Memory
“For me, there is no return to my own country.”
Homer, Iliad, Achilles after the death of Patroklos
What sort of future is coming up from behind I don’t really know. But the past, spread out ahead, dominates everything in sight.
Robert M Pirsig , Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I remember.
I woke up late, but decided to go for a run anyway. What a treat it was to be out during daylight; usually my runs took place in the darkest part of the night, in that wedge of time after the street lights went off and before the sun rose. I had grown used to those pre-dawn runs, necessary in order to make the long commute from New Jersey to New York City and still arrive to work early. I had become familiar with jogging in the aphotic darkness, startled occasionally from my reverie by the chuff of a deer’s breath, the waft of their musky scent, or the shadowy feel of movement followed by the clack of hooves on new pavement. Afterwards I would laugh at my skittishness, nothing here but deer, nothing to harm me.
I remember.
The morning was bright, the sun warm, a brilliant cerulean blue sky, polished, shellacked; a perfect Northeastern fall day sky. As I began my run I briefly contemplated taking the day off, but a more compelling inner voiced decided otherwise. Ten minutes into the run a severe back spasm stopped me mid-stride. I tried to continue, but it was no use, I turned around and walked back home. Giving up on a run was a rarity for me; running was sacred, 6 days a week, every week of the year – rain, snow, sick, cold – I ran because I ran and ran and ran. But this day I did not.
I remember.
Despite a late start I went through my usual morning rituals. My mother, who lived with me, asked me, as always, what I wanted for dinner and I, who never knew at 6:30 AM, replied, as always, ‘surprise me’. I got dressed, kissed my sleeping daughter goodbye, drove to the station and then air-kissed my mother good-bye. The constancy of my morning routine was a faith unto itself.
I missed the New Jersey Transit train that left at 7:42 AM but a glance at the schedule told me there was another at 7:50 AM. The wait gave me enough time to buy a paper. Thinking about a meeting I had planned at 10 that morning I doubled checked the schedule to see when I would arrive; 8:49 AM at Penn station. Good, I thought, I should be in by 9:15 AM; later than normal, but in plenty of time to prepare for my meeting.
I remember.
Each of these acts remains forever indelible, because every choice determined the timing and timing is everything and on this day my timing was perfect.
I remember.
As I did every day, I read the paper and then nodded off. In my semi-sleep I heard the conductor call out “Newark, last stop.” Inwardly I groaned, annoyed with myself because I realized this meant I had misread the schedule; this train didn’t go all the way to Penn Station. Instead, it stopped in Newark, New Jersey where I had a choice; wait for another New Jersey Transit train or transfer to the high speed line, the PATH, and walk to my office. I was inclined to wait for the next New Jersey Transit train – the PATH train meant a long walk and my back still hurt.
But then, when a PATH train pulled in across the track just as I stepped off the New Jersey Transit train, I thought to myself ‘ah, karma’; suddenly impatient to get to work I decided to try and get on the PATH after all. At first circumstances seemed against me; as I merged into the line at the turnstile to get to the PATH side of the platform a woman accused me of jumping in front of her. I stepped back to let her go first, then the turnstile refused my crumpled dollar two times before the machine ate my money and let me through. Just as the doors to the PATH were closing I squeezed through into the standing room only car. As the train pulled from the station I saw the woman who accused me of jumping in front of her; she had decided not to take my train.
I remember.
I looked at my watch, 8:25 AM. It seemed that taking the PATH was a good choice after all; with luck I estimated I might be in the office by 9 AM. Still, when the PATH stopped at Journal Square I momentarily considered getting off and transferring to another line, one that would take me to Penn Station instead of the World Trade Center. Though I wanted to avoid too much walking a pressing desire to get to the office the fastest way possible encouraged me to stay where I was. If my back was really bad I could catch a subway from the World Trade Center; that would bring me closer to the office and minimize the distance I needed to walk.
As I rode my I contemplated my daughters upcoming 9th birthday. If the train arrived on time I decided I would take a quick detour and stop up at Windows on the World to make arrangements for my daughter’s birthday on the 21st. She had never been there; it would be fun for her and a friend to have breakfast at Windows; the wonder of being so high in the air, the sweep of the New York City skyline, the eerie feeling of the building swaying in the wind. Perhaps my mother could come too; she would turn 75 in 2 days. I was pleased with the prospect; Windows was one of the few restaurants that held nostalgia for me, it was a place of firsts; first oyster, first bottle of champagne toasting a first business success. It was a rite of passage; yes, breakfast on Windows was a wonderful idea.
