jumped off that building,' he said. 'from the fourth floor.'

i got up to rubberneck. i saw that the pavement in front of the building in question was squared off with police tape which was tied to two police cars parked in the street. several other police cars were clustered around. many people, cops and passersby, were clustered around - cops inside and outside the square, voyeurs outside.

the lightbars kept going, like lighthouses. i sat back down.

neither of us recalled hearing an ambulance. it seemed like a suicide really did take place a few doors down. while we were eating bacon cheeseburgers.

i think that's the closest ive been to a death in my life.

blame it all on yourself.

this mornning, as i was walking through ft greene park, i passed a slightly derelict-looking black guy. he was holding a boom box, and despite his tattered appearance, he looked cheerful; we smiled at each other. i couldnt hear what he was playing on the box, b.c i had my headphones on, but after i passed him i was curious, so i took them off. ill make no secret of the fact that i was expecting hip-hop.

i couldnt have been more surprised by his song selection: billy joel's shes always a woman.

reminded me of another time when, on myrtle ave, i passed a similar dude singing sweet caroline.

ah, ft greene. combining you with my prejudices sometimes yields funny results.

quote 35.

they only throw ticker-tape parades for war heroes, astronauts and people who win ballgames.

-jerry jones, as quoted in class last night

show me in the rules where it says i cant marry myself.

i was best man at a wedding one time - that was pretty good. i thought there was a little too much in the title there. best man. i think we oughta have the groom, and a pretty good man. i mean, if im the best man, why is she marrying him?

-jerry seinfeld

at palm and mrs. palm's wedding this weekend - a wedding that was, of course, quite classy - i had but two responsibilities as best man. one was to hand the rabbi the rings when he asked for them during the ceremony. the other was to deliver a toast towards the end of the dinner portion of the reception. anyone who knows me wont be surprised that i was much more nervous about the rings. i practiced taking them out of my pocket from the moment i got them until i walked the maid of honor down the aisle at the beginning of the ceremony. ended up doing fine.

at the risk - nay, certainty - of sounding immodest, i knocked the speech out of the park. it was prolly ten minutes or so, but it felt like ten seconds. i hadnt written a script to read from - just some talking pts i wanted to make sure to cover. for instance, i started by explaining that palm and i had our bar mitzvahs on the same leap day in 92, but as he was new to our school that year, and i had been there for ages, almost all of our classmates went to mine. i said that considering that that was our start, and that sixteen years later i was his best man, ours is one of the more storied friendships in jewish history. then i said it was a bittersweet day b.c i always thought palm would marry me. anyway, it went from there.

people just seemed to go with it; laughing, 'awwwing' at all the right moments. it was a real high being up there. as soon as i sat down, people started giving me effusive compliments. it all felt great, not least of all b.c i really wanted to do right by the newlywed couple.

you gotta love it, right? i go to a wedding, then i write a post about it that focuses entriely on me.