Click the link to the right to hear The Red Hot Chili Peppers version of Yertle.

And he looked down the stack.

And he saw, at the bottom, a turtle named Mack.

Just a part of the throne. And this plain little turtle

Looked up and he said, “Beg your pardon, King Yertle.

I’ve pains in my back and my shoulders and knees.

How long must we stand here, Your Majesty, please?”

“SILENCE!” the King of the Turtles barked back.

“I’m king, and you’re only a turtle named Mack.”

14 Yertle The Turtle

From the venerated classic Yertle the Turtle, this exchange between the self-appointed Turtle King and his lowest turtle servant illustrates a spirit firmly attuned to the concerns of The Occupy Movement: fairness, equal treatment, selfishness, and the dillusions of power.

Way back in the 1950s when Yertle first made his demands, Dr. Suess proved he understood the arbitrary claims of rule and the consuming greed of the corporate mandate. He proved, in simple terms even a child can understand, that when a tiny fraction of a population benefits so exclusively, and at the physical expense of so many others, that structure cannot last.

A more equitable distribution of life, liberty and the time to pursue happiness has always been our collective aim—a little more room for everyone to dream the American Dream. On Occupy Writers, more than 3,000 figures from letters and counting posted their support of the Occupy Movement, as Dr. Suess did 60 years ago.

They include another children’s author, Lemony Snickett; musical revolutionary Zach de la Rocha; poetic luminescent Anne Waldman; Ursula Le Guin for you old school sci-fi heads; personal teacher and all around wonderful human Gillian Conoley; and many more. My personal favorite is the very first, Francine Prose, who invokes Walt Whitman before she admits to the overwhelming need to weep at the brilliance of the congregation:

…I was struck by how well-organized everything was, and, despite the charge of “vagueness” one keeps reading in the mainstream media, by the clarity—clarity of purpose, clarity of intention, clarity of method, clarity of understanding of the most basic social and economic realities. I kept thinking about how, since this movement started, I’ve been waking up in the morning without the dread (or at least without the total dread) with which I’ve woken every morning for so long, the vertiginous sense that we’re all falling off a cliff and no one (or almost no one) is saying anything about it…I kept feeling these intense surges of emotion—until I saw a placard with a quote from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” And that was when I just lost it and stood there and wept.

Many other sites have cropped up to unifying writers and the 99%, including OccuPoetry. Run by poets Phillip Barron and Katy Ryan, the site invites “poetry about economic justice/injustice, greed, protest, activism, and opportunity.” It is updated regularly and January 9 features a poem by me: “Shadows of the King.” The reading is posted there and here.

That girl is a gymnast, he said.
And I asked: How do you know?—
He said he could tell
from the shape
of her body, the size
of her muscles, the way
she moved. I supposed, as I drank
my milk at the diner window,
that like knows like
and athlete to athlete, he saw
in her a kinship that he would
never find in me. I looked up
past the old, dingy windows
on Main Street. The skinny girl,
walking quickly, was gone.
And I felt every pound
of pregnancy on my body
like a deadening barbell
and I wondered if he would
reach for my hand.

—Lori D’Angelo

Anniversary

joy, rag-eyed, soft
as a morning egg,
and still the bottom
falls out of your heart
your thin feet
strange and muscular
turning towards one another
at strong angles

are they yours?
an old woman’s feet
her hands prostrate
over your words
and then again that viperous
joy, that molasses
shout, coming forth
face-up, glowingly
unalarmed

so you grow old
so the new string hums
the same note as the old
all’s well, all’s well
but then, everything’s changed

—Hannah Craig

Untitled (The first time …) from One Hundred Hungers

The first time her thick blood dampened the new moss of her body,

she opened a cloistered inner door to her mother.

Together they watched the alphabet of liquid spill out of her earth,

each cramped syllable spreading into an idiom, a dark and long language.

Her mother taught her to push the storm back

into the throne of her swelling, and later, in the dark,

she tasted the spoil of red on the tip of her finger.