I remember.
The PATH pulled into the World Trade Center stop. The station was dim, almost dark but then it was often dim in the PATH station, so far below the surface. As I stepped onto the platform my nostrils twitched, I smelled smoke. Subway fire, I decided, happens all the time – a pain but no real danger.
I rode the escalator up to the next level; thin fingers of smoke were now curling through the air. I upgraded my previous assessment; this was a serious subway fire. No question now, I would have to walk to the office, no point in trying to catch a subway train if there was a fire, it would be chaos in the tunnels.
At the top of the escalator it was business as normal, the usual ebb and flow of commuters going to work. The magazine kiosk was open; a few folks were milling about looking for something to read. If I hadn’t bought a paper in New Jersey I would have stopped to peruse the magazines for the ride home. As I watched the tendrils of smoke grow thicker I wondered how serious a smoke condition was needed for the vendor to abandon his stand. And if he did, what would happen to his magazines?
I remember.
To get to the shopping concourse, the last level before the street, I had to either walk up a long set of stairs or ride another escalator. Normally, even though it took longer, I’d take the stairs but, given my sore back, I opted instead for the escalator. The smoke was getting thicker; I sensed a slight shift in tension. A few people in the crowd behind me pushed to get ahead, I heard someone shout ‘Hurry Up’. Yet overall I felt no sense of worry; most of the people around me were calm, too familiar with the various bits of mayhem that made up life in New York City to get excited by a little smoke. Besides, we were so close to exiting onto the street level plaza; there we would be safe. The smoke did change my plans however about detouring up to Windows to arrange the birthday party; maybe later in the week.
As the escalator moved upward I looked at the long wall that ran alongside it; on it was a giant poster for the well known online job site; in enormous bold letters it said; Monster.
I remember.
At the top of the escalator, concourse level, there were two cops pointing people toward the east side of the building. A few people picked up their pace at the sight of police presence but there was no frantic running. The atmosphere was largely composed; authority was in charge, danger was not imminent. One man even ignored the cops and went in the opposite direction; the police officer yelled at him but didn’t chase him. There were no other police in sight.
I walked past the stores, glancing in the windows. Most stores were not open yet. Typically, if I found myself in the World Trade Center I would do a quick trip to the Rizzoli bookstore but, again, the smoke, and the police gave cause to save this for another day. I kept walking through the concourse till I came upon an escalator that led to the outdoor plaza. As I got on I noticed there were very few people around me, I rode up to the street level alone.
I remember.
I stepped outside, and paused; the plaza was covered with what looked like ticker tape. Across the span of the plaza I could see people gathered in the street. Surprised I wondered, "had there been some event, a championship won, some parade that I had not been aware of?”. Scanning the ground I noticed that among the paper shreds were objects; I leaned over to pick up one of them, a bolt, a screw, a spring? As I bent to pick up the mystery object my attention was drawn skywards, back towards my left. I looked up at the North tower, World Trade Center #1; in the windows above me were flames, they filled the glass panels across the width of the building. In the narrow panes I thought I detected movement. Surely there could be no people there? Squinting into the sky I tried to discern what I was looking at; curtains billowing, a visual trick of the flames? Whatever it was, whatever I saw in that moment it colored everything afterward; a primal recognition that there was something terrible happening here, shifting my thoughts into autopilot.
“A serious fire”, I thought,” a very serious fire”. With that I ignored the object on the ground and dismissed any notions about a parade and strange ticker tape. Instead, recalling my days volunteering on an ambulance, I told myself to move away from the building in case the glass in the windows above exploded outward and fell to the ground where I stood. My world became strangely reduced to a kind of mental tunnel vision, a single-mindedness; “I need to get to the office now, I have a meeting”, I told myself. This became my mantra, the call that impelled me forward.
With that I took a couple of steps.
I remember.
