beejayw1
09-23-2002, 08:51 PM
Hi, all -
I'm back after a business trip to NYC onto which I tacked a visit to a good old friend, the sort you've known for over half your life, and can't imagine living without. Anyhow, I had to be in Manhattan, and felt I should visit the World Trade Center (now 'Ground Zero'), something I hadn't done since well before 9/11.
I used to go into Manhattan pretty often until about two years ago, and I was not looking forward to seeing the changes. You get used to things, to landmarks, to guiding beacons, as it were.
My first visit to Manhattan came some time around 1982, in the middle of a wet snowstorm that obscured all the street signs. I went to the office in the financial district, audited the files I was supposed to audit, and left to go home.
The problem was, I couldn't see the street signs, I was a lot younger, I was in a strange city, and I was getting panicky. I knew I needed to get to the basement of the World Trade Center, catch the PATH train to New Jersey, and then switch to the AMTRAK train to Philadelphia. But the landmarks I'd been trying to follow - Chemical Bank buildings - appeared to have been a bad choice. Every building, it seemed, had its Chemical Bank building.
Finally, nearly in tears, I went into a bank. "Excuse me," I said to one of the tellers, "Can you tell me how to get to the World Trade Center?"
She smiled and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. I looked out the picture window and saw, looming through the snow, those two towers. I knew where I was, and I knew how to get home. I almost swore they smiled at me.
Well, maybe they were a symbol of wealth and power. I don't know. To me, they were a sign of welcome, of shelter, pointing the way home.
So now, today. And it was strange.
Have you ever looked for a mountain on a starry, moonless night and only been able to make it out because there were no stars there? It was a little like that. I didn't know how to get to where they were; they weren't there to show me. So I started walking, hoping I was headed in the right direction.
I ended up at Battery Park, at first. I found something eerily familiar. A globe, torn and battered, and I thought "What a fitting sculpture to commemorate a world being torn apart! I wonder what it memorializes..." And then I stepped closer and realized what it was: the sculpture of the globe that had stood before the World Trade Center. I'd seen it so many times in its glory. Now, battered and torn, it stood as a sort of shrine.
I realized I was farther south than I should have been, so I set myself to hike up toward Ground Zero. There were people there - withdrawn folks, keeping their thoughts to themselves, a member of the Hasidim, with his prayer shawl and his book, murmuring his prayers and swaying forward and backward to the rhythm of his words. People looking for the emotions, people hoping to find others in the grip pf strong emotion, with cameras at the ready to capture it.
I caught several people trying to photo graph me; perhaps my expression was odd. There were, of course, the inevitable vendors of NPYD and FDNY hats, of Tshirts, of recordings of speeches and of photographs. Perhaps ten years ago I might have snarled at them. Now, I''m not so sure.
Not far from Ground Zero, around old Trinity Church, there was an exhibit of memorials: photos, letters, prayers for peace and a deepening sense of love, photos of newlyweds, poems, outpourings of sympathy, hope and love from all over the world.
I took photos today, and here they are:
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4291328487
I'm glad I went, but I think I'll sorting through my emotions over the next several days.
I'm back after a business trip to NYC onto which I tacked a visit to a good old friend, the sort you've known for over half your life, and can't imagine living without. Anyhow, I had to be in Manhattan, and felt I should visit the World Trade Center (now 'Ground Zero'), something I hadn't done since well before 9/11.
I used to go into Manhattan pretty often until about two years ago, and I was not looking forward to seeing the changes. You get used to things, to landmarks, to guiding beacons, as it were.
My first visit to Manhattan came some time around 1982, in the middle of a wet snowstorm that obscured all the street signs. I went to the office in the financial district, audited the files I was supposed to audit, and left to go home.
The problem was, I couldn't see the street signs, I was a lot younger, I was in a strange city, and I was getting panicky. I knew I needed to get to the basement of the World Trade Center, catch the PATH train to New Jersey, and then switch to the AMTRAK train to Philadelphia. But the landmarks I'd been trying to follow - Chemical Bank buildings - appeared to have been a bad choice. Every building, it seemed, had its Chemical Bank building.
Finally, nearly in tears, I went into a bank. "Excuse me," I said to one of the tellers, "Can you tell me how to get to the World Trade Center?"
She smiled and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. I looked out the picture window and saw, looming through the snow, those two towers. I knew where I was, and I knew how to get home. I almost swore they smiled at me.
Well, maybe they were a symbol of wealth and power. I don't know. To me, they were a sign of welcome, of shelter, pointing the way home.
So now, today. And it was strange.
Have you ever looked for a mountain on a starry, moonless night and only been able to make it out because there were no stars there? It was a little like that. I didn't know how to get to where they were; they weren't there to show me. So I started walking, hoping I was headed in the right direction.
I ended up at Battery Park, at first. I found something eerily familiar. A globe, torn and battered, and I thought "What a fitting sculpture to commemorate a world being torn apart! I wonder what it memorializes..." And then I stepped closer and realized what it was: the sculpture of the globe that had stood before the World Trade Center. I'd seen it so many times in its glory. Now, battered and torn, it stood as a sort of shrine.
I realized I was farther south than I should have been, so I set myself to hike up toward Ground Zero. There were people there - withdrawn folks, keeping their thoughts to themselves, a member of the Hasidim, with his prayer shawl and his book, murmuring his prayers and swaying forward and backward to the rhythm of his words. People looking for the emotions, people hoping to find others in the grip pf strong emotion, with cameras at the ready to capture it.
I caught several people trying to photo graph me; perhaps my expression was odd. There were, of course, the inevitable vendors of NPYD and FDNY hats, of Tshirts, of recordings of speeches and of photographs. Perhaps ten years ago I might have snarled at them. Now, I''m not so sure.
Not far from Ground Zero, around old Trinity Church, there was an exhibit of memorials: photos, letters, prayers for peace and a deepening sense of love, photos of newlyweds, poems, outpourings of sympathy, hope and love from all over the world.
I took photos today, and here they are:
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4291328487
I'm glad I went, but I think I'll sorting through my emotions over the next several days.