Please stop, she said to the ceremonial force of this cyclamen twirling up

and inverting her center, but each month her insides descended in diamonds

and dashes. A salt-cycle of ornamented sheets and brief regeneration.

—Lauren Camp

three seeds

I waited for the rain her hair river

crows on my body I drink a cloud of hair

handmade in the bed an ocean

out of wedlock our bodies do not break

your neck slit gold from each other

and open

but I once knew who

fear a world where we love in the limb

was called my reflection down-

minted stream.  Handmade, story

I bring out a tree

will cleanse your breath,

again, having

washed myself too many

play the veena if you river again

made of eucalyptus trees.  Think

the dirt may find a home

of the sky, his pronoun

no longer appeared, in flames

and the fish may rest

in graves my body

only a wall of cicadas,

with body to break

what if a lola sky no water can dose

Italicized words from Melissa Sipin, Claire Donato, Hari Malagayo Alluri, Rachelle Cruz, Todd Wellman, Tamiko Beyer, Paul Ocampo, Serena W. Lin & Bushra Rehman.

—Ching-In Chen

Book of Nights

I

Open your book of nights,

unreadable and faded.

The sheets are damp,

your sleep bloated with rain

and the same dream, the one where

you are standing at the window

broken,

picking glass stars

from your wet mouth.

You’ve kept nothing of his

but the unbelieving children

and a faint memory

of shifting bones

But some nights,

the moon’s hard eye holds you

closer, tighter

than your body can bear.

II

He’s been warned

of her sharp white teeth,

the necklace of vertebrae kept

hidden among the underthings.

Her openmouthed kisses leave him raw,

his throat lined with salt.

She is too hungry to be trusted.

Tonight, while she sleeps,

he will fill his heart with stones,

drown it deep.

III

Sleep is not the forgetting it used to be.

You put the kettle on, wash your face,

watch fireflies crawl on the ceiling

till day breaks.

Love has locked you in this body,

fashioned your wings into tired hands

that fall open, suppliant,

on his chest

like dead spiders.

IV

Mine is a magician’s smile

styled with mirrors and smoke,

red wax scrawl, trick of the eye.

At night, when my skin is bare,

I am little more than a question.

I lay still, wait for the one who

will happen upon my true face.

When touched too gently, I say things

only trees understand.

—Danielle Boodoo Fortune

Made of rolled, recycled paper dipped in a scent “by an award winning fragrance company” topped with biodegradable erasers!

This brilliant idea (proof that there are jobs in the green industry) is featured on BuyGreen, which offers a wide variety of eco-conscious products for personal and commercial use and is one of several ethical consumer sites featured in the current issue of The Boston Review.

Just in time for holiday shopping, this comprehensive discussion of Ethical Consumerism has myriad expert voices in firsthand accounts responding to an introductory article by Dara O’Rourke. The special edition is as full as Santa’s bag when it comes to inspirational language and a defense of activist, conscious, or ethical consumption.

But one of the more practical elements is the inclusion of several consumer goods rating systems. GoodGuide is a product of O’Rourke’s own research while at UC Berkeley. The Guide is even downloadable as an app to use in an actual store. The site provides simple 1 – 10 ratings for a virtually endless number of products from shampoo to jeans. Some of the detractors in the article argue that his 1 – 10 method is not just simple, but an oversimplification, and they may have some validity.

Greentopia rates companies strictly environmentally, awarding zero to four leaves (like stars). It also caters business searches to many local areas. I was encouraged to see something from my own home receive the highest possible rating: the makers of Fat Tire Ale, New Belgium Brewery, got 4 out of 4 leaves.

Better World Shopper grades companies (literally A through F) according to five categories—human rights, the environment, animal protection, community involvement, and social justice—free online and provides more comprehensive portable guides for a fee.