The PATH ride from Newark to the World Trade Center stop was 22 minutes. The PATH was rarely ever behind schedule. I know that I took the 8:26 AM PATH train out of Newark; this meant that I arrived at the World Trade Center station at 8:48 AM. Although an order had been given at 8:46 AM for PATH trains to no longer stop at the World Trade Center mine did. The first plane had already struck the North Tower, World Trade Center #1 at 8:45 AM. The trip from the PATH to the street level concourse, given the long escalator ride, the crowd and my moving slowly because of my back, was about 10 minutes. That meant that I was standing somewhere on the World Trade Center Plaza staring at what I thought was confetti from a ticker tape parade around 9 AM. I was probably east of both towers, closer to the South Tower, World Trade Center # 2. I estimate that I stood there for several minutes as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
I remember.
With my third step came the explosion. Overhead a giant fireball roared; I felt a wave of hot air, one person screamed and many started running. A woman near me fell and I offered her a hand but she got up and kept running. I heard someone say that a helicopter hit the building. I told myself that it was probably a generator exploding, that the fire in the first building must have somehow caused the second to catch fire too. I told myself this because it was believable, because I needed something believable, even though if I turned around I would have seen that this was not believable at all, in fact it was physically impossible. The two towers were simply too far apart for a fire from one to leap to the other. I did not run, in fact my only thought was the calm certainty; “I have to go to work now, I have to get to my meeting”.
I walked a block; saw a cop. “What happened?”’ I asked him. “I don’t know”, he said, “I think a plane flew into the World Trade Center, maybe 2. One was a small plane but the other was a 767.” “Impossible”, I said,” they don’t allow them to fly into the airspace. A pilot would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to fly into the WTC”. I had never considered dead. The cop nodded in agreement, “Maybe”, he replied, “something happened with air traffic control.” Unsettled by this, I decided to keep walking.
The sky was still blue, the sun was still shining.
I remember.
I walked around into the streets of the financial district; with the ever growing crowds I became confused about whether I was facing North or South. My back hurt, I was warm. I thought I should call the office and tell them I would be late, I should call home in case this was on the news. I could not get my cell phone to work so I stood on line at a phone booth. The line was long, too long; the urge to get to my office was too strong. I abandoned my place in line, reassuring myself that I would call home once I got to work, but first I had to get to work. All this wandering felt like I was wasting time. I decided to walk back towards the World Trade Center Plaza and follow Broadway back up towards my office. Soon, I found myself on the North side of the plaza, staring at World Trade Center #1, the North Tower.
I made myself look, look hard, I felt that it was important, that I needed to see it. In front of me was the spire of World Trade Center #1 with a brutal gash in its side; the metal frame looked as if it had been burst open, the steel structure curling back, blistered and blackened. As I looked at the giant hole I felt an odd sense of surprise, ”oh my, it looks just like an airplane” I thought. Of course it was an airplane, I knew it was an airplane yet my mind still said “this is impossible, such a thing could not have occurred.” A shudder ran through me.
A stream of thick white smoke ran off the building, flames extended from the blackness of the hole and could be seen behind windows, the air rang with sirens and shouts; police, fire, EMS everywhere. I saw FBI agents running yet this did not unduly concern me; all New Yorkers know that when the financial district takes a hit the feds come out. It did not necessarily mean a thing. People around me were mostly subdued, curious, shocked but no panic.
Then someone nearby gasped, “they are jumping”. I stared at the building, at the ravaged wound in its side. This was incomprehensible. I was handed a photograph of the very scene that I was looking at; a figure tumbling down the side of the building, spinning over in the air. Once again I could not grasp this; my thoughts would not register this. Planes do not crash into buildings; people do not jump out of towers on perfect fall days when the sky is cerulean blue. Once more, I felt an inner need to move, “I have to get to work, I have a meeting” I thought. With that I turned and started to walk again.
I remember.
Walking again, I found myself on Park Row by the J&R music store. Emergency vehicles careened down the Brooklyn Bridge. I stopped and sat on a highway divider for a moment and looked again at the towers; they burned furiously. Smoke ran down the sides like one of those high school dry ice volcano projects.
The picture looked like the set of an action movie; only this was real, this was here. As I gazed at the burning buildings a renewed sense of the horror enveloped me. I had been in a burning high rise before, I knew that you did not evacuate everyone at once; people above the fire were told to stay where they were, this was known as ‘defend in place’. I also knew how frightening it was, the sense of helplessness engendered by waiting and watching. “The people in that building must be terrified”, I thought.
