9/11 journal

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The WTC site is more difficult to visit each day. I have spent a lot of time there, because it is my neighborhood, but frankly I no longer feel like I belong there. First the terrorists destroyed it, and now the city and federal government have remade what remains into a totally alien landscape. Every hour I watch for the planes to return in some form.
11/12/2001 click on images to enlarge
High fences surround the "crime scene," but really, is that what it is? "Crime" seems too trivial a word, it is a holocaust scene, a scene from hell, a horrible sleepless graveyard. I suppose they are trying to protect us from the horror with those fences. In places the fence material is guaze-like, revealing the familiar streets that I have walked on thousands of times. But those fences do rearrange the neighborhood, they throw it totally out of balance. The first view of the WTC site continues to move many people to tears. Personally, each day the world seems more incomprehensible than the day before. All around people pray, asking I imagine, the eternal question, "why is the world this way"? I am thankful I am walking and my girlfriend escaped unhurt. I took her return to me from the WTC for granted, she is so free from hate. Many like her were taken, I think of them every waking hour.
Looking at the site is a devastating vision, I cannot believe there were people moving about in these offices one minute, and the next they were forced to run for their lives. Parts of the standing building look like some immense doll house, waiting to have a huge hand reach in and play with the desks. These are the offices directly above where my girlfriend was when the first plane hit. Americans want to witness the tragedy with their own eyes, for once the TV is not enough. They put up with being forced behind cloth covered fences, they stand on each others shoulders to catch a glimpse. A few go past the Police barriers, but not many, it is a quiet crowd.
Everywhere there are stone-faced Chinese (yes always Chinese for some odd reason) vendors selling "souvenirs." I cannot help but wonder if visitors put these pictures of the WTC up in their living rooms when they get back to Texas or Missouri or California. It seems an odd thing to buy, not like the little cast Statue of Liberty I proudly brought home when I was a child. There are some seemingly strange visitors, I met one man who travels with a Cross. Any other time I would have laughed at him, but I talked to him at length, his presence seemed no different than all the others who have invaded "my" neighborhood. I liked him a lot.
There are wilting and dirty "memorials" everywhere. They are depressing to those of us who live here. It makes our neighborhood feel even more like a graveyard. But for now it is a graveyard. Frankly I don't quite understand the impulse to build these shrines, but then, I did leave flowers at our local fire house. Not a sign I was glad to see. Posted on the Battery Park movie complex. Air quality reports seem to be mixed, however no one seems to disagree on the fact that it is awful, if not actually deadly.
Hopefully this equipment is more high-tech than its rather haphazard placement would attest to. I found this hanging on a fence near where they wash trucks leaving the WTC site. The City Health Department has ordered that all vehicles leaving the WTC site be washed, to prevent the circulation of dust all over Manhattan. There does seem to be somewhat better control over dust in general, but it is still everywhere on the ground and therefore in the air. What do they expect to do when the temperature drops to below freezing?
We still live among the barricades, many which seem unnecessary, but no one has ordered them removed. These are along the still-closed City Hall Park. They keep the pigeons from walking too close to the fence. It seems a victory for terrorism that a beautiful park is closed, but the city cannot spare the police to guard it. The whole area around the WTC site is a mess, more perhaps than anyone in the city can actually cope with. Maybe we are simply too tired to clean up all these little piles, I guess there is always tomorrow.
It's going to be a very long time before I can walk down this familiar path and buy a Krispy Kreme (Krispy Kreme's new store at 5 World Trade was destroyed, no employees were lost).