Buzzards, the last on the list of dead,
fly from cliffs to buildings as if routine,
circle in the clouds that will take more
lives than the lives squashed and squashed in piles.
There is much madness but no discerning eye
and when the news repeats from various,
amateurish angles a film so real
it takes on a fifth dimension and deep-sixes
the vanity of capitalism
which becomes the artery of freedom,
behold the remnants of something more
than flesh and spirit, shoveled onto barges
destined for Staten Island and the largest
dump in the world—final resting place?
(BPK)

We've heard the stories, we continue to hear the stories, and tragedy mounts tragedy in the person and her family and his neighborhood. I knew a woman who died on September 11, 2001. She worked high up in one of the Twin Towers, and after the plane plowed into the building like a malicious magic trick, she was cut off from the bottom. I have this image of her making her way to the roof, handkerchief over mouth, covered in soot, thinking of her family, her friends, her godchildren. She stands on the observation deck, the normally high winds unnatural on this late summer morning, waving her white handkerchief at the helicopters. And then, from one of the highest man-made points, she jumps into the sky.

I have a penchant for overreacting. Ask my wife, my close friends, my mother. When the Yankees, two outs from winning, lost the World Series, I remained distant from the news for a week. I couldn't deal with the mere mention of the result and condemned my students—as lightheartedly as I could muster a response—for bringing up anything remotely baseball. And it was just baseball, a game. I was like this before September 11—petty, self-absorbed, misanthropic—but I've became more pathetic in my exaggerations with the "It could have been me" syndrome and the "I've been on that flight" response, even if I've never actually been on that particularly numbered flight from New York to Los Angeles. My overreacting is a response to my self-absorption, my self-absorption leads to pettiness, and all the things that are petty collect like junk in a nightstand drawer. My city was bravely falling apart and I was thinking about myself, my demise, my bold death, my not being around to witness the birth of my daughter because I was on that plane.

Petty, strictly defined, because the little things are important. A few months ago, someone sideswiped my parked Volvo 240 Classic. (At times, I am defined by my car.) I accused everyone on my block for denting the fender. I even blamed my wife with the old, "How could you not notice this?" as if she were somehow responsible for being out on the street, without my knowing, between the hours of 12 to 6 in the morning, staring at the front of my car. Mind you, it was she who brought it to my attention; I probably wouldn't have noticed it for days. The real problem with my nitpicking obsessiveness is that I don't remember when I started to give a damn about cars or, for that matter, a damn about anything but my own paltry existence.

Self-absorbed because I am a writer and, you may have already noted, this essay starts out as an "In Memoriam," but now centers on me. Obviously, society is to blame for me being this way.

Misanthropic, not necessarily because I am but because I want to be. This is a trait of mine acknowledged mostly by others. I suppose it has something to do with my mood swings, my insistence that everyone else is wrong, and with my conservatively liberal beliefs. In truth, I am a misanthrope because others so often bore me (a defining, crotchety old man statement).

My priorities are rent asunder. I have my morning of the attacks story, the "I couldn't write for weeks" line, and the "Everything seems so unimportant now" response. I have no great new opinion, no gem of wisdom to offer. I am a 31-year-old writer expecting the birth of my daughter and trying desperately not to overreact to every little ache and pain my wife experiences. A sneeze:  "Oh my God." A cramp:  "Should we go to the hospital?" I am a writer, an average-to-good-one on a regular basis, and my implicit failure as husband, friend, and son will soon be explicit failure if I continue to modify my existence with proof that I am petty, self-absorbed, and misanthropic.

Jane. Born, raised and living on Staten Island, her name was Jane Baezler and she was one of those great people eulogized, but more magnificent in reality.