The 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero in New York City

On Saturday May 14, 2013 around 7:00 PM I revisited the memorial to those killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. On that day I watched the tragedy unfold on an old
TV in the art studio where I worked as a teacher. I stood with a colleague before the students arrived and we were shocked, stunned by what we were seeing. First one tower then the other and the horror of the fire and the people leaping to their death and the buildings essentially melting. There were no words for what we felt and then both of our classes arrived and we had to teach and that was it until later in the day at home when one could speak about what one had witnessed earlier that day. There were many conversations in the next few months and then the events receded out of the mental limelight into the shadows of the recent past. I remember being at New Year's party, bringing in 2002, and wanting to talk about 9/11 but no one was really in the mood. Not a festive topic at all.

In February 2012, in New York for a reunion, I made my way down to the recently opened memorial site having no sense of what to expect. After going through security, like getting on a plane, and then walking about ten blocks, I entered the memorial site and saw what had been created to remember the victims of that day. Two large square holes, about twenty-five feet deep, with water flowing down all four sides to the base and from there flowing into a black square drain of indeterminate depth in the center. Surrounding each hole was a metal barrier with the name of each person who died carved out and lit from below. The sense was of life ending and flowing down the drain touching on the randomness and sudden surprise of endings, on the waste and the loss of life of each person who perished. To me it was the fullest and most complete artistic representation of loss, the most moving memorial, a unique and complete vision, and I was moved to feel what had been stuffed away all those years before and finally had some kind of emotional catharsis.

Returning a year and a few months later with my wife and my son I was not expecting to be moved again but found the experience even more powerful than the first time. The tallest of the new towers was almost complete and was a majestic shape soaring into the sky and this structure added to the sense of New York's power and resilience and rebuilding made perfect sense. We all felt like we were on hallowed ground. My son is an architect and in the presence of what has been built on that site I hugged him and said he had chosen a noble profession one capable or creating powerful structures that can cause people to feel and think in a spiritual dimension that transcends the all pervasive urban concerns of commerce and materialism.