I wrote this out in longhand while I was in New York a couple of weeks ago. It pretty much speaks for itself:
I took the subway from Penn station to Ground Zero today. Down the E line, which I unexpectedly exited at Fourth Avenue. I had the idea that I'd walk a few blocks to more fully experience the site, but a glance at the MTA map changed my mind. I snuck back on the train and took it to Church Street.
I was shy about asking directions, as though it would be too naked a thought to say, "I'm looking for Ground Zero. Do you know the way?" And what if I called it by the wrong name, like calling San Francisco, "Frisco." Would it be extra-inappropriate to be malappropriate about such a tragic subject? Would I feel even more like a voyeuristic out-of-towner or would I feel something else altogether. I didn't want to know.
There had been a sightless man playing harmonica when I was waiting for the train at the station. It was an eerie turn-of-the century melody that echoed spookily off of the tile walls. He was playing the harmonica with one hand, the other blindly holding out a tin can. Now he was walking through my car -- his face scarred as if by a blast and some kind of red military jacket on his back. There was no doubt in my mind that he would stop and address me. Somehow he knew about whatever secret sins I might be carrying with me to Ground Zero. As he walked past, I looked intently at his leather jacket, trying in vain to decipher the decals. It could have been one of those jackets that just looked like the real spit-and-polish military thing. It could have been real. I couldn't tell.
He was really fucking blind.
Finding ground zero from Church Street was easy. I simply walked toward the open space -- the largest and most fantastic piece of Manhattan emptiness you'll ever see. There were barricades and police, but they are everywhere in New York right now. The city is on high alert because the Davos forum has left Switzerland for the first time and will be held in Manhattan over the next few days. It's a brilliant move. The anti-globalization forces made the last forum an unsightly mess, so they decided to move it to New York, where nobody wants to be photographed harassing the cops or destroying property. Too many raw nerves there. Later in the day, I walk halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge. There are cops every 100 feet.
Within a block of the site, I see a chain link fence covered with a decaying collage of unwrapped flowers, photocopies, signed flags, and pennants. Small midwestern Rotary clubs and middle schools sending their love to the people of New York. Beyond is the great and peaceful maw that these two horrible collisions and the inevitable reckoning of potential energy had opened in the heart of New York.
I walk up to Broadway and Fulton... to St Paul's Church, which has become a kind of relief effort HQ -- closed to the public and completely covered with testimonies to the fallen. I break my guilty silence and ask a man and his wife how you get tickets to the viewing platform. He is clearly relieved to be able to do something -- as if the great emptiness might be catching -- and tells me to walk down Fulton to South Pier where you can get harbor cruise and platform tickets from the same booth. A minivan rolls by, slide door open wide, and a teenager videotaping us all. My ticket is for 4 PM.
On my way back, I stop into some tourist stores, trying to find the Most Garish Trinket on Earth for Anna -- it's not really a Ground Zero thing, I've always kind of got my eyes open for garish trinkets, but surprisingly there is nothing worse than a plastic statue of the twin towers. Taste seems to be enjoying a brief period of vogue. I kill an hour at a cookie store, reading the New York Post. The headline reads "State of the Union: MAD PLOT."
The sidewalk in front of St Paul's is crammed with people looking at the tributes along the church fence and there are cops moving people along. There are cops everywhere. At a movie theatre afterwards, the themes of values and patriotism were sounded again. There were as many cops (some of them in riot gear) in front of the theatre as there were people in my viewing platform group. There were two police officers in front of every McDonalds and Starbucks in Manhattan. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing going on anywhere in town. I sat in the theatrical darkness watching trailers for upcoming films, contemplating their earnestness. One was a biography of Iris Murdoch. The theme: Lifelong love. For knowing how to love the same guy, and how to write, it seems, that was the great achievement of her life. The second film is about a team of misfit little leaguers who must overcome long odds. Say no more. Trailer number three takes on the teen market. The message: abstinence. It's a comedy about a young man who goes a biblical 40 days without sex (including the monkey mash). As if. Finally, there's a Richard Gere film about faithfulness. Husband Richard Gere (did you know his middle name was Tiffany? True story) gets, yawn, even with wife and her hot Latin lover.
I hate this hypocritical newfound morality. The more people that get killed, the more we need to tell ourselves that we are moral people. The more we need the ritual cinematic punishment. To me, the world looks more and more like an ugly dogfight, with the desperate ones at the bottom doing whatever the winners would do in their shoes. Be on top or be in the shithole. Give me Amores Perros over this Hollywood claptrap any day.
Nothing is marked. You have to walk the six blocks to South Pier without any signs. The booth where you get tickets is poorly marked. It seems as though they want to force you to interact with someone, to say, "I am here for a reason. I am. Now please help me find my way." Back at St Paul's I see a woman with a stack of pink tickets. This must be the way in. I give her mine and she takes it without examination. It is 3:45.
They let you into a small wooden construction platform in groups of about 40. There were six teenaged girls in my party, along with tourists and some semi-locals who had parked in garages now demolished. We walk through to a waiting area, right in front of the subway exit next to the Church. This is of particular interest to the teenaged girls for some reason I fail to grasp, and they break ranks with the group to peer down into the empty stairway. The exit is closed; it is quiet like a dead limb.
The observation area is small, but there is a large plywood ramp going up to it. There is a huge US flag tacked onto the ramp's wall and everything is signed. Now is the time to testify. People pull out pens and begin signing whatever they can. The woman next to me writes "I love New York," and signs it. We move forward again and are stopped again. Now we're next to the sparse and ugly St Paul's cemetery. Why do we bury our dead so close to churches? It feels like a marketing gimmick, telling us we need death in order to understand morality. Telling us we need to repent.
After a few minutes, we are allowed up the ramp, and the gothic cemetery is all I can look at. With every step it looks more grim. The graves are sooty and the sparse grass looks as though it would be happier in a nice warm coffin. Everything else is black dirt. Here we are stopped for the final time. A guard tells us that people like ourselves have come here for many reasons. To mourn, to take pictures, to remember loved ones. he asks that we give others the opportunity to do this by making book when he asks us to leave -- an event that occurs about five minutes after we get to the viewing platform.
The view of the site itself has no context for me. I never saw the World Trade Center up close before September 11th, and what I see now looks like the largest construction site I've ever witnessed, but with rubble instead of raw materials. The two men to my right are remembering trips to the city when they drove and parked and visited here. The woman on my left has begun to cry. A few minutes later, she and her boyfriend ask to have their picture taken. " I was there when it was still a hole in the ground." Video cameras are making thousands of records of the work. Everyone wants a piece of this. I try, briefly, to imagine the horror, but I realize that I have no idea what has truly been lost. I don't want to take a picture. I think instead of what I could possibly write.
