Peripheral Vision
The events in the following story took place a little less than one month before September 11, 2001. After that morning of crumbled steel, chalk-faced survivors and those not remotely fortunate, I've found it nearly impossible to convince myself that my story -- or any story unrelated to the aftermath of mourning and death -- might matter. It is harder still to believe that my small act of non-complacence -- one that resulted in nothing but the discovery of a dead man, dead for hours -- is anything but meaningless after hundreds of professional heroes died making their livings. And, in truth, my story and my actions amount mostly to zero. But I can't shake the feeling that, a month before the onset of our modern madness, an image of a stiff corpse under a bush in Central Park had hold of my dreams; and that now, along with airplane noses feeding explosions, and building-shaped columns of dust that held for a moment before joining the breeze, this August morning image matters, a year later, for me.