unexpected walk

seduced by the view from the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, i walked from the meatpacking district to One WTC. i wonder if that was a mistake.

i was not in nyc on 9/11. i've never lived there. i have no family on manhattan island, although my cousin was in college near there that day. but seeing the building on monday, this new, replacement, feel-better edifice, i felt sick. i'm not sure if i have a right to such visceral emotion in this instance. nevertheless, it was there.

i'd been to the site twice since the attack. the first time, in dec `02, though a year had passed, there was nothing but a gaping hole, & a few stray girders littered the scene. i remember it seeming as if some beast had ripped the city's heart out & left the cavity in tatters, in hopes that nyc would bleed to death. the second time was in dec `06, when my family took Thomas, a Korean exchange student, to nyc for the first time. sure, the rubble had been removed, & the ground smoothed over, but it was still a hole. a giant, cavernous hole that could never be filled.

so prior to this third visit, i'd hoped that seeing the memorial would somehow make me feel stronger & restore my faith in something, i didn't even know what. to see action & honor, rebuilding & remembering, i'd come out all the better for it.

i was mistaken. all it did was bring back the vicious bile of that morning.

i remember exactly where i was, as i'm sure everyone basically does.

sleeping. at home. alone. the phone rings. do i have to get up? i roll over, trying to will the ringer into shutting up & thus rid myself of this incessant, irritating, unsolicited nudge to get out of bed. it doesn't stop. fine. wake me up early. bastards. & if it was a company solitication, God help them.

"turn on the TV!"

that's all i remember derek saying. when i did, i fell apart. i couldn't believe what i was seeing on the screen before me. it couldn't be true. this doesn't happen, not here. one building was burning. then it happened again. the other building was joining its neighbor, ablaze, their smoke rising to the heavens along with how many souls.

though i know it was folly, i thought--if i keep watching, something will get better, somebody will say it's okay. thus without wanting to, i watched people jump to their deaths. is this heart-shearing inferno, & the way it kept me captive, is this what it means to be America?

terrified doesn't even begin to describe the shrieks & cries that were exploding from my heart. through the miracle of modern media, i watched Death throw its shroud over the city, over the nation, in real time. i'd never seen this kind of darkness before &, even at age 21, had never been to a funeral. so this was the introduction. a fine "how do you do."

i grieved for the victims & their families & our country, but i also grieved for my father. at the time, he was still active military, & i knew what this was: those planes were all part of a massive declaration of war. & i knew that he might have to leave, to go to some unknown part of the world & fight an enemy i'd never seen & could not comprehend. i was angry. because whoever did this, not only had they killed thousands of people, but they could also kill my father someday.

fortunately, (for me, i guess), he was never deployed, although i know he burned with his instinct to defend his country. just knowing that he *could* have been put in peril, that the then-nameless They might have the chance to take his life too, was enough to make me rage at the attack, at Them, & at my own powerlessness.

these feelings have lessened with time, although i'm not sure if they will ever, or should, fully disappear. i'm frightened that i had that kind of capacity for anger, & what shook me most in visiting this memorial was the question if i'll ever near such infernal depths of emotion again. indeed, the promontory looming over those waves was close. far too close.