They promised me it would be bigger. They promised me I would feel something. I am standing on a pedestrian bridge over ground zero, and I feel nothing. Perhaps I feel a little bit disappointed by the fact that I feel nothing. It’s as if my whole life until this point beginning with the fifth grade on has been being up to the moment that I stand at ground zero, and it is like cosmic erectile dysfunction.
My relationship with September 11th has never been a meaningful one. I don’t remember where I was when the towers went down. I was in class, drawing in a notebook or maybe on the way to the bathroom or maybe taking a quiz – I don’t really know, because I didn’t find out that anything was wrong until three thirty that afternoon. My mother apparently called the school and they told her they had things covered and she didn’t need to pick me up, and then they didn’t tell us anything. Other kids parents came and took them home, but no one came and got me. I knew nothing then and hence I feel nothing now.
So I am here, and the universe is not. I am ready for an outpouring of grief, or a great revelation about my own fractured psyche (I don’t know it is fractured, but perhaps I will realize it is), or a sudden rush of patriotic enthusiasm. But I don’t. It’s a city block. It looks like a million other city blocks I have driven past back home every day, somewhere between demolished and rebuilt, a concrete wasteland with a ‘Coming Soon’ sign promising new growth. It’s a city block, not a disaster area, and it neither shocking nor moving. It simply is.
For me the whole experience was a lot different. I woke up while the second tower was still untouched, I remember I was coming up the stairs and everyone was around the tv, so I went over to watch as they were discussing the first plane, and watched without comprehension as the second plane flew into the second tower.
ReplyDeleteWe only learned a few hours later that one of my nephews (who also suffers from epilepsy) was supposed to have been interviewing in the towers that day.
Because of the black out: we didn't learn till almost at the end of the day that he was alive, not caught in the wreckage. He'd arrived too early and gone for food down the street, heard the boom, and stepped out to see ash falling from the sky.
I guess for me having actually seen it on the news, havign heard the newscasters dawning comprehension that they were watching live footage, not recorded, and that it was an attack and not an error of horrific proportions, made the whole thing much more vivid.
I don't know how I'd feel if I went there personally, but I don't think I'll ever forget the day.