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dawatyanproject · 3 years

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When the Phases of the Moon Pull the Tides of Time | 明月几时有光阴墨潮生: #1 (First Quarter)

First Quarter Moon / Neap Tide / @11:25pm from Toronto, ON

During the pandemic lockdown, I like to watch “How-To-Wear” videos of people putting on their traditional/ethnic clothing, as the content provides a sense of connection to the outside world.

One day, I came across a video introducing the Emirati kandura, a regional variation of the Arab garment also known as a thawb or dishdasha (note1). The presenter mentions that the Emirati kandura is often worn with a long tassel-like piece called a tarboosh (plural: tarabeech; note2), dangling from the neckline.

Dating back to the nomadic history of the Bedouin people, the tarboosh is an important cultural and poetic object in Arab culture: before the travellers left home for a trip, their family members would infuse the tarboosh in fragrance, so that the scent from home could stay with the travellers during their journeys.

In history, especially during times when travelling was more difficult and long-distance communication took significantly longer, people of different civilizations had found creative ways to make the concept of home, family, and memory portable.

...人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺，此事古难全。但愿人长久，千里共婵娟。

—— 苏轼《水调歌头·明月几时有》

“While humankind experiences joy and sadness, separations and reunions, the Moon experiences its dark eclipse or bright crescent, fullness or absence: such are historical cycles that are impossible to be broken.

I can only hope the loved ones can remain together for the longevity of time itself, and they are bathing in the same moonlight even if they are thousands of miles apart.”

- An excerpt from “Shuidiao-Getou (Water Melody)” by Su, Shi. (Translated by Eric Chengyang)

Throughout history, ancient Chinese poets had used the Moon as a symbol of remembrance, and as a medium to express complex feelings in regards to separation and distance, due to the fact that the moon is always available and has its changing phases. For instance, during the Mid-Autumn Festival in the year 1076 AD, Su, Shi (aka. Su, Dongpo; 苏东坡), a famous Song-dynasty poet wrote and addressed his famous ci to his brother from afar.

Since the date of the Mid-Autumn Festival is determined by the Chinese lunar calendar that tracks the phases of the moon, in the evening, the moon is always round, full, and whole. As indicated in Shu, Shi’s ci-poetry, the full moon not only symbolically represents reunions but also serves as a reminder for gathering.

Interestingly, the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节; on Sept. 21 in 2021) shares similarity with the Canadian Thanksgiving which took place yesterday, with regards to their approximate timing and modern festive customs.

I have always felt a special connection to the Mid-Autumn Festival because of my love and constant craving for mooncakes; unlike most Chinese festive foods, the mooncakes are not available all year round.

In Canada, Asian grocery shops and bakeries usually start to put out the mooncakes for sale, as if the shops are reminding their customers that another Mid-Autumn Festival is near, and the beloved yet brief Ontarian summer is packing its bags and is departing soon.

Since mooncakes are seasonal, each year, I always felt a bit sad when I ate the last piece of mooncake over coffee, as I wondered where the unsold, leftover mooncakes had gone after the festival.

At the end of this past summer, when I went shopping in an Asian supermarket with my mom, I saw the stacks of mooncakes at the entrance: a sight that felt so normal that I forgot we were still in a pandemic.

Seeing the boxes of mooncakes again, I recalled a conversation I had with my mom last time when we shopped together. At the time, while we were picking out mooncakes, we were discussing why some mooncake brands had such an unbelievably expensive price tag, and I jokingly told her that maybe those mooncakes’ salted egg filling contained actual gold foil.

This conversation felt so fresh and vivid, that I had the impression as if it had just happened sometime in the summer. However, when I picked up a mooncake box and saw the expiry date, I suddenly realized that the reason I was seeing the mooncakes again, was because a full year had already gone by since we last shopped together.

Image: a Cantonese mooncake (left) & a Suzhou-style mooncake (right), with a cup of dry chrysanthemum-osmanthus tea served in a gaiwan.