Project Label is largely reader-driver, opening it up to the whims and biases of voters, but they have these handy Social Nutrition Labels that break down a company’s impact like the nutrition guide on the sides of food items. They also list ethical awards a company has won to help them earn that rank.

Rankings vary among the sites and can seem counterintuitive. As with GoodGuide, many of the ratings on Project Label are fairly liberal. For example, Nestle receives an overall 74.2% when Better World Shopper gives Nestle an F. Trader Joe’s, a store the layperson like myself might perceive as ethical, gets a C on Project Label, just two stars—leaves—on Greenopia, but a big A- on Better World Shopper. There are similarities as well though: Gap and Levi’s both score in the 80s on these sites; Patagonia is praised by all.

Know More is a wiki, with Wikipedia’s well-known and easy to navigate page layout. The site was started by poets Bernard Dolan and Sage Francis. The articles posted on company history and behavior are informative and current. The startling, behind-the-consumer-curtain images are what may stay with you though.

There are more sites in the Boston Review article, too many to have investigated by this time. And that seems to be key to sort out the contradictory information on some of them.  But if you are charging into the holiday fray to charge your way to present heaven, or if you want to buy the greenest jacket this season, these sites of ethical consumerism are definitely worth visiting.

Additional sites listed in the article: Alonovo hones online shopping choices to ethical preferences; Ethiscore; Evo; Skin Deep; and ShopWell ,dedicated to healthy food choices.

Many students proved to be just as, if not more informed than I. But many were still completely ignorant of the national protests, which is why I was comfortable lending the time to the discussion. A moment of this significance should not be ignored by the country’s future citizens of consequence; it should not be treated like a distraction from the glut of vampire films and glitzy cell phones.

Knowledgeable students seemed to be utilizing their electronic savvy to enhance their civic engagement. They introduced the class to several youtube clips of live footage of the protests, including Officer Pike pepper spraying the UC Davis students repeatedly, the resulting meme of him pepper spraying everything from the Mona Lisa to the Constitution to Snoopy, and to the particularly provocative video of an unknown officer in Oakland who uses a flash-bomb to disrupt a handful of protesters who have congregated—on the other side of the police barricade—around an injured, unconscious man. That man would later turn out to be an Iraq war veteran.

Some students disagreed with the movement, some supported it. But a majority of the class saw this particular action as unconscionable and simply wrong.

This led to broader topic discussions of civic engagement and forms of responsibility. I challenged students to engage others during their Thanksgiving, rather than recede into personal media devices, rather than let the day run without incident in an attempt not to anger someone politically or religiously. Sympathetic debate is all too absent in our popular culture, with media figures and organizations dominating discussion with vociferous bombast. Face to face conversation with extended family members who might disagree with your views—perhaps significantly disagree—can remind everyone that policies are not absent people.

The second direction of the discussion turned to the purpose and tactics of the police, where it’s easy to generalize. Students—many people in fact—love to hate the police, calling them power trippers and corrupt. To these claims, I usually ask students about the last time they interacted with an officer. Was it receiving a ticket? Being somehow reprimanded?

Most of us might have a negative impression of police officers because most of the time we encounter one, we’re on the receiving end of punishment. The method by which this punishment is delivered is up for debate, however.

It’s also beneficial to see both of these actions—at CSU Davis and Occupy Oakland—as the work of individuals. The question, though, is this: Do those individuals belong to a group that encourages, condones, supports those actions such that the individuals had no reason to second-guess themselves? Has the atmosphere of that institution—our police force—grown so hostile—in general, and to the civilian force specifically—that attacking, rather than protecting civilians is now part of the mindset of some officers, if not a reflex in others?

Because surely the officers we see today are not those I at least grew up being told to admire. When Sesame Street played “Who are the people in your neighborhood?” it told me to trust the police. But the volume of instances of police brutality and abuse of power associated with Occupy or outside is too large to ignore.

And in the CSU example, the extended video clearly shows Officer Pike surrounded by a horde of other officers, pepper spray visible to all for several minutes. His actions are a surprise to no one.

