A Dad Examines His Sept. 11 Fears

Comfort is going to be hard to come by today, but if there’s one thing we’ll take away from the wall-to-wall documentaries and news reports on television, it’s that others feel as bewildered, hurt and uncertain as we do.

Playwright Israel Horovitz gives voice to some of these feelings in the 50-minute filmed monologue “3 Weeks After Paradise,” being presented tonight at 7 and 10 on cable’s Bravo network.

Horovitz--the 63-year-old writer of such plays as “Indian Wants the Bronx” and “Park Your Car in Harvard Yard”--lives just minutes from the World Trade Center site. A year ago today, he and his wife heard the roar of a too-low jet and soon were filled with dread, because their youngest son was in class at Stuyvesant High School, adjacent to the trade center.

The son returned home safe, but the horror of those minutes--when Horovitz could only fear what terror might be raining down on the school--profoundly affected him.

“I wanted to check myself into an insane asylum today,” he says as artful black-and-white photography captures every line in his careworn face. “I can’t stop the nightmares or the daymares. I’m on a plane, wrestling the hijackers to the floor. I am Superdad, saving all the children of the Earth.”

In the weeks that follow, Horovitz falls into what he calls “a doomsday depression” and worries about the future, especially for his two youngest children. “I wonder if they’ll ever get to university, or if they’ll go directly from high school to war.”

Horovitz--who wrote, directed and performed the piece--inserts color snippets of home movies into his black-and-white monologue, further personalizing his thoughts. If he errs, it is in his decision to air his personal politics from time to time, which may set him apart from some of his watchers.

Most of this piece is universally felt, though.

“This is not a good time for people of imagination,” he says.

Nor for anyone else.