Thursday, December 19, 2002

Empty Sky Yesterday I had to travel to New York City on business. I have been in and out of the city numerous times since the events of 9/11. I have even had to venture downtown. I have always avoided going over there; where the World Trade Center used to stand. Yesterday was different. I made myself go over. I can't say it made those events seem anymore real. I mean, I'll never forget that day, it's like a line drawn down through my life. A different me stood on the other side of that line than the one that's here today. If anything it made the events seem more impossible, more unreal. The size of the hole (acres upon acres) and the sheer enormity of what used to be and now is not. I went in and out of those buildings thousands of times in my life. I walked through the underground concourse and took the PATH train out of that station. I looked down into the huge maw of the earth trying to remember where all of those places used to be. But a big emptiness just stared back at me. I read the list of names of the murdered and imagined them multiplied by all the family members they must have had and all the lives they touched. As far as you can tell by their names, it seemed that every race, creed and nationality must have been represented on that list. I saw the name of my wife's friend. I talked briefly to one of the construction workers there. He's been there since it happened. His son was a firefighter who died there that day. As I walked up Church Street to Chambers and cut across West Broadway to where my ride would pick me up I looked back into the bright sunlight. Other than the temperature, that day was just like this one, completely cloudless. As far away as I stood I realized that I would've still been in the shadow of those two buildings. It is hallowed ground, a cemetery, and should be respected. But we do no honor to those who were murdered by the bloodthirsty cowards if we do not rebuild or if we rebuild in a timid way. The "footprints" of the buildings should not be built upon but the site cries out for a positive statement, not a cowardly one. We make the mistake of thinking that people everywhere are pretty much the same and want pretty much the same things. I won't say that I've been everywhere, but I've seen enough of this world to know that is false. There are people in Europe with thousand year old grudges that are just as fresh in their minds as if their families were raped and killed yesterday. There are people whose whole way of thinking is so alien to ours that they might as well come from the other side of the galaxy. I don't know that all the blue jeans, Sony Walkman, computers or Coca Cola in the world will ever change that. Some people will always hate us just because we are us. 8:19:16 PM    Go Ahead, make my day  []