A woman next to me started crying and I patted her on the back. I stared at the towers a few more moments but was once again driven to move. Some ambulances passed by and then I suggested to the crying woman we get up and walk towards City Hall. The streets were more crowded now, loose bits of conversation floated by “What was that second explosion?”, “That was just the aftershock of the first explosion”, ‘It had to be a terrorist” “No, come on that’s impossible.” I soon lost sight of the woman who had been crying. There were people everywhere now, so much confusion. I did not stop to talk to anyone; all I knew was that it was imperative I get to the office.
Every few minutes I stopped and turn around to look; the South tower was now ablaze; the fire looked even worse than the one in the North Tower.
I turned once more to look at the flames; at that moment a giant mushroom cloud of roiling smoke billowed up into the air. For a brief moment I thought it was an atomic explosion of some kind. Then I could see the wall of smoke moving forward, towards me, so I turned and kept on walking. I did not know that I had just watched the South Tower collapse into nothingness, taking with it the lives of every occupant.
I remember.
As I walked I decided that I was glad that my office was in a low rise brownstone near Canal Street. I wondered if I should have stayed back at the towers and offered assistance, perhaps even now I should turn back and help. I decided against it; my skills were limited, I would only be in the way. I kept walking. The crowd grew larger. Occasionally I saw someone covered head to toe in soot. I did not stop to ask them what happened.
I arrived at my office, overwhelmed by a sudden sense of relief and gratitude. I walked up the stairs to my office door and began to shake. By the time I stood at the main door I was weeping. I did not know why. The door to the office was locked; I could not find my keys. I pounded on the door and quickly it was opened. Later they told me I was very, very pale. I tried to explain what I had seen, suddenly incoherent, believing that they did not know. In many ways they knew more of what had happened than I, and when they told me I crumpled into a chair in shock.
I remember.
I was the last member of the staff unaccounted for. With everyone safe those of us who were in the office decided to decamp to the apartment of one of my co-workers who lived nearby. We walked to his apartment. He gave me a beer. I spoke briefly to my family and told them I was okay; I asked them to tell my daughter I was okay. After an hour of sitting in my friend’s apartment I knew I had to leave. I had to see my daughter, that’s all I wanted, to see my daughter.
I walked up Broadway, the streets were strangely empty; no cars, no buses, quiet everywhere. A deserted New York felt wrong, out of place. The only sign of movement came from above, a squadron of military aircraft, the gentle far off buzzing of their engines against the unearthly backdrop of silence. I kept walking, heading to Penn Station. When I arrived I went inside where it was alive with a swarm of activity. People were madly trying to find trains out of town. I looked at the departure board, found the next train out of Penn Station and walked down to that platform. It didn’t matter where it was going, just so long as it took me out of Manhattan; all the roads in and out of the city had been closed, if I wanted to get home first I had to get out of the city. Once I had crossed the river I figured I could get someone to pick me up; but for now I just had to get off of Manhattan Island.
I didn’t bother with a ticket, it seemed pointless. The next train was destined for Princeton, about 45 minutes from where I lived. When I got to the platform I saw that the car was packed sardine tight with people, literally no room. I stared at the open doorway in frustration but then the people inside the car shouted ‘It’s okay’ and they pulled me aboard just as the doors shut. When we rose out of the tunnels I called home, my cell phone was working now. Meet me in Princeton I said.
No one on the train spoke of it. When I got to Princeton my family was there. I went home to see my daughter.
I remember.
We could not return to our office, it was within the no access zone. For days I sat at home watching the television; over and over and over; the planes, the fire, the collapse till I could see it all with my eyes closed, till it seeped into every pore. We all said the same almost simplistic commentary, expressed the same sentiments of shock. We watched and watched. We felt anger, loss, fear, nothing at all. We were nicer, we hugged more often, and we spoke softly. The images burned into my soul.
I remember.
In time we were allowed to return to our office but required to carry identification. As I went to work I felt tentative, hesitant. In the office space below us they created a makeshift facility for the search dogs; the ones that found bodies. Sometimes I would enter the building as one of the dogs was leaving to perform their job. I could barely stand to watch the dogs go off, knowing what was asked of them, knowing that theirs was a task without grace.
