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Twenty-three years … 9/11

The vicissitudes of life create pathways of a present tense of existence.

One asks have I performed this or that task? Met the needed deadlines? Balanced all of the varying strands to ensure that I am reasonably on point in concert with the strains and stresses of any given day?

There are, however, those moments when free in mind and spirt I will walk along Brooklyn Bridge Park and in glancing up notice the sky. It is when I cannot help but gasp at the absence of my twin towers of memory.

They were the locating beacon points of the City I love. The edifices that always startled my imagination when I looked up to grasp their presence rising above the city scape.

And they always were a grand surprise. Whether shrouded in mist with the early glow of light on a rainy evening, or majestic as I would walk in and amongst them. Marveling at their symmetry and the quietude of the plaza where they stood so gracefully.

Their loss is also incalculable. So many lives snuffed out on the day they fell and in the succeeding years as first responders have succumbed to 9-11 illnesses.

But there is also the loss of how wars played out in their name leading to yet more death and destruction and a sense of existential threat and imbalance I would argue the USA has yet to recover from.

Were we to enable the symbol of symmetry again, we might, perhaps find ourselves. Understand that while we must defend, we must also have the balance of sure-footedness. That existential threat can be overcome by letting go of our attachment to fear of the unknown. That by embracing our past and our present, we can feel more confident in our future.

I still ache for the towers because they are my memory of place, not from some nostalgic sense, but for a sensibility that embraces the surprise and joy of seeing an old friend made new again. Their absence is also the symbol of a kind of anger and tactic of terror I eschew at every turn. Yes. I understand the politics of terror. It is out of a very old play book. What I have always hoped for and continue to strive for though is a world where such plays are no longer necessary. Perhaps I remain naive to think that such things can exist–but in my city of memory they do exist as two giant towers to the sun that bring light and a boundless sense of joy into being.

Twenty-two years … 9/11

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In a recent conversation with my dear friend Achim whom I had not seen in many years, I was reminded of the impact 9/11 had on all of us who called New York City our home.

He lived in the West Village in those days a couple of blocks from the Hudson River. His memories were filled with the shock of the experience, but also of how community had grown. He’d walk with neighbors to the West Side Highway to cheer on the workers making their way to the still smoking pile of concrete, glass, twisted steel; the tomb of the people who’d never made it out of the towers. His particular group moved to exuberance through their tears as turning back in silence, duty done, they’d walk back in a funereal silence.

Watching the towers as they collapsed was a waking nightmare in real time. Experiencing the incredulity that something so mighty as the twin towers could evaporate in seconds, one after the other, imploding as an accordion pancaking in on itself. The mind playing tricks, thinking, “What will it be like to have only one tower?” before the second one collapsed a mere thirty minutes later.

I saw it from my daughter Izzi’s window on Sackett Street in Brooklyn to the south west of the towers. My view of the tip of Manhattan unobstructed where the pair of buildings had always stood as an edifice of my New York.

There are days when I cannot fathom much of the world that has grown in the space of the buildings’ absence. What I am grateful for is to still be here along with my fellow denizens of New York who call the City our home.

The hole in the sky

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Seventeen years today…

I chose to remember joy, even though my heart aches for the losses.

For the hole in the sky.

For the people I mourn.

For an America that was less fractured by revenge, less intent on unraveling progress, less mean in its pursuit of something tangible that has seemingly been lost.