At the time, he was doing specific things for a 24-hour period and then writing about them. So that morning, after contemplating driving to Salem to report as a volunteer, he decided to instead spend the next 24 hours observing and writing. “I didn’t know how to respond other than to write,” he says.
He played with his cat, who was entertained by a scratching post and a strand of string. “It would have been a good day to be a cat,” he says. He went to the post office. He rode the MAX. In the afternoon he went to the zoo. “The zoo wasn’t any different than any other day,” he says. “My guess is that parents just said, ‘We’re going to the zoo.’” Driving along Northeast Broadway, approaching a store called Elmer’s that specializes in flags, he noticed the line was pouring out the front door and snaking around the block. “I understand patriotism,” Matthew says, “but what the hell does a flag do?” Big flags on big trucks in one of his recollections.
One thing that stands out for him is hearing, over and over, the people on television announcing that things had changed forever. “It was annoying,” he says. “Of course things change. Don’t tell me that before anyone knows how they have changed.”
He does recall crying over the events of the day and what they foretold. “We immediately went after quick, severe retaliation,” he says. “I knew we’d retaliate with force, and given who was in charge at the time I knew it wouldn’t be very well thought out.”
He rented a few videos. “Something light,” he says, not recalling specific titles. And he looked out the window of the apartment he and his wife lived in at the time and there, in the courtyard, was the couple from across the hall with their infant, having a picnic. “Watching them doing something as simple as having a picnic,” he says, “there was a sense of innocence that had not been lost.”
