just another 9/11 in the VOE

my parents always used to go to the world trade center, to shop and eat.  i remember looking down from one of the towers, high above the streets.  not long before 9/11, i was visiting, and we drove along the road overlooking that familiar skyline as usual, taking it for granted.

and then one day it was just gone, in a scene from a nightmare.  my parents and people i knew could easily have been up there on that day.  i have a young relation  who was running through the devastation with her kid, to escape.  and of course everyone from here knows of people whom they lost that day.

the major flight paths go right over our house to and from newark and other major airports.  you get used to the constant drone of planes overhead.  you never get used to that sudden silence, and after that the panic when you did hear a jet.  today the sky seems a bit quiet, as i imagine they still reroute traffic on 911, so i notice when a plane flies over.

now ground zero is like a sacred mass burial ground that pilgrims visit from all over the world.  i imagine future kids being told, your ancestors are buried there.  for that matter, so are some older people’s descendants, or perhaps the ones that would never be born.

who knows, if you dig down deep enough, there may be an ancient native american burial ground under there, over which new york was eventually built.  just the way my mind works, not trying to make some inappropriate point here. i guess i’m just thinking about burials lately, for some reason.

mass murders are not something you forget easily.  what must it be like for people all over the world who go through it every day, as a matter of course?  for us here it’s the exception, not the rule.  imagine generations of communal memory traumatized by genocide.  9/11 x infinity=the history of the human race.

well, it being 9/11, i think i’m entitled to a small lapse in my otherwise cheery posts!  ok, i admit it, my little experimental foray into positive thinking is doomed, DOOMED!  i’m way out of my depth here—depth of despair, that is.  who am i fooling?  9/11 is just another day in the VOE.

 

 

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