in hoboken, again: as far as work is concerned, this week has turned out to be a wash; as far as the rest goes, i don't need to tell you that absolutely nothing will ever wash away what we've been through as a country. as soon as i got in i was told by my boss that we could leave once we got done whatever was urgent; i was hard-pressed to think of anything that could be considered "urgent" in the world of consumer marketing, though i knew what needed to be done, and that's just about all we did this week.

i left at 11 or so, only two others were in my path train car: one was a woman dressed all in black and the other was a man holding, and i'm not exaggerating, at least 20 flags, and wearing a red & blue jacket and a u.s.a. hat. i figured that the woman was wearing the standard manhattan uniform -- basic black, worn by several other females i saw later -- and that the guy didn't lose anyone he loved in the wtc. personally, i was dressed all in black with a black umbrella -- yeah, i got that e-mail but i find little to celebrate today, besides the way that the country has pulled together: it's a day of mourning, not the 4th of july.

i had two hours until my train came and so i headed towards the park in hoboken once again. it was raining and cloudy and just nasty in general and it all seemed painfully appropriate. the smoke has, essentially, cleared; the remaining cloud, despite being more sinister in its appearance and its genesis, blended in well with the others.

extending from the railing that keeps us all from falling into the hudson and catching, quite literally, our death are small, square wooden boards whose purpose i can't divine except for the purpose all carvable objects eventually serve, i.e. the victims of hearts and love 4-ever and declarations that so-and-so was here. on a few of the boards, someone scrawled what can only be deemed emo lyrics. "i want you to know how hard it is to get over you..." unbearably earnest sentiments that, when spoken with your own voice, seem to work whereas, when sung by someone unbearably earnest, they never do. "i keep remembering how you fucking broke my heart..." probably written by a drunk kid in the dead of night months and months ago about some girl but now, for me, standing in the rain and soaking in the broken landscape, he's had his context pulled right out from underneath him. today, if i had my own wooden board, the miserablist lyric my inner 16 year-old would add would be: "i wear black on the outside because black is how i feel on the inside."