9/11 Memorial

There are so many aspects one could review in respect to our little outing.  Professor Ugoretz mentioned context, both external and internal, but as all we New Yorkers know, trying to describe the context of the chaos of lower Manhattan becomes a chaotic task in and of itself.  I will therefore limit myself by only expounding on a few details that stuck out to me.  First, I’d like to say it’s interesting how I stepped out of one scene of immediate violence (the shooting of which many of us stumbled onto on our way to the memorial) and into a scene of past violence.  Next, one of the first things I noticed when I got off the subway in Manhattan, was how touristy the area had become.  There were signs up pointing the way to the memorial, and long before I even got there, I was immersed in crowds of people taking photos.  There’s nothing essentially wrong with this, but it somehow, to me anyway, cheapens the spot.  Instead of being a place of peace, or rest, or quiet, it was overflowing with gawkers, and it seemed awfully morbid.  At the same time, I realize I make a part of the morbidity of this tourism.  I was there gawking with the rest of them.  The next thing I noticed was how loud everything was despite the seeming solemnity of the place.  The construction was going on full force, as well as the sounds of the city.  Life was going on outside the memorial.  As for the fountains, I thought them especially beautiful.  The noise of the waterfall helped drown out the other infiltrating noises.  I thought about how they are literally grave markers, which made me suddenly reluctant to lean on them.  And the way the fountain was constructed, with the water flowing continuously toward the middle until it fell away to some space I couldn’t see, seemed in my mind to make some sort of an afterlife, in a fanciful and tragic way.  It was the way the water moved, the shapes made by light playing on the falls, like fleeting spirits, and the reflections of the building surrounding it like odd, cubist sentinels.  I kept thinking about how all these building were witness to the destruction, and how all the people in those buildings were witness to it too.  And all those people with sad faces, who perhaps knew the names on the fountain, made me think of that river in Hades, the river Lethe.  Anyone who drank from it was given the gift of forgetfulness, and of oblivion.  I’m not sure if this is a pleasant connection to make with the tragedy of Sept. 11 because we can never truly forget, nor should we, but I thought the thought anyway.  And then I sighed to myself, and went home.