My reply, in part, was this: "Craziness is right.  Surrealism, too, any word you can think of to describe a City that is not the same, where you can't step outside your apartment without being reminded somehow of the enormity of this event – enormity in its monstrous, grammatically-approved sense – even if it's just the sight, from Roosevelt Island, of that seemingly permanent cumulus at the tip of Manhattan."

I had in mind a couple of things – aside from all the heartache and exhaustion and inconvenience of the past week – that occurred right on our doorstep.

First, on Tuesday of this week, I noticed a sign next to the elevators at 20 River Road that had apparently been up since last Thursday.  It was from Donna Cusano in 7B and was addressed to "Fellow 20 River Road Residents," the first such communication from a neighbor that I can recall since moving here, and it urged us, in red ink, to "Display the American Flag," to donate to the relief efforts, and sign up to donate blood at Goldwater Hospital.

As of September 13, she wrote, she was "displaying the only flag in all of Manhattan Park."

On that date, perhaps, the feeling of patriotism and war fervor associated with such flag-waving events in the past (the Persian Gulf War was the latest example) hadn't quite taken full hold, and it's possible she was correct.  But even without such prodding, my wife and I put up in our window Kmart's paper Red-White-and-Blue as printed in The Times on Sunday, and by that day all of Manhattan Park was duly festooned.  And Donna had edited her notice in the lobby to proclaim that she was no longer the only one.

We salute Donna Cusano.  We're not just living in a big ol' apartment building.  We can be a community.

Second, just steps away from Donna's posting, I recall an encounter last Friday with a young woman outside the doors of our building.

It was a gloomy day and she was wearing a bright yellow dress.  She approached my wife and me as we walked back from The Trellis.  "Is this safe?" she asked.  "Is it safe here?"  She was fleeing from Battery Park City and wanted to know about Roosevelt Island.  She had children and asked about the Island's schools, its transportation.  She had an appointment with a broker in the lobby of 20 River Road.  She said they could no longer live in Battery Park, they had to get out.  She was afraid.

Are we safe here?  How many others had that same question as they fled the disaster and looked ahead to such an uncertain future?