After having spent months indoors without leaving the Suburban neighbourhood during the pandemic lock-down, I feel like the grains of time have been unknowingly seeping through the spaces between the grasp of a hand.

Like the recurring cycles of the Moon’s phases, I have managed to locate my position in time not from a calendar, but rather through the return of the mooncakes, although this year, I was not feeling the sadness because I ate the last piece of mooncake as the festival passed.

- By Eric Chengyang (墨月无觞) of Dawat Yan Project, on Oct. 12, 2021 (@11:25pm)

To be continued in the form of a visual poetry as the Moon moves. Thank you for reading part #1 and visit the Dawat Yan.

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Notes & Citations

1. To learn more about the diverse styles of the kandura / thawb / dishdasha, please refer to the following article. Img #01 shows a model with a tarboosh hanging from the neck, and img #03 shows what an Omani tarboosh looks like.

Gulf: What differentiates the Dishdasha from the Kandora?

https://gulfnews.com/photos/lifestyle/gulf-what-differentiates-the-dishdasha-from-the-kandora-1.1601284787970?slide=1

2. Reference for the “tarboosh/tarabeech”:

“Bracelet inspired by the Emirati Tarboosh: Al Ghadeer UAE Crafts x Loreta Bilinskaite-Monie”, by Dubai Design Week

https://www.dubaidesignweek.ae/programme/2019/bracelet-inspired-emirati-tarboosh/

3. A fun fact: due to the different styles of mooncakes (as shown above), Chinese people from different regions tend to eat the mooncakes in distinctive ways:

Northern-Central Chinese tend to eat the mooncake in 1-2 single bites, because their variant of mooncakes has a flaky crust.

Southern Chinese such as Cantonese, like to cut up the mooncake with a knife, and either eat or share the smaller pieces over tea.

As someone from a Cantonese background, I personally think that mooncakes also go well with coffee.

#multiculture #daohanfu #mooncake #mid autumn festival #hanfu #chinese culture #moon #art #traditional clothing #projectmoon #dawatyanproject

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soymilkandtoast · 3 years

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Dear Serah,

It’s currently 1 am and I’m sitting in bed writing this letter to you in hopes that you still use tumblr and will eventually respond. Maybe I’ll even send you an email we will see...

I have a double bed. For the last three years I’ve been sleeping on the right side near my door. As much as I’ve tried to move around,sometimes in the middle, sometimes on the left, I’ll wake up in the morning only to find myself in the exact same spot...on the right...by the door. Double beds are too big but then twin beds are too small. So I bought pillows, 10 of them ( I may be a minimalist but when it comes to bed comfort I am very much a maximalist) and would stuff half of them on the left side before I slept. I don’t know why I’m telling you this but I feel like it’s something you should know about me.

It’s almost summer and those little annoying black flies have been swarming all of Toronto. I went for a walk yesterday since there’s not much to do during ‘the lockdown lockdown lockdown’. Mark and I stopped over at the LCBO and he got super excited to find some raspberry white claws and announced that we were going to be ‘basic bitches’...which I’m totally down for..always! We also went to Popeyes and got their spicy chicken sandwich that everyone kept hyping up last summer. Whenever I think of ‘Popeyes chicken sandwich’ it takes me back to Nikocado Avocado’s breakdown inside of his car . If you haven’t watched it, I truly recommend it...it is a work of art. How did he perfectly time the rain and his tears? Who knows! But anyways, I digress...Um, to summarize it was a very short walk and we soon gave up because he ate some flies and started to get tired from having to swat millions of them away. Our goal was the beach. We were not close to the beach.