Recent articles in The Nation and Los Angeles Times suggest 9/11 as the cause of a creeping militarized response to group movements. In Fullerton, California, Kelly Thomas—a homeless man with schizophrenia familiar to residents—was beaten to death by 6 officers in 2011, but the beating of Rodney King happened in 1991: 9/11 can’t be the sole reason.

In the above situations, adrenaline and groupthink are often blamed, a groupthink that insulates officers from self-doubt and responsibility and exaggerates their sense of authority. The police do have unenviable, extremely high stress jobs that continually place them in conflict, which is why increased and intensive counseling should be mandatory for all officers. This would alleviate the routine emotional buildup involved with police work and counter the macho, independent silence that characteristic of the field.

In California, the minimum requirement for a CHP officer is a high school diploma. This too should be revisited. If only to join the bandwagon, educational requirements are going up, up, up in our country—the police, as figures of authority in our neighborhoods and elsewhere, ought to be reflective of the majority’s background and ability.

Policing comes with just this special demarcation of knowledge. They serve not just as agents of protection (or punishment), but as agents of situational authority. A significant line exists between officers and civilians—especially in protest situations, which are not as simple as speeding, but are social demonstrations of broader, vaguer struggles of judgment. Protests, union actions and the like are manifestations of power, which in our society is routinely ceded to the police. This in turn creates a populace that feels disempowered, the wonders despondently, “What can I do?” rather than asks with optimism, “What can I do?” People move deeper into isolation, escaping into personal media and other diversions as they feel less and less like legitimate citizens.

Social movements such as Occupy or organized labor solidify responsibility within the community once more, the same community that promoted the police department—and theoretically the individuals it employs—to its position. When the purpose of that authorized group splits so radically as it arguably has from its original empowering purpose, a deep realignment should occur. Individual citizens acting as moral and social authorities in their own right is one excellent corrective method. Using cell phone cameras to become citizen journalists is another. Pondering aloud the practical philosophy of the organization is another.

As an educator, I have worked in some diverse places, including a mental hospital. My first post-graduate teaching position came, shamefully, at a for-profit—the kind advertised in the middle of the day during commercial breaks for The Price is Right and Tyra Banks. The school in question had a few specializations such as video game programming, interior design, and criminal justice.

Regardless of the decision-making process of all who choose to pay $40k a year for knowledge you could get for exponentially less, the lowest performing students in my classes were inevitably the criminal justice majors. I cannot say that they went on to become police officers.

I do not know that they bumbled their way into a uniform and firearm like Alex’s lackeys in A Clockwork Orange. Though during one class, one students was actually served papers by uniformed officers for a domestic dispute. The student had been dodging it for weeks and refused to take them from the officers who dropped them at his feet.

The final disturbing insight into the group’s mentality came when I asked one student why she even wanted to become a cop. Her unflinching answer was “So I can carry a gun.”

Of course, Barbie is still biologically-impossible-fabulous! as she graphs, measures, and charts the dimensions of her eco-friendly doll house. Outfits for the line will appear professional, while still suggesting girlish frivolity, undoubtedly.

The full, linked article appears on Mother Jones where writer Matt Hickman says “Past ‘I Can Be …’ Barbies have included movie star, veterinarian, dentist, lifeguard, news anchor, racecar driver, ballerina, and, ummm, bride.”

Coincidentally, dirtcakes was recently inspired by an art exhibit featuring imagined Barbies, repurposed doll-sculptures that explore the stereotyped, suppressed, and assaulted feminine that is perpetuated by the Barbie myth. Images of the re-visioned Barbies from artists Melissa Avila and Jill Wade are prominent elements of our upcoming issue 3: Girls Will Be Women. Also in the issue will be the winner of the Inaugural dirtcakes poetry contest, Leah Greene’s Beningo Street – Wife, alongside stunning work from artists and writers such as Cristin O’Keefe Aptowitz, Lauren Camp, Ching-In Chen, Anna Leahy, and Jeanann Verlee.