The city felt wounded, bleeding, raw and painful; yet oddly beautiful. A gentle kindness abounded, as though everyone was bruised and tender, as if excess of any kind would hurt too much. All sensory output was subdued; the normal cacophony that was New York had been softened. Everywhere one walked there were gestures, tokens of what was felt but could not be said. People hid their fear in a frantic patriotism, yet that felt right, it felt okay; in the end it was this place, this country, this city that bound us.
Dean and Deluca put up a display of red, white and blue colored water bottles, all the stores in Soho placed flags in their windows; some glorious and big, others homemade in a child’s crayon. Every restaurant, deli and pizza shop posted the same message; fire, police and EMS eat for free. I felt a powerful pride in New York, in the determination to restore itself, in the refusal to withdraw from the business of daily living, in the resilience and the heart that came pouring forth.
Later, much later, I was grateful when the street vendors returned, hawking their goods, the flags and the t-shirts, the Plexiglas images of the missing towers. I bought one; I didn’t resent the commercialization, indeed commerce and opportunity were much longed for signs of normality.
Walking down the street was heartbreaking, every pole bore a poster calling out; ‘have you seen my mother, my husband, my wife, my brother’? Over time the sun and rain faded the pictures so that only pale ghostly images stared back, never to be found. For weeks I cried every time I walked past those luminous postings, ephemeral reminders of someone’s life. I read every one. In their very ordinariness those faces spoke to me; even though they were strangers they were people I worked with, people I knew. Like me they made choices that day, only their choices came to a different result.
Down the block a makeshift gallery was born in a storefront. The gallery was a collection of photos; some professional but most not. The pictures were for sale to raise funds for the families who had lost someone. Several days in a row I found myself there, looking at each and every picture, feeling the horror, feeling numb. Then one day I could bear it no more and I never went back.
Below Canal Street was a war zone. At the World Trade Center site one could not speak. Where the towers had stood, where I had stood, was now simply twisted metal, steel i-beams jutting out of the rubble, a huge American flag, grim grey faced rescue workers silently searching; everything exposed , elemental, brutally naked.
I remember.
The public arenas became populated with apparitions of police accompanied by bomb sniffing, no petting dogs. Along with the police came the National Guardsmen who sprouted like mushrooms in all the transportation centers. Each day as I went to work, I would pass the Guardsmen in Penn Station. Young, stalwart men, they stood alert, with wide legged stances and sober faces, in their camouflage uniforms cradling their high powered military rifles. They looked far too innocent for this; their faces still soft, some had not even begun to shave. “Had they lived enough to know?”, I wondered, though I could not have said what it was that I wanted them to know. They held their faces emotionless, watchful, though sometimes the sight of a pretty girl made their eyes travel the breadth of the room. Oddly I found such gestures reassuring, a reminder of our humanity. Much of the time the sight of the guardsmen unsettled me; a part of me longed for them to go away even as I understood that they were meant for protection and I deeply appreciated what they were willingly doing. Still, the very sight of them and their guns weighed upon me, a constant reminder of my vulnerability, our vulnerability.
I remember.
The orange alerts, the anthrax scares, the warnings on every train about suspicious behavior; overnight life had become dangerous, perilous, fragile. Soon I could no longer sleep on the train from New Jersey to New York. I had to be awake, to be ready. I held my breath and planned my escape from the train every time we crossed the river.
The randomness bothered me, I found myself wondering why, why was I there? Why did I do what I did; why did I make so many choices that, in retrospect, seemed unlike my usual self and led me to safety. Why did people who chose other doors or other paths die? I felt tremendous guilt; I was an unwitting voyeur at a great tragedy. I did not belong there; yet there I was. I did nothing heroic or brave and yet I escaped everything; the smoke, the ashes, the collapse. I was haunted by a sense of shame; I did not deserve my good fortune. What led me to step out this door and not that, no jet fuel above, no flying bodies to crush me, to stay down on the ground and not go up to the floors that shortly tumbled to the earth? How I was able to rise up from the bowels of the earth before that same space was obliterated, no lingering, I did not stand there and read a magazine or visit the bookstore. So many choices, so many chances, each decision drove me to this place at this moment and then I came and I left. I left.
