The Day of the Dust Cloud (four years later)

Of course, it started like any other Sunday. Gratefully later than most of my other days, but still a day I have to work, the last day of ym five day week, a sunny, yet breezy morning, probably pants today, not shorts. Then over breakfast, my housemate Sean, also a tour guide for Grey Line says to me:

"The first tower was hit four minutes ago." My first response was a flashback. Of someone in my campus dorm, up in Western Massachusets saying something about a plane and a tower as I was brushing my teeth, still shaking the night's crust from my eyes. Of course, I came back to today, my second reaction being just an instant of "Oh no, not again." When of course, by the third instant I had caught his meaning, and remembered. Today's The Day.

And to be perfectly honest, I have no personalized reason to comemorate The Day. Meaning that I knew nobody in the towers, and knew nobody who knew anyone. My greiving was the public greiving oh acknowledging that my home and my city had been attacked, and in the collective sense, we were all sharing one large wound. I mourn my being removed from the scene. 200 miles away, going through the motions of classes and college routine for the next three days until I threw a handful of clothes into a pack and hitch-hiked my way down the I-495 until I was back in Brooklyn and could see The Dust Cloud personally, from across the Fulton Landing.

My life wasn't changed substantially, but the next three years being removed from my city made me feel like I couldn't experience how the city was dealing, adjusting, and preparing to move on. I remember on holidays, walking around the financial district wondering if it was just a psychological block, or if I was just so removed from the experience that I couldn't find the border of the clean-up, seeing the wreckage only once in it's still smashed-war zone state before I started bringing student and senior groups to the spot so they could snap photos and I could give my memorized speech of facts, events, and praise of our Heros.

I'm fifteen months out of college now, my first 9/11 feeling finally re-integrated into the rhytms of my city. Watching the rapidly gentrifying over-the-river spots of my beloved Brooklyn, taking part in the arts scene in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and the still-rebellous Lower East Side, trying to scream away the encroaching Starbucks' and six-figure execs. Laughing bitterly at the meager efforts of the democratic primary, wondering which clown is going to win the 4-runner rat race, just to crumble under Mayor Mike's billions in campaigning and pro-active approach to development and city improvement. Even if it is typical corporate-centric profiteering behind most of the public-works projects Mayor Mike is advocating, I have to say: one of the first things I look for in a mayor is compitence. And he exudes it a lot better than any of the Democrats.

New York City's evolution of the past 20 years has been astonishing, and the past four in particular have showed how powerfully the city has been reborn and continues to grow and evolve for the better. Except in that one sixteen acre spot between Church and West, Liberty and Vesey. A place that has remained for four years as a pit, both literally and ideologically. The tour bus drives past it one block removed. Which is a lot less removed than I feel some time. I ahve a New Yorker, yet I personally have no say what should be there. And I, just like those who are actually making the choices that will change the city permanently, seem to have no idea what should be there either.