Across the maze of Manhattan, through catacombs where hulking steel monsters transport people from place to place, down canyons grated with iron and concrete side to side. Past cafés and posh eateries where men and women dressed in fine fashionable elegance come to socialize and solicit business transactions. Into the very heart of our city itself —there lies a garden. Adorned with two vast pools with majestic streams of flowing waters easing into them, the garden stands as a memorial, an act of remembrance. Some call it heaven, others hell, but its true name out of virtue of its function is the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
Into this garden I went, idealistically thinking that my coming would ease the burden and grief, weighing down on so many families haunted by its meaning. That the remembrance would wash away the blood and tears, and their lives would ravel together like a spool of yarn, leaving the trauma and sadness to teeter in the dust. Its aura feels at once an expression of life, and conversely a competing cold and calculated effort to subdue it. The eerie silence that pervades the memorial is in itself a spectacle nonetheless. No busy pedestrian bustling on by, nor angry taxicabs honking their annoying horns, just quiet, calm, and personal reflection. It is an anachronism in a modern metropolis of 18 million people.
Even before one enters the site he is overwhelmed with a sensory and emotional explosion. Crying relatives massed on the sidewalk, memory ribbons, and flowers paint the epic scene. The subtleties of personality and humanity have given the memorial an essence beyond what can be drawn and designed. The myriad placard, flowers, and appeals to remember loved ones have a profound, clearly involuntary effect from the perspective of the architects, contractures, and those whom had built the structure. Though, it may be this aspect of the memorial which is the most moving of all.
The pools are massive, footprints of the two large towers whose base once occupied their residence. They recede down some distance away with waterfall formations letting down streams of water edging their sides. Along the perimeter of the pools lay long columns of marble slabs illuminating an inscription of all those who had fallen under the attacks. One can peer down into the reflective bodies of water and see a mirror image of himself or of those he imagines. It is place to contemplate, mourn, and introspect on the passage of time and life.
As I walk along the groves of Swamp White Oaks, which align the concrete gray tables strewn in series about the plaza, I am overcome with a question. Does this encapsulate the veracity and barbarism of the acts perpetrated again our state? Does this reciprocate the unequivocal path of vengeance and destructed we subsequently ensued? It is my personal belief that we lost ourselves out of the tragedy. It was almost as if the period before and after 9/11 were as a blur. Not necessarily knowing what to do we embark upon two despicable wars in the name of freedom and liberty. And in freedom and liberty we crushed our enemies, slowly and methodically like the concrete, which intersects continuously through this very memorial. Black and White, we the people who worshipped the light waged war against those adherents of the dark, apparitions and ghosts prowling the dead of night. How could such a sound, standing structure present something so evil and heinous?
On 9/11, I was in the 4th grade amidst the great havoc and emotional upheaval, which gripped this city. My mother hearing rumors of a massively orchestrated terrorist attack whisked me out of school and into the comforts of our Long Island home. We walked through the doors and into the living room numbly watching the newsreels play the dark day’s events. Suddenly, images of the twin towers afire cluttered the television set. Then the images cut, and the unprecedented occurred. The tall structures began to collapse. First the north, then the south.
As I watched, a loud sound tinged the room. Not preceding nor following their collapse. It was exactly directly during their descent that the noise began to emanate. Taken aback I turned to my mother, my protector, and stared as her face gaping and contorted with expressions of horror let out a bold scream. Indeed, she no longer had a face at all; rather a large gaping void had taken its place leaving a black hole, a deep dark cavernous well in its stead. A memory so vivid and real it haunts me even now as a write about an event and a physical manifestation designed to remember it.
I continue to wonder what this memorial is here to represent. Is this a representation of the moral degradation our country went under over the past ten years or a testament to heroism and bravery elicited on that faithful day? Sometimes I wonder whether it mattered at all that we were attacked on 9/11. Whether we were enslaved to fight these battles anyway and that those who had perished would have died all the same be it of the body or the mind. As it is always is, things are not as they appear to be. Logic rarely dictates reality. Concepts evade and the mind continues to wonder. How it is possible when everyone runs out of a burning building there are always the brave few who run into it? And to know that the 366 of the best of mankind, firefighters and police officers, none of whom were in the buildings at the point of attack, found themselves all the same mixed with rubble and bone atop the pile. So when the debris fell upon the whole of the city that day, it fell with it the remains of these beautiful men and women, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers. And their bodies and souls were interspersed with the lot of New York. These were the people who died here and this is now their sanctuary.
The wind is strong and it whips my face. I stand over the marble showcase leaning against the pools and continue to contemplate. It is fall now. Soon the Oak trees will shed their leaves and prepare for dormancy in the winter. Then they will reemerge in a renaissance of color during spring. Life goes on. But the act of the leaves’ removal is also beautiful. Just as this magnificent memorial is a celebration of both life and death; evil both done against and propagated, by us. We too must find comfort in the beautify that surrounds us whether begotten out of tragedy or happiness. So maybe this memorial represents both. The good and the bad, light and dark.
But even still now as I lower my head into the clear crystal water I cannot escape it. Staring into the deep pools I can still make out the tender silhouette of my mother. If I look deep enough, into the pools and the recesses of my mind I can still see her screaming silently. And as I look back, silently, ever so, I find myself compelled to hopelessly scream with her too.
