From the Air

As a child, I was a kind of a sky worshipper.

This was the Midwest and the sky was so vast.

It was most of the world.

I knew I had come from there.

And that some day, I would go back

What are days for?

To wake us up.

To put between the endless nights

What are nights for?

To fall through time, into another world

[Helicopter noises]

I live in Downtown Manhattan.

Next to the West Side Highway.

In September 2001,

after the Trade Centre fell,

everything was covered with white ash.

For months, lines of trucks moved up the highway –

-carrying the twisted metal debris from the Towers

Out at the end of the pier,

there's a strange Assyrian looking building.

And during this time,

FBI speedboats began to dock out there.

It was the beginning of a time when cameras began to appear everywhere

[Helicopter noises]

And everything was so loud, and such a mess.

I tried to get out of town as much as I could.

And I decided to go to California.

Up to the northern mountains.

With my dog Lolabelle.

Now, the idea was to take a trip,

and spend some time with her.

And do a kind of experiment

– to see if I could learn to talk with her.

Now, I'd heard that rat-terriers could understand about 500 words,

and I wanted to see which ones they were.

It was February, and the mountains were covered with tiny wildflowers.

And such a huge tall sky.

And very thin, pale, blue air.

And hawks. Circling.

Every morning we walked down to the ocean,

which took most of the day.

And what happened was – more or less

– beauty got in the way of the experiment.

It was just so beautiful up there that I forgot the whole project, really.

It just slipped my mind.

Most days the walk to the ocean took several hours.

And we would just goof around and lie down, and have snacks, and carrots

Now, rat-terriers are bred to protect borders.

So Lolabelle was always on the job.

She would trot in front of me on the trail,

doing a little advance work.

A little surveillance.

Now occasionally, out of the corner of my eye,

I'd see some hawks circling in this very lazy way, way up in the sky.

And then one morning, suddenly,

for no reason – they came swooping down right in front of me.

Dropping down through the air

– their claws wide open – right on top of Lolabelle.

And then they swooped back up and dropped back down

and I realised that they were in the middle of changing their plan.

This little white thing –

that'd looked like a tiny white bunny from 2,000 feet up

– was turning out to be just a little too big to grab by the neck

And they were making their calculations, figuring it out

And then I saw Lolabelle's face.

And she had this brand new expression.

First was the realisation that she was prey.

And that these birds had sought to kill her

And second, was a whole new thought.

It was the realisation that they could come from the air.

I mean, I never thought of that.

A whole 180 more degrees that I'm now responsible for.

It's not just the stuff down here –

the dirt, the paths, the roots, the trees - but all this too...

And the rest of the time we were in the mountains,

she just kept looking over her shoulder,

and trotting along with her head in the air.

Her eyes scanning the thin sky.

Like there's something wrong – with the air

And I thought: "where have I seen this look before?"

And then I realised it was the same look on the faces of my neighbours in New York,

in the days right after 9/11.

When they suddenly realised –

first, that they could come from the air.

And second – that it would be that way from now on.

And we had passed through a door.

And we would never be going back.