FOGGY
OVERCAST ABOVE
CLARITY
OF RAW EMOTION BELOW
EARLY MORNING
FOG SHROUDING THE FREEDOM TOWER
TAGS: 9/11 MEMORIAL, 17TH ANNIVERSARY, THE FREEDOM TOWER, THE MEMORIAL GLADE,
REFLECTING ABSENCE POOLS, READING OF THE NAMES, RITES AND RITUALS,
FDNY, NYPD, PAPD
(Tuesday September 11, 2018
The Battery, NYC) It is nearly midnight and the highly conspicuous NYPD
presence in this area earlier today has returned to normal levels. The crowds who traveled for the 17th
anniversary of the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks just blocks away this morning to
honor and memorialize their dead have returned to their homes perhaps a bit
more comforted by the day’s rituals – maybe not. This sector of Manhattan has
resumed its normal routine. The yachts
moored in the marina bob in the slight chop; the waft of music and laughter are
carried on the slight breeze from the nearby PJ O’Rourke’s and somewhere in the
distance a discordant choir of sirens wail.
But this is the very edge of Our Big Island and as such not on the
“beaten path”; yet it is this neighborhood that will forever house the Sacred Ground
upon which once Our noble Twin Towers stood as bold exclamation points for all
the world to see.
This morning broke with a low
overcast and a high fogbank that obscured the top of the Freedom Tower. Her spire pierced the fog as the happenings 1,776
feet below on the street pierced the hearts of all who gathered for what have
become annual rites; rituals such a day merit.
Born out of the NYC optimism
of the late 1960’s, the design, engineering, and construction of the World
Trade Center was as audacious as it was visionary. Their story has been told many times in many forms
but no one critic or naysayer could ever deny their raw beauty. Their deaths came as the result of a
diabolical evil, of an ultra-strident orthodoxy - a brand of radical Islam that
was unimaginable up to September 10, 2001. New Yorkers and all Americans lost
their innocence on the bright Tuesday morning 17 years ago; we learned our vast
ocean spans no longer protected our homeland from virulent terrorism. In retrospect it is painful to see just how
naïve, how vulnerable we all were. Our
sprawling federal government’s intelligence apparatus failed us, failed us in a
most negligent way.
NAMES AND TOLLS OF THE BELL
It takes four hours to read
the names of those
murdered at the WTC. The
names are read by victim’s family members in a commemoration punctuated by
moments of silence and the toll of a bell.
These moments represent the exact moments that each of the Twin Towers
were struck by the hijacked planes and the moments each tower fell in a roiling
cloud of hell. There are also moments of silence at the exact times hijacked
jets hit the Pentagon and one that crashed into a field in Shanksville,
Pennsylvania. Before the recitation of
the names of the deceased commenced, the high fog descended and hung over the Hallowed
Ground and the aggrieved like a funeral shroud. Many of the families attending
the service this morning carried enlarged photographs of the one they
lost. While those faces are frozen in
time the surviving family members show the signs of time’s passage; in some
faces the years of grief and pain are evident.
For all survivors that anguish will never evaporate; it is a heavy
burden they will bear forever.
Among those present it is
perhaps saddest to see those who were infants or young children on September
11, 2001. Now grown into their teen
years and older they mourn a mom or dad they have scant, if any real recollections
of. Some of them bear striking
resemblance to the person whose photo they carry. Several of the women who perished that day
were pregnant and their unborn children are also recognized. Yet from the abomination of that day Lower
Manhattan especially the World Trade Center site has
risen from the ashes.
The twin pools of the Reflecting
Absence memorial in what were
the foundations of the majestic towers, there are carved out what the architect
calls “voids”—a pair of black granite craters, each 192 x 192 feet square and
set 30 feet down into the footprints of the Twin Towers ⃰. Each crater boundary walls are etched with the names of all
those who died in the attacks. The voids are the focal points of what is known
as the Memorial Glade. The Glade is as much sacred ground as is any American
battlefield. The entirety of the 8.6 acres represent raw emotions while being a
staid yet elegant memorial, understated, respectful and fitting with the mood this
landmark warrants.
THE MISSION
The ceremonies and rituals
practiced on this day are as much memorializing the deceased as it is about
keeping our memories alive. There is an
entire generation growing up in the post 9/11 era. For many the events of that day may be
cursorily taught in school along with other events in recent American history. It falls to members of our Community, those
who experienced that day and the aftermath personally to tell the tales. It will be only by our firsthand accounts
that the significance of September 11, 2001 will remain relevant and recognized
for the profundity that resonates here in Our City, the entire NYC Metropolitan
Area and the United States at large.
LAST CALL
They must have given last call
at PJ’s. Three young men with neckties
undone and suits rumpled walk south talking at the annoyingly loud volume the
intoxicated often do. Their presence and
revelry beg the questions about where they were on 9/11; do they even know the
significance of the Ground just a few blocks away? Who knows.
The Cynyx among us (certainly this Cynyc) can answer these questions –
those young men are likely too young to fully understand, to recognize the
profundity of the ceremonies concluded hours ago in this neighborhood. Perhaps they viewed the highly visible Police
presence and the metal barriers that cordoned off access to The Glade as an annoyance,
an inconvenience to be tolerated on their way to work and to the tavern
afterward. Such is life.
Thousands of innocents got up
and went to work in the WTC on this day 17 years ago never to return home to
their families. For 343 MOS of the FDNY,
37 MOS PAPD, 23 MOS NYPD the Twin Towers were literally their “Last Call”, they
answered the calls to respond, went about their business escorting, carrying or
even dragging an unknown many to safety.
They truly personified The Ultimate Sacrifice, a brand of dedication and
devotion that often separates those with a calling for public service from
everyone else. This is not to value some lives more than others; not at all. It
stands as fact that as thousands descended via the stairways, many dazed, confused,
and injured hundreds of First Responders determinedly made their way upstairs.
There were also unknown accounts of bravery and sacrifice among the civilians
who found themselves in a living hell. All involved found themselves choked
between circumstance and happenstance, a nightmare scenario where the few
reacted to help save the many. If not for the efforts of all, God only knows
what the mortality rate would have been.
***** *****
*****
The breeze has picked up a bit
and the clacking sounds of the mooring lines affixed to the yacht piers have
gotten more noticeable. Maybe it’s high
tide. There is a hurricane brewing off
the Carolina coasts, maybe that is already exerting itself out in the Atlantic. The dark harbor is busy tonight; tugboats
maneuvering barges, oilers off the coast of Staten Island can be seen from a
certain angle. Looking north the
glittering jewelry that are the spans of the George Washington Bridge are
visible if one knows exactly where to look.
Everyone who came down to the
9/11 Memorial and observed the remembrance came looking for something. Some, if they knew exactly how to look, not where to look but how to look may have found that which they sought. There can be comfort in the rites, the
rituals can serve as commemorative railway tracks keeping the seekers on a
strictly defined path. That path is
towards tomorrow and all the tomorrows to follow; their suffocating sorrow may
be a bit diminished by having spent the morning on that Sacred Ground. As this day is about to blend in to the next
we say a final prayer. We pray for the
dead and the dying, for each other and ourselves.
Bless All…
Amen
Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2018 © All Rights Reserved
Copyright Brooding Cynyc 2018 © All Rights Reserved