To all who contributed and submitted, thank you. We look forward to publishing another issue.

Three women share the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

Leymah Gbowee, Liberian Peace Activist
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
Tawakul Karman, a Yemeni rights activist

are honored for their “non-violent struggles for women’s rights.”

Click the grey arrow below to hear Thorbjørn Jagland announce the award on UN Radio.

Thank heaven for little girls who will become women of peace.

“Girls Will Be Women”

Coming soon.

Japanese flower arrangers doing Ikebana (Japanse bloemschikkers bezig met Ikebana)
Nationaal Archief Holland.  Photo Courtesy of Flickr: Commons

 __________________________________________________________________________

Yes, we feel you watching and waiting for “Girls Will Be Women.”  To pass the time, we offer a small interlude before dirtcakes Issue Number Three arrives in print.

Consider this: In creative endeavors, there’s a magical quality to the number three.

For example, floral arranging has Ikebana, a Japanese discipline where the practitioner uses a plant’s blossom, stem, and leaves to design an overall triangular form.

Artists and photographers divide scenes into imaginary grids of three lines – both horizontal and vertical.  Images with the most visual interest and tension are created when there’s a balance of empty space with a focal point within each third.

Writers too are well-versed in The Rule of Three. One of the most basic structural breakdowns used to describe a story is that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  Plays and films use the three-act structure.  Character threesomes appear ubiquitously. Think of  The Three Musketeers, Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. And then these three characters interact while they try and fail, then try again and fail differently, and finally succeed, or fail, spectacularly depending.

So it seems only natural that we here at dirtcakes are especially excited to pause and reflect on the beauty of three as we await our third print edition.

In our first year, we published two print editions, sponsored a Poetry Contest and a Poetry Reading to Benefit the St. Lucia Red Cross, and featured an emerging writer’s take on becoming the voice for a new generation.

Our writers represent Argentina, Canada, China, Denmark, England, Ireland, India, Japan, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, Thailand, the US, and Vietnam.  More importantly, each writer and photographer was paid for his or her work, a rarity in the literary magazine publishing world.

If you’d like to support what we do here and own your own copy of these first two editions, please click on “The Hunger Issue” and “School Me” links on the home page.  We still have some back issues available for sale.

Our next issue, “Girls Will Be Women,” will feature the winning entry from our First Annual Poetry Contest.  We couldn’t be happier to introduce you to Leah Greene’s poem, “Beningo Street–Wife.”  It was selected and read by Lynne Thompson as part of the dirtcakes co-sponsored fundraiser for St. Lucian victims of Hurricane Thomas.

Lastly, we’ll open submissions up again soon as we look for contributions to our “Oh Baby” issue, Dedicated to Goal #4: Reduce Infant Mortality.

But that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves.
Right now, it’s time time to balance the finishing touches of Issue Number 3.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, 7:30AM PST

I didn’t see any of my friends. At my Southern California Catholic girls’ high school, the campus seemed emptier than usual, the mood subdued. The North tower fell during the drive to school, as I turned from Lynn Road onto Janss a bare minute from campus, and now girls in green plaid skirts stood on the grass speaking in low voices. And then I remembered: I was in Campus Ministry, assigned that week to read prayer during morning announcements over the loudspeaker to the entire school.

Yesterday I had used Dreams Alive, a slim volume of prayers written by teenagers, full of uplifting musings on hope and friendship and loyalty, and in this moment I knew only that this pathetic collection was utterly useless to me. I headed for the lunch patio, sat at one of the tables and tore a sheet of college-ruled paper from my pre-calc notebook. I held a pencil and tried to give shape to what had happened. To write.

That would be the year I started taking writing seriously, spending evenings curled on the couch scrawling essays and poems in a green binder after finishing AP French homework or Jane Eyre passages. A year later during a college scholarship interview when I expressed a desire to write for a living, a professor asked what would keep me from giving up after, say, a year in the real world. I searched for how to explain.