Later, I went back, trying to figure out where I was standing. I studied the maps and diagrams of the site, of the place I had been, because if I knew, if knew for certain where I had been standing, if I knew what direction I was facing, it would matter. But of course it did not.
I wanted a meaning, I wanted a truth, an explanation, how did those others die and I live, how did their choices differ from mine? They went to work, just like me. But I overslept and they did not, I picked the wrong train and they did not, I walked out the right door at the right time and they did not. Why me, why them. I told myself it mattered, that it meant something and then I knew it did not. I knew 3000 people died simply because they went to work. And that was the most horrifying realization of all.
I remember.
There is plenty of equity in death – up in Windows on the World immigrant waiters, for many of whom this was their first job in America, died next to moneyed white collar business executives having power breakfasts. Cleaning staff and night watchmen died with the wealthiest traders and brokers. A cop and a priest died alongside each other. No salvation in being one or the other.
It’s all random, that’s what I learned, and that’s what I came to understand. Those who died didn’t do anything at all. For a long, long time that frightened me, maybe it still frightens me. Why is one good or bad – is it just fear of punishment? Is it belief somewhere deep down that good folks will be spared? But good people died that day – and surely people who acted badly lived. Who could tell the difference, did it matter? They all became ash with a few bones left for memory. It’s easy to praise the dead – how much do we honor the living? How do we honor the living? Much judgment was made that day and since. In the meantime, people argue about how to show tribute, what to revere, who to hate, how to move on.
I understood then that my living was just circumstance, dumb luck - tomorrow the circumstance could change and I could be under the jet fuel or a falling body, I could get breakfast and stay in the building 45 more minutes. There were no guarantees, on that day I happened to take the right door, to leave when I did – but it meant nothing, absolutely nothing.
Knowing this changed everything.
I remember.
Several days later I was running in woods near my house; a storm had come through and blown all the leaves onto the ground. The heavy blanket of fall foliage obscured the all of the paths, making it difficult to run safely on the rutted ground. This wood that I knew so well, this wood that was deeply familiar to me had suddenly become a foreign landscape. Like my beloved city, like so many of the truths that I held self evident, all had changed, the tell tale markers had become unrecognizable. I was lost.
As a city New York always took itself for granted; filled with power, elegance, and so much knowledge, all these gifts and more existed here in abundance. Perhaps because of this I believed we were protected, even sacred, for surely no one would burn the libraries of Alexandria ever again. To me New York City represented the best in the world; it was the home of both the powerful and the refugee, immigrant and native born, a swirling mass of humanity, creativity and intellect. And, because of this, I thought, surely we were safe.
And now I knew we were not.
There in my wood I fell to my knees and I wept, I wept for my city, I wept for the losses, for the people who just got up to go to work, I wept for the uncertainty, the unknown, I wept because I took the wrong train and I lived.
I remember.
In all the death and devastation I hoped for redemption, yet I knew there was none.
I remember.
The nightmares, waiting in my dreams to see where the plane would hit, knowing I could not stop it.
I remember.
Every time a plane flew overhead I would pause, every sense waiting to hear the explosion..
I remember.
Each year, 10 years now, on that morning, stopping whatever I was doing and holding still.
I remember.
Changing my life, wanting to change the world, changing nothing.
I remember.
The rescue workers, determined, fearless, vanquished.
I remember.
The eyes of the soldiers I came to know, the darkness within that belied the weight of their pain.
I remember.
The blackness, the loss, the anguish, the grief.
The humanity, the resilience, the fierce determination.
The fathomless pain, the shock.
The lust for redemption, the desire to give meaning to the meaningless.
I remember.
I wore a green polar fleece sweater, and it was too warm, so warm, and there was heat and flames and sun and it was much too warm.
I remember.
When one life ended and another began, when everything changed with a fireball and the gritty taste of ashes and smoke, with silent blue, blue skies and a building brought to its knees.
I remember, I remember, I remember.
I forget.
Where I stood, what my meeting was for.
I forget.
What it was like getting on an airplane and not taking my shoes off.
I forget.
What it meant to take those buildings for granted; to mock them in their sterile omnipresent appearance.