Instead, we walked back to mine and drank on my porch, while watching the neighborhood raccoon who lives in the tree at the front of my house attempt to climb down. Mark kept waving at him and making eye contact and I was afraid that raccoon would assume that it was welcomed into our party of two. I mean, after yesterday’s show I have a newfound respect for these trash pandas and have lovingly named the one outside my house Pankush. Assuming that this person will never see this post, I feel like it’s safe to say, yes I named it after a very specific someone and yes because they both share the same sentiment. Anyways, toodleloo write soon! tata!

youtube

-Karen

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d-rklaw · 3 years

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Recap

1. It’s been a while since I last posted, and a lot has happened: finished up my fellowship, had lots of farewell parties, took a business class flight back to Sydney, spent two weeks in hotel quarantine, reunited with DZ, moved in with him into a new rental, furnished the place, reunited with some of my old friends, spent Xmas with DZ’s family, celebrated the new year... and now tomorrow marks the first day of my new job. How did time fly by so quickly? I’ve managed to have 6 weeks off work but it feels like just yesterday I finished up in Toronto. I was especially touched by all the gifts, well wishes and celebrations everyone threw for me before I left. I’d always felt deep down that I didn’t really belong in Canada, but there was no doubt in my mind that I knew the friendships forged there would be lifelong. People tell me that I’m a social being who makes friends really easily (which I still find super weird but am starting to accept), but I’m truly very grateful for all the people I’ve met along my journey who’ve supported me.

2. 2020 saw some of the darkest times of my life. I know, I say that probably too often.. maybe I’m being dramatic? But regardless, the beginning of the year saw me start to see a counsellor which helped me through some of my mental issues, but it all went to shit when the pandemic hit and I was basically trapped in Toronto. I cried at work for the first time (not over a patient). Things were beginning to look more and more bleak... but apparently I had a breakthrough and started on antidepressants, which surprisingly worked to mitigate my anxiety. There were some side effects which I don’t enjoy, but overall I’ve been pretty satisfied with being able to feel somewhat stable for the first time in years.

3. A combination of factors this year was really bad for my health overall... quarantine/lockdown periods, decreased exercise, more frequent dinners, antidepressants etc. meant that I’m now the heaviest I’ve been in my life. While this isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, especially as I’ve already got a partner, I can’t let it get out of control. DZ and I have resolved to workout 3 times a week using our new gym equipment and do yoga + cardio on the other days. We’ll see how long it lasts...

4. I’m quite anxious about starting work (although without the pills, who knows how much it could be). I’ve visited my workplace already to try and hit the ground running when I start tomorrow, but I’m still pretty nervous about treating tumour sites that I haven’t looked after for quite some time. Not to mention dealing with the work computer systems that I’m not used to once more. I just really want to do well to get the permanent job so I can be set for life! Thinking back upon this year I think I’ve achieved a fair bit at work, which is kinda mind blowing given how much impostor syndrome I experience when I’m in the workplace. Motivation to keep going with some of my projects has dropped over the last few weeks but I’m hoping it’ll pick up again once work starts.

5. I think overall I’m in a pretty good place. As horrible and unforgettable as some aspects of 2020 were, I’m grateful for the way things have turned out for me ultimately. This year is definitely going to see its own set of challenges for me to face, but after gaining life experience overseas, being a doctor during a pandemic, and making the decision to cut my time in Canada short to come home... I think things will turn out alright. Here’s to 2020 - even though it was a shit year, it can only go upwards from here.

#recap #2020

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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Why I won't buy an Ipad: ten years later

Ten years ago, Apple released the Ipad. I was in a hotel room in Seattle, jetlagged and awake at 4AM while my wife and daughter slept.

I had been thinking about Apple's impending Ipad release and what a reversal it meant for everything I loved about tech: taking away your right to decide whose code you'd run -- even your right to change the battery! I wrote about my feelings and many people read it. It even rated a mention in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs.

A decade later, the Ipad is ten years old and Apple has killed 20 state Right to Repair bills, in part to lock out third parties who might change you batteries for you.

I just reread that piece, and I still stand by it.

Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either)

I've spent ten years now on Boing Boing, finding cool things that people have done and made and writing about them. Most of the really exciting stuff hasn't come from big corporations with enormous budgets, it's come from experimentalist amateurs. These people were able to make stuff and put it in the public's eye and even sell it without having to submit to the whims of a single company that had declared itself gatekeeper for your phone and other personal technology.

Danny O'Brien does a very good job of explaining why I'm completely uninterested in buying an iPad -- it really feels like the second coming of the CD-ROM "revolution" in which "content" people proclaimed that they were going to remake media by producing expensive (to make and to buy) products. I was a CD-ROM programmer at the start of my tech career, and I felt that excitement, too, and lived through it to see how wrong I was, how open platforms and experimental amateurs would eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros.

I remember the early days of the web -- and the last days of CD ROM -- when there was this mainstream consensus that the web and PCs were too durned geeky and difficult and unpredictable for "my mom" (it's amazing how many tech people have an incredibly low opinion of their mothers). If I had a share of AOL for every time someone told me that the web would die because AOL was so easy and the web was full of garbage, I'd have a lot of AOL shares.

And they wouldn't be worth much.

Incumbents made bad revolutionaries Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.

I mean, look at that Marvel app (just look at it). I was a comic-book kid, and I'm a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was -- and is -- huge, and vital. I can't even count how many times I've gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I'd missed, or sample new titles on the cheap. (It's part of a multigenerational tradition in my family -- my mom's father used to take her and her sibs down to Dragon Lady Comics on Queen Street in Toronto every weekend to swap their old comics for credit and get new ones).

So what does Marvel do to "enhance" its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. Nice one, Misney.

Infantalizing hardware Then there's the device itself: clearly there's a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.

But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers).

The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Dale Dougherty's piece on Hypercard and its influence on a generation of young hackers is a must-read on this. I got my start as a Hypercard programmer, and it was Hypercard's gentle and intuitive introduction to the idea of remaking the world that made me consider a career in computers.

Wal-Martization of the software channel And let's look at the iStore. For a company whose CEO professes a hatred of DRM, Apple sure has made DRM its alpha and omega. Having gotten into business with the two industries that most believe that you shouldn't be able to modify your hardware, load your own software on it, write software for it, override instructions given to it by the mothership (the entertainment industry and the phone companies), Apple has defined its business around these principles. It uses DRM to control what can run on your devices, which means that Apple's customers can't take their "iContent" with them to competing devices, and Apple developers can't sell on their own terms.

The iStore lock-in doesn't make life better for Apple's customers or Apple's developers. As an adult, I want to be able to choose whose stuff I buy and whom I trust to evaluate that stuff. I don't want my universe of apps constrained to the stuff that the Cupertino Politburo decides to allow for its platform. And as a copyright holder and creator, I don't want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create. The last time I posted about this, we got a string of apologies for Apple's abusive contractual terms for developers, but the best one was, "Did you think that access to a platform where you can make a fortune would come without strings attached?" I read it in Don Corleone's voice and it sounded just right. Of course I believe in a market where competition can take place without bending my knee to a company that has erected a drawbridge between me and my customers!

Journalism is looking for a daddy figure I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who'll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff. The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of "content" isn't just that they can get it for free, though: it's that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targetted more narrowly than the old media ever managed. Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert. We'll miss your fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the Web so little that we'll hardly notice it, and we'll have no trouble finding material to fill the void.

Just like the gadget press is full of devices that gadget bloggers need (and that no one else cares about), the mainstream press is full of stories that affirm the internal media consensus. Yesterday's empires do something sacred and vital and most of all grown up, and that other adults will eventually come along to move us all away from the kids' playground that is the wild web, with its amateur content and lack of proprietary channels where exclusive deals can be made. We'll move back into the walled gardens that best return shareholder value to the investors who haven't updated their portfolios since before eTrade came online.

