View from the Balcony

Thursday, September 11, 2003

Two years later, New York resonates with a particular echo today and during this week. I have had meetings in the city each day, and at every encounter, have been met with sadness and anxiety in my friends, who attribute it to financial hardship and job frustrations. To my eyes and ears, it seems overshadowed by the memory of 9/11/01.

I hid in my apartment that day, watching TV with fixed attention. I didn't want to let the tragedy in. I certainly didn't want to go out. I was frightened to lose my momentum, always tenuous, and be overwhelmed by sorrow. Yet for all my personal resistance, our world crashed down with the Towers of the World Trade Center. Many lives lost and changed forever.

Alot has changed in two years. I sit at my computer looking out at the Hudson River. Dinner last night with Ellen, celebrating her birthday, at a restaurant on the wharf. A perfect early fall evening, a touch cool, dry and crystal clear, the Tappan Zee bridge lit up in the night sky and boats moored in the water.

Two years ago, I was living downtown, loaning my shoes to Angeline, so she could walk home. Walking with Steven to Union Square park, and seeing the spontaneous candlelight memorial spawn before us, reading the messages posted along each path.
I can feel now what I couldn't feel then. I am always a little behind.

Mayor Guilliani was brilliant. It takes an unbelievable amount of something special to have the strength and presence of mind that he showed then. I couldn't accept that either, carrying resentments from other political differences.

Looking at the photos of my summer trip to Europe, I can see where I have been. My inner monologue drowns out half the awareness of where I am.

I am still in a state of euphoria from living closer to nature, and have let go of the immediacy of my love for New York City. I fear (like before) too great a sense of loss to be able to move on. As I look at the images on TV that have been played over again today - the Towers burning and falling, the dust spreading, I smell the air again and taste the chalky soot on my tongue. With the impetus of sorrow I left, and sometimes it is only that push that can propell me on to a new beginning. Something must always die before a rebirth can happen. I am in the infancy of a new phase, after New York, after 9/11.

My friend Eloise moved out here as well. She was evicted from her Tribeca apartment that day, closer to the Towers, her apartment uninhabitable. It is good to have her here. We eat breakfast together on the beach, and talk over our lives, while we roll our pants over our knees to let the sun shine on our legs. Nature is helping us heal. It will take a generation to absorb the enormity of the attacks of 9/11, for New York City to once again achieve a history that is larger than this tragedy. Right now, the World Trade Center Towers still cast their long shadow even though they are no longer there.
posted by Hana 5:27 PM