Grey Squirrel On Redwood

Dear Juliet

I thought I'd better mention that if you (theoretically) wanted to come over, preparations would be necessary (travel insurance, return ticket, support letter from me etc.) so I'll just quickly advise you to check this link and liaise with me beforehand. To make it easier for you, I also have a To Do list which I'll cross-check with the primary source material next week or so.

Okay, said it. It was on my mind...

In the meantime, I lit a candle you-know-where for yourself and the 9/11 victims. I forgot to take a picture of it, but I did get a nice shot of this squirrel.

Hope you like squirrels.

I think you don't like dwelling on bad things, so I'm not going to go on about it too much. Just provide this excerpt from Dear Miss Landau about breakfast in the South Tower, 2000.

In 1989, fresh from Australia and California, I’d lain on the ground in the plaza between the Twin Towers and gazed up the vertical precipice towards the 102nd floor of the south tower, a sure way to get vertigo even when lying down on solid mother earth. Lockerbie had been fresh in my mind: I’d just passed the Pan Am Building with demonstrators freshly planted outside, wanting to know the truth about flight 103.

In 2000, I’d taken the opportunity of a weekend break in New York and, still as strong as I’d become slaving in orchards and plantations in Oz, I’d ascended the south tower of the World Trade Center in the morning and the Empire State in the evening.

I suppose there are a few thousand people left like me who can make that statement, but no-one else in human history will ever be able to say that, and in so doing I became part of that history, locked in days of Cold War terrorism, an ageing frustrated spook with a few photos taken from the gantry atop the south tower and memories of breakfasting in the top-floor diner, glancing at the Lady Liberty paperweights and T-shirts in the shop, looking at the wraparound internal montage of New York’s history, celebrated in word and deed. I remember a picture of James Brown, and the words, “they built this city on rock and roll.” I remember standing in the footwell in front of the guardrail in the diner, my feet almost touching the floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window and half an inch from a thousand foot drop, taking pictures of Ellis Island, Liberty and the Hudson with my trusty old Zenith camera. It was pre-digital and so was I. I did not know, as I kept my balance and my nerve, that the first ripples of catastrophic change were starting virtually beneath my feet as Microsoft lost its antitrust suit against the US government, as the NASDAQ index on Wall Street started to slide and the dot.coms began to crash, denting America’s global economic hegemony, perhaps fatally and forever. A financial crash prefacing the physical crash of the towers eighteen months later.

I do have pictures of the Towers, but they're pre-digital. Maybe I'll be able to show them to you one day, though.

I hope you're listening out there.

I still like writing to you. I always did.

I don't know if I ever mentioned this much, but my own self-esteem was never high and I would always tend to think everything was my fault.

So you're not the only one who feels like this. The best or only way I could manage this was, well, by writing those two books; but then, also, by analysing and clarifying exactly what I'd achieved and painstakingly crafting some self-respect. I know it's not easy.

We're not absolutely identical (I will cheerfully face up to all sorts of bad things) but l think we have a few things in common.

And I always liked you just the way you were.

Have a hug: 🤗.

Love,

James