“It is me,” I said simply.  I won the scholarship.

After first period, I made my way as usual to the front office. Our principal was already standing at the microphone. I stood in the hallway outside as she introduced the teacher who would lead us in prayer for the families of the victims and the terrorists themselves.

It never occurred to me that official representatives of the school might not wish to leave the perspective on this day in the hands of a 16 year-old girl.

I listened, folded my paper away into my notebook, and went to class.

Sunday, May 1, 2011, 11:30PM EST

I had come on a weekend recon mission to New York, to a hostel in East Williamsburg, the less fashionable edge of the artsy, hipster-ridden Brooklyn neighborhood, to find a place for myself. I wanted to walk New York, neighborhood by neighborhood, seeking a sense of belonging that would allow me to leave family, friends, an editing career, a state where, apart from a four-month study abroad stint in India, I had spent my entire life.

The Village Voice, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair: maybe they would cease to flicker like mirages on a dreamy horizon if I found a home base.  Yet I wondered if I could ever truly be a part of this city.  I imagined a permanent chasm:  the natives who survived September 11th, and everyone who came after.

The thing about a hostel in New York City is that no one there is actually from New York. I was sitting in the TV loft overhanging the kitchen, where teens and 20-somethings were making a late dinner, checking their Facebook pages, or murmuring in accented English, when Fox News ran the ticker — “Osama Bin Laden Dead” — and the stirrings began. Soon a cluster of residents from countries across the globe had gathered behind me upstairs, anticipating Obama’s speech: Finland, Spain, Germany, Korea. We switched to CNN and leaned in close.

Obama’s careful use of the first person at the critical moment disappointed me: “I directed,” “I determined.” And though part of me felt undeniably relieved, the thought of the U.S. government carrying out an execution order troubled me. I cringed at the final invocation of the Pledge of Allegiance: a benediction.

For a few moments, no one spoke. Finally, with a half-measure of dread, I turned around.

“What did you think?”

“Well, that was embarrassing,” Germany said.

“They should have held a trial,” Finland insisted. “Innocent until proven guilty, right?”

My head felt thick. The night I arrived in New York, my fifth cold in as many months had hit me. The square of skin under my nose had permanently chapped. I was planning to head back to my dorm room when the news appeared, and by now it was nearly midnight.  A box of Tylenol PM beckoned from the metal locker next to my bed. I longed to take one, hunker down under my thin polyester blanket, and fall asleep.

My hostel-mates’ words stung, but they also struck me as wildly optimistic. Despite my misgivings, I played devil’s advocate, arguing about the logistics of capturing bin Laden alive, let alone bringing him to trial. Where on the face of the earth could you find an impartial jury? And anyway, no one doubted bin Laden was behind the attacks. Hadn’t he taken credit, boasted? But Finland was adamant.

“Things are going to get bad for the U.S. in the Middle East,” he promised.

CNN’s camera panned a mob cheering outside the White House and I spoke aloud. “I wonder if anyone is at Times Square?”

Spain grabbed his smartphone and searched Twitter. “Not much happening here,” someone had tweeted moments ago, “but people are gathering at Ground Zero.”

I hoarded tissues and bundled into everything warm in my suitcase, then we plotted the 45-minute route from Morgan Avenue into Manhattan. By the time we switched from the L line to the E, college students were singing, and the guys had grabbed beers. But I tried to steel them and myself for Ground Zero. People there didn’t want to hear political debates tonight, I warned them. They were coming to remember and grieve: to light candles, lay flowers, stand vigil.

The first thing I saw when we emerged from the subway stairs at the World Trade Center stop was two guys hanging off the Church Street light pole. One of them sprayed a bottle of champagne at a cheering crowd. The other shook an enormous American flag.