I forget.
How it felt to go to work, to just go to work without questioning head scarves or empty packages or office towers that reached to the sky.
I remember. I forget.
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening glade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood –
Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time”
Lethe, the river of oblivion, roils
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Time unfolds and smoothes the edges of pain. Eventually I began to believe that life would go on in a normal fashion once more. The National Guardsmen dwindled down. The stores took up themes other than patriotism, people were allowed below Canal Street without id, the world around us had other stories to tell. The horror and devastation was reduced to archives. Each year I attended a memorial, always alone.
September 11th 2001 was a decade ago. Soon it will be another war tale, already movies have been made; it is not even the last chapter in history books anymore. The new buildings are being built, life does, resolutely, go on – a biologically deterministic drive overrules human sorrow, human loss.
Yet the battle cry of 9/11 has always been ’never forget’, to somehow hold this day in memory.
Memory. St Augustine described it as a vast palace of many rooms; Proust tells us that it is “the rope let down from the heavens to lift us from the abyss of not being”. Ask anyone who has struggled with or knows someone who has struggled with memory loss and they will tell you how memory defines us, gives us identity, gives us self. Memory is the foundation for relationships; its cumulative product is the story of our lives. When memory fails life feels insubstantial, isolated. It is memory that allows us as individuals to bear witness to our lives, it is memory that gives us a personal past and collectively it is memory that binds us to others and gives us a history.
It is also the gift of memory that allows us to look forward; we know what we know only because we already know something. Memory’s vision acts as a wellspring for the imagination, its capacity to inspire is almost divine. It is no surprise then that in ancient Greece one of the three original Muses, those goddesses of creativity, was named after memory.
Memory is both precious and pervasive, it is a meme that passes values, behavior and ideas from one generation to the next; it is a bond that identifies us as belonging somewhere. Memory keeps us safe, able to recall where danger is. Memory also allows us to rejoice, to relive the sweetness of a time since passed. And sometimes, memory can even be a demon that plagues us.
It is memory’s gift that allows us to be immortal, as Jonathan Weiner says in his book Time, Love, Memory ‘somehow, though memories are written in atoms, we keep the memories, even if we lose the atoms.’ It is not surprising then that we want to ‘never forget’. For a long time it seemed that the only way to redeem the losses, to give honor to those who gave their lives and show respect for those who died was to carry their memory with us, to ‘never forget’. But a memory that is capable of drawing us up from not being cannot be laced with bitterness; it cannot be infused with a hatred meant to hold us forever in this place of devastation.
Several years ago I visited Normandy to visit the beaches where my father and thousands of other soldiers stormed ashore. I was surprised however by the sight of the cliffs; the military armaments, the bunkers, all the physical remnants of this infamous battleground had begun to sink into the earth, covered by a mossy blanket, vanished from the mortal world. Yet a short distance away the endless grave markers in the American cemetery remained a stark reminder.
Perhaps this then is the skill, let the battleground fade and the person remain. Perhaps this is the greatest feat of all for memory, to still honor, pay tribute, but to allow us to move on.
A decade has passed, more than half of the life of my daughter; our nation has struggled with battles and wars, turmoil, confusion, and heavy hearts wearied by many, many things. But the arrow of time has only one direction, and like Achilles we cannot return to the time before, to the country we believe once existed; no matter the pain of our loss; we can only look forward. There is no recovery, only rebuilding.
On the first anniversary of 9/11 one of my co-workers sent me a card which said ‘Sometimes it takes courage just to live’ and for a long time that was my rope from the abyss, my way of making sense of memory’s story. Now it is time to let go, time for me to know in which direction I face, to know where I stand, time for me to embrace what is ahead. I have come to understand that to do so will not dishonor the past but will in fact be the only way to give true meaning to it. Life is precious, this is what I know, and it is all that I know.
For ten years now I have written an annual essay for this day, for 10 years I have reflected upon it for it absolutely changed my life. This is the last essay; today I will be what changes my life; built upon memory but not enslaved to it.
These days I have on my desk a new reflection, one that allows me to let that September morning with its blue, blue sky and the story of all that it wrought be part of my own story without being the all of it.
Today on my desk it says ‘Memento vivere’.
Remember to live.