But the real economics of iPad publishing tell a different story: even a stellar iPad sales performance isn't going to do much to stanch the bleeding from traditional publishing. Wishful thinking and a nostalgia for the good old days of lockdown won't bring customers back through the door.

Gadgets come and gadgets go Gadgets come and gadgets go. The iPad you buy today will be e-waste in a year or two (less, if you decide not to pay to have the battery changed for you). The real issue isn't the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.

If you want to live in the creative universe where anyone with a cool idea can make it and give it to you to run on your hardware, the iPad isn't for you.

If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn't for you.

If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you're going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn't for you.

https://boingboing.net/2020/01/27/nascent-boulangism.html

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belladonnadream · 7 years

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Stevie n Mick 9-11 Memorial

Stevie Nicks September 11, 2016 · September 11th, 2016

As I always say on this day~ No one needs to remind me~ of what happened in New York on September 11th, 2001. I was there~ at the Waldorf~ sleeping~ when the first plane hit the first tower. We, 7 of us, had come in from Canada that night~ landed at 2:30 in the morning~ ready to spend my day off in my favorite city. I went to bed at 7:30am... It was a beautiful day~ looking out the windows before I laid down. I was so excited to be there~ I had such hopes for that beautiful day~ and then the world stopped. The world changed. As the day went by you could not see the sun~ we put wet towels around all the windows. It was as if the world had ended.

I kept a journal all through the four days we were there. As we drove away from New York on Friday at sunset (on a bus) heading towards Atlantic City (show on Saturday had not been canceled) we looked back across the water at the fallen towers and the sad grey city. We drove slowly, taking pictures in our minds~ knowing that nothing ~ NOTHING ~ would ever be the same. And we cried. Silent grey shadowed tears of disbelief~ I think we cried all the way to Atlantic City. I don’t think any words were even spoken, and we prayed that the world would heal and get better.

It hasn’t.

Our world is dangerous. The warnings are everywhere. People are afraid. I am afraid and I hate being afraid. I want to be strong and fearless. I want anyone who reads this to do everything they can to help this world~

Please God show them the way Please God ~on this day~ Spirits all~ give them the strength Peace can come if you fight for it~ I think we’re just in time to save it Please God Give them the strength On this day Please God Please God Please God Show them the way~

These words are from a song you have yet to hear~ about this day...

I am re-posting my journal entries again for you to read~ I wrote them for all of us. Consider these words as you go through the next sixty days~

Love to All, Stevie Nicks

2001

Dearest Everyone- This is my journal entry for September 11, 2001. I wanted to share it with you, because I was in New York; because it was the heaviest thing I have ever experienced ~

Love, Stevie Nicks

Sept. 11, 2001 11:30 a.m. We got into New York via private jet at 2 o’clock this morning, coming into New York from Toronto, Canada. I have been listening to Shawn Colvin’s song, Another Plane Went Down, from her new album, A Whole New You, all the way here while trying to compose a letter to Gladys Knight about Aaliyah, her niece; about my dream. Airports, planes everywhere, music, music, tears in my eyes, Sulamith (my yorkie) was upset all the way from Canada, psychic, dreamlike, flying, flying, flying.

And now, it has happened. Two planes dove into the World Trade Center Towers ~ 4 hijackings in 3 hours. The Trade Center is gone, thousands of people are dead. The Pentagon was attacked kamikaze style, and one plane they are pretty sure, was on its way to the White House.

Everyone is pretty sure it was Osama Bin Laden, the evil high tech murderer hiding in Afghanistan...

People are walking across the Brooklyn Bridge trying to get home. I am here at the world famous Waldorf=Astoria, the hotel where the presidents stay ~

I will write as the day unfolds~

I am pretty sure Radio City will cancel; I think their offices were in the Towers...I am so sad for them...

Aircraft warships are on their way to us here in New York and to Washington... I don’t really know what we are going to do now – the airports are completely shut down-

My heart is broken.

