> Dear Wolfgang
> (and Lorenzo)
>
> Though I know HarperCollins already sent word to you, I want to
> express my personal regrets for not coming to the book fair this
> year. I was looking forward to celebrating comix, to catching up with
> friends not seen for far too long, and even to wandering through that
> endless humbling swirl of row-after-row of books in all languages
> and shapes.
>
> Everyone with access to a television set saw the cataclysmic
> destruction of the World Trade Center towers, saw it in constant
> replay, burning- and burning itself into our collective retina. I saw
> it that way too, but first saw it unmediated.That September 11th
> morning, my wife and I had just stepped out of our lower Manhattan
> home to vote in New York's election primaries. The towers had been
> our taken-for-granted neighbors, always picture-postcard visible less
> than a mile south of our front stoop. Out of the very clear, very
> blue sky, a plane roared right over our heads and smashed into the
> first tower a few minutes after we walked out our door. We had to
> get over our stunned disconnect to realize that this was no movie,
> and that our fourteen year old daughter, Nadja, was in the heart of
> the growing pandemonium.
>
> Nadja's a freshman at Stuyvesant High School, right below the towers
> (For the last couple of weeks it was used as a triage center for
> rescue workers.) A half hour after the first blast we had made our
> way into the lobby of the school to find her. It took an hour to
> locate her among the 3000 disoriented students in the ten-story
> building. Some of her classmates had parents who worked in the
> towers; some classmates had seen bodies falling past their windows.
> While we were there, the buiding momentarily lost its power and
> shook, as the South tower crumbled right outside.
>
> We got Nadja out a few minutes before the school decided to evacuate
> and we made our way home on the promenade alongside the Hudson. We
> turned back to see the North tower tremble. The core of the buiding
> seemed to have burned out, and only the shell remained-shimmering,
> suspended in the sky-before ever-so-slowly collapsing in on itself.
> Francoise shrieked "No!ŠNo!ŠNo!Š." over and over again. Nadja cried
> out: "My schoo!" while I stared slack-jawed at the spectacle, not
> believing it real until the enormous toxic cloud of smoke that had
> replaced the building billowed toward us.
>
> We headed uptown to get our ten-year old son, Dash, out of the United
> Nations school he attends; stopping at home long enough to retrieve
> some phone messages and heard, with relief, the voices of some
> friends who lived under the towers and who we had feared dead.
>
> The four of us remain shaken. We've continued functioning (I even did
> a cover for a special edition of theNew Yorker in the three days that
> followed) but whenever I walk the three block north to my studio
> these days Istill turn back-as if toward Mecca- to see if my buidings
> are still missing. Insomnia, crazy mood-surfing, short fuses and an
> inability to concentrate seems to have become our family's pattern
> for the moment.
>
> It's not that I'm afraid of flying (it seems safer than riding the
> subways actually)-and I would take pleasure in reclaiming my
> international citizenship by joining you in Frankfurt- but my leaving
> home for five days would just be too destabilizing for my immediate
> family. My sincere apologies for giving you so little notice; I hope
> you'll invite me to join you again, preferably in a future where
> comics-and all print culture-are threatened by nothing greater than
> e-books and video games.
> til then "peace" and warm wishes
>
> art

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