Hundreds of people crammed into the square outside Ground Zero. Mostly young, they waved flags and hastily-made signs and snapped pictures on their iPhones. The noise was deafening. Among them roved professional news crews, guiding massive cameras on their shoulders; I even saw a local TV news anchor whose face I recognized from a subway ad. I pulled out my work-assigned Blackberry.

May 1 at 1:19am via Facebook Mobile: Singing the national anthem at ground zero. Pretty emotional. 

We made our way closer to the Church Street light post, soon to be rechristened “Win Street” by some kid with blue painter’s tape. Pressed up against my neighbors, I heard a petite brunette woman introduce herself as a correspondent for a British newspaper. She was interviewing a pseudo-intellectual type in a green army jacket and glasses who a few minutes before had been grandstanding about hope from atop the light pole. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, and she rolled them at something the guy said. I wondered what she had been doing earlier — relaxing with a boyfriend or husband, maybe having a glass of wine? Not planning on spending her evening here.

Finland determined to get himself interviewed. He left with Germany and Spain to track down a news camera, leaving me alone with Korea. I took slow, deep breaths of the cool night air, trying to head off a coughing fit. More and more people crowded into the square.

1:32am via Facebook Mobile: Starting to get pushy now.

Everywhere I turned, reporters were arriving on the scene with notepads, recorders, video cameras. I had nothing. No notebook, no recorder — not even the back of an envelope to scribble notes on.  My camera’s memory card was bloated with pictures of a high school friend’s wedding.

I was a paid writer these days — sort of. Four years I had spent weekends freelancing for a pittance at a local alternative weekly. But I worked the arts and culture beat — theater reviews, art previews. I wasn’t a news junkie. And I wasn’t on assignment tonight. I coughed, fighting an asthmatic spasm in my lungs as the mob launched into chants of “USA!”

Maybe I couldn’t work the crowd. But what kind of a journalist would just stand there, feigning patriotism and repressing ambivalence? At least I could use the one tool available to me: my Blackberry Facebook app.

1:51am via Facebook Mobile: A lot of young people in the crowd who are celebrating an ass kicking. Sign: osama: 0, obama: 1.

As I scrolled through my camera with one hand, ruthlessly deleting pictures, I updated my Facebook status with the other, switching my personal phone back and forth to text my sister. Behind me, a 30-something man in a baseball cap spoke reasonably to a TV crew, and Korea and I edged closer to him. Excuse me, I said. But I was wondering what you think of all this?

1:53am via Facebook Mobile: Quotes from the field: I’m not here to celebrate the death of a terrorist. A lot of people died here.

I felt a surge of appreciation, but his solemnity paled amid the Mardi Gras atmosphere. Bored with cheering, the crowd had turned to taunting.

1:54am via Facebook Mobile: Crowd’s singing nah nah nah nah nah nah nah, hey hey, goodbye

1:56am via Facebook Mobile: Sign: ding dong osama dead

A herd of college boys stood next to me. They looked like freshmen or sophomores. What do you think of the news? I asked one of them.

2:17am via Facebook Mobile:  Quotes from the field: it’s a fucking relief. Pardon the french but damn.

The mood was shifting. More and more people pushed into the square, but for those who had been there since the news broke, the pressure was mounting to up the ante. People were getting reckless.

The Church Street light post and traffic signal had been the focal point all night: a soapbox, a maypole, a stage. Blonde girls and drunk frat boys, military and intellectual types — anyone who wanted to carouse, to whip up the crowd, to feel part of something big managed to pull themselves up. Most climbed no farther than the square pedestrian walk sign.

2:18am via Facebook Mobile: Now some idiot is inching out above the street on a lightpole.

A tendril of toilet paper was billowing gently in the breeze from the traffic signal hanging over the street, and the kid was shimmying toward it. It was difficult going and he soon gave up, but not for long. He backed up, and instead of climbing out, climbed up: past the pedestrian sign, past the Church Street sign, till he was clinging the curved base of the streetlight shining down on the crowd. You could hear the exact moment when the high cheers below deepened into alarm.