8:42 a.m. First Tower 9:04 a.m. 2nd Tower 9:40 a.m. Pentagon 9:59 a.m. South Tower falls 10:28 a.m. North Tower falls (people jump) 11:29 a.m. United flt 99 crashes in rural Pennsylvania 5:20 p.m. #7 Tower collapses

Sept. 12, 2001 4:42 a.m. in the morning

We are a devastated city I feel I am a part of this city. We are a strong, brilliant city. We are watching a piece of history We are living through a tragedy Like no one – has ever seen...

The fire chief of New York is dead. His assistant fire chief is dead. One of my champions from Warner Brothers wife is gone. She was coming home from Boston after settling their twin daughters at a University. Their grandmother was with their Mom.

M.H. called from Toronto. He is there with the Backstreet Boys. One of their carpenters went home because his wife was having a baby. He was on one of those planes. We are a grieving city A surreal city ~ It is 5:09 a.m. in the morning We are still a dark city – But soon it will be dawn – and the dreamlike reality of yesterday will turn into the true reality of what has really happened.

I have seen grown men cry today. They seem to be having the most trouble with this. They are the protectors –

And they feel so helpless ~ They can’t stand it.

It seems that, as Don Henley so brilliantly said ~ “This is the end- of the innocence.”

5:15 a.m.

I sit here at 5:15 in the morning – in shock. The tears just don’t stop. As a writer, I am driven to write what it has been like to be 20 minutes away from the Twin Towers ~ To be here at the world famous, Waldorf=Astoria Hotel, home of foreign diplomats and gathering place of politicians, in a suite where I am quite sure Heads of State have met, and discussed the problems of the world. The living room is all dark wood, ceiling to floor, and you can just imagine John Kennedy sitting at the desk. It is stunning. This hotel is where the presidents have always stayed, and this grand old hotel is in full lockdown. All but two entrances are closed, the driveway through the hotel – shut, all the cars - moved out.

I feel strangely safe here in New York now – and the city still looks awesome from my windows, still sparkly, still beautiful, almost like – from this room- Nothing ever happened- Almost...

The television news people are extraordinary – all of them. They are tired; you can see it in their changing faces, as the day has gone by. Of course, I feel like I know them all, like they are really dear friends, choking up and recovering, just like me, hour after hour... You can’t go through something like this with a city. You become attached.

You become “war buddies.” It is just so deep. It is 6:10. It is sunrise

6:38 a.m.

It was a beautiful sunrise. It has turned the white curtains pink, the room pink- I swear. The sun is one half inch over the city horizon, the sky is peacock blue, sky blue but the city is still glowing pink. If I had been sleeping since Monday and I looked out this window, I would think, “It just looks like a beautiful New York fall day, my favorite thing, let’s shop! It looks just like it did Tuesday morning when I went to bed, just before this all happened. The view is so beautiful that looking up at it, almost makes you start to feel good, and forget, and then, honestly you feel guilty, and then you feel worse and sick to your stomach. If they can’t sleep, then I’m not going to sleep either... So today is both beautiful and frightening, looking out from 36 floors up, can I tell you how unimaginable it would be if I looked up and saw a big jet flying towards me, in this country? Not possible. My question – “How could this happen?”

I am overwhelmed with how extraordinary the firemen and the policemen are. They just don’t give up. They “don’t stop.” They are awesome...and so is Mayor Guiliani. I would ALWAYS want them on my team. They are my heroes.

Well, I think I have to sleep now. In an interview from the street, a man says in tears, “You do not want to see the things I’ve seen today...I am traumatized.” “I am traumatized for life...”

That is the truth...We are all traumatized.

“I’m tired. I’m thirsty – I’m wild eyed In my misery.”

God Bless everyone that lost someone ~ And all of those ~ that are gone... I am so sorry ~

Stevie Nicks 7:06 in the morning

P .S. The room is still glowing pink – I swear...

Last Thought...September 14, 2001

Please everyone, do not blame people for this just because they are Muslim – or come from some other ethnic group. If you do, you let Osama Bin Laden win – as surely as if you helped him put those planes through those towers. You - become him. He wins. Consider this carefully...

2011

September 11, 2011 9-11 Nine Eleven 2001

It is four o’7~ 4:07 in the afternoon. It is Sunday. It is the 10th Anniversary of the attack on the great towers of New York City. The twins~ those two awesome skyscrapers who stood above our beautiful city. I say “our” because I became a New Yorker on that day.

I am not watching television, at least not yet. I do not need T.V. to jar my memory. I remember it all, as if it were yesterday. Landing in New York at 2:30 in the morning~ coming in from Canada to spend my one day off in New York. Looking forward to playing Radio City Music Hall~ one of my favorite places to play. Driving into the city from the airport~ excited~ it’s always a romantic drive for me~ like something wonderful could happen~ New York City~ just like I pictured it. Awesome. Awesome...

And awesome it was. Arriving at the world famous Waldorf=Astoria Hotel. Famous people live there. Political dignitaries live there. Wallace Simpson and the ex-King of England~ lived there for 5 years in the suite with the 3 great arched windows. History oozes from its great walls. When you are there~ you are part of history. We got to our suite at about 4 in the morning~ the very grand~ all dark wood suite~ we unpacked~ the sun was coming up over the city~ the 4 windows in the living room full of pink light~ extraordinary pink~ bathing the brown Bosendorfer in light~ the sun is up~ it is 7:30. I say to the girls~ “Maybe we should just go out now and have breakfast and go shopping~ and sleep later. I was looking out one of the windows at the city that was now full of people and cars and cabs and limousines~ crazy energy~ and we laughed, realizing how tired we were after 2 shows in a row and the flight from Canada...Maybe a little sleep would help~ then we’ll hit the streets. Sulamith Wulfing and I went to bed~ dreaming of going out later~ maybe finding a little diamond something~ and off we went to sleep.

Right after the second plane hit the second tower, Karen woke me. I don’t remember exactly what she said. I just remember jumping up and running to the window where I had stood 3 1⁄2 hours before. Looking down at that same street, no cars, no cabs, and no people. Just empty. Not beautiful~ just frighteningly silent. No way out~ just fear.

Karen was on the phone with my manager Sheryl. She had been on the phone with her when the plane hit the first tower. Because of that~ we had a line out to the world. Sheryl was able to have someone call our parents and my band in Canada and let people know we were all right.

The Waldorf went into lock down. It is the presidents hotel, so lock down is something the do well. Then we waited. We turned on the big T.V. in the living room and watched ~ and watched~ and watched.

Because we were hooked up to T.V. all over the world~ we saw things that I think most people didn’t see. Spanish T.V.~ people actually jumping. That was momentary~ pulled immediately by the networks. The first newspaper with a horrid image on the front page~ not seen again. We kept the newspaper.

As the hours went by we, like everyone else in the city who wasn’t close to ground zero~we just sat and watched T.V. and cried. I never left the suite. From Tuesday afternoon to Friday night when we drove away to Atlantic City I just sat in front of the T.V. and cried. The sunsets were extra beautiful. All that dust and smoke makes sunsets and sunrises more beautiful. Like smoke on stage makes the lights more beautiful. After that, soon after that actually, I developed an allergy to dust and smoke. I don’t use smoke on my stage anymore. It shuts down my throat~ I can’t sing in it~ and it’s not beautiful.

It’s 4:58p right now~ the devastation I felt that day is starting to creep in. My throat is starting to close up~ and my eyes are starting to fill with tears.

I guess that’s how it will always be. All those people lost. All those families ruined. All those hearts broken. I was 20 minutes away. I did not lose a best friend or a child or a lover. But part of my heart went down with those towers... And that will never change...

Stevie Nicks 9-11-11

#Stevie Nicks #Fleetwood Mac #Stevie Nicks History #9-11

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