2:22am via Facebook Mobile: Some idiot climbed to the very top of the lightpole and was confused the crowd didn’t cheer. The chant? Get back down!

The crowd underneath was dense, but not so dense he wouldn’t still break his neck, or someone else’s, if he fell. It didn’t matter, though. As he picked his way down, nearly a dozen more took his place.

2:24am via Facebook Mobile: 9 people on the lightpole. One of them is pretending to fly like superman while hanging over the street. If he dies will people keep partying?

I couldn’t watch. I put away my Blackberry. I started talking with Lawrence, a jazz saxophonist from the Upper East Side in his 50s or 60s. I told him about wanting to move here. He had been in New York for 9/11, most of his life in fact. Everything was different after that, he said. The mood of the whole city was down. It took a long time for things to pick back up again.

I get that, I said. The New Yorkers here tonight seem muted, reflective. Not like the rest of this crowd. So young — most of them weren’t even in the city when it happened. They were kids.

Lawrence gestured to the crowd. “Yeah, but to these kids. . . Osama bin Laden was the bogeyman.”

By 3 a.m., the crowd was thinning out. Korea and I looked for the others, but they had long since disappeared into the knot under the traffic signal. We gambled against the $50 cab fare and opted instead for a long, eerie subway ride home with the drunks. I finally fell into bed after 4 a.m.

I made my way back to Ground Zero around noon the next day. I needed a chance to mourn after the cacophony of last night. The blue painter’s tape was still plastered over the Church street sign. Someone was selling American flags for $3, and entrepreneurs had already silkscreened the day’s headlines onto t-shirts. It felt like every news outlet in the country had a team on the street. Police were shuttling crowds of people through the crosswalks, but most of them seemed to be milling about, looking for something to photograph.

On one stretch of the fence shielding the Ground Zero construction, passers-by had pinned front pages from the daily papers with their screaming banner headlines. The Star Ledger: “‘Justice has been done.’” The Daily News: “Rot in Hell!” The Post: “Got Him! Vengeance at last! U.S. nails the bastard.” Below them, a photoshopped image of the Statue of Liberty brandishing bin Laden’s bloodied head.

In front of the headlines, framed by the outline of the new Freedom Tower rising amid the dust, stood a kid silently holding a homemade sign — Brian Beckley, I would later learn, a jazz musician from Seattle. His sign bore a John Donne quotation, one of many that would soon go viral online: “Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.”

I wandered over to St. Paul’s Chapel, across the street from where the World Trade Center Towers once stood.  St. Paul’s serves as an unofficial 9/11 memorial, a place where rescue workers and firefighters received care and encouragement during the raw early days after the attacks. Letters and cards of gratitude, and photos and mementos of the lost are still on display at impromptu altars.

My previous visits here had featured shuffling schoolchildren and chattering tourists on pilgrimage.

I craved stillness. I wondered how I could possibly provide a perspective on this new day, the ending of a story begun almost ten years earlier. Today, it was quiet. I picked up my Blackberry to update my status, but then I slipped it away into my purse.

The time for words would come later.

_____________________________

Jenny Lower is a writer and editor living in Ventura, California.

For many in Generation Y, the events of September 11, 2001 unfolded while sitting at school desks.  Teachers were the first responders, charged with delivering age-appropriate news to upturned faces of children while simultaneously attempting to make sense of what was going on from terse announcements and television snippets.

Even President George W. Bush, was interrupted with the news while reading to students in a classroom at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida.

The generation that grew up quickly at school one Tuesday morning in September is now to poised to add its voice to a post- 9/11 America. dirtcakes went looking for an emerging writer to explore, in a thoughtful and quiet way, the role that writing plays in capturing a sense of time, place, and perspective of major historical events.

When the dust settles, when the initial raucous reaction fades, how will we remember and make sense of our world?

For a special “School Me” post publication feature, please check back with us on September 13 to read Jenny Lower’s response to “What did you learn one September?”