There is a church out side the construction walls around Ground Zero - its the only place where the city still lets people mourn for 911. It seems out of place at first - this ancient church with a graveyard at its feet in the middle of tall, stocky, shiny, glassy, financial manhattan. But if you walk inside the tall black gate surrounding the old graveyard, decorated with shirts, and flowers and teddybears commemorating 911, you'll realize that this ancient churchyard is in just the right place - a soft spot in the heart of Manhattan, a knuckle of (almost) serenity inside the black iron gates that keep out the city's advances, a receptacle for blind grief among a world of unblinking (and unflinching) eyes. A literal tesimony to the saying, 'there is a time and a place'. Ground Zero itself is heroically bustling, overrun with cranes and banging construction, spitting orange construction workers and foreign tourists with shiny cameras. If you didnt stop to notice the size of the gap inside the blue constructions walls then it would look like the beginning of just another high rise. At first this seemed callous, ungrateful, sacreligious the way the construction workers and tourists tramp all over the gaping gravesite of the twin towers, carelessly and without ceremony. But then you realize - this is just so New York. Rebuild, renew, exceed. Stronger, surer, back on the old metropolitan feet -- all the while, knowing simply that, there is a place and a time for all the rest. My Dad used to tell me growing up, in the weekly spasm of never-ending grief over some silly friend or breakup- you can choose to make your own destiny, looking life (and loss) square in the face or you can be a victim. One thing is for certain, New York is no victim. The loss of that day in September will live in the very heart of Manhattan forever - literally and figuratively. The walls of the old St Paul's churchyard will be responsible for carrying the memory while the new towers go up and the gap fills back to the top. A time and a place. In the meantime - rebuild, renew, exceed...stronger, better, clearer.
Im seated in a glass conference room in the shiny new 7 World Trade Center - a building behind the twin towers, destroyed with them on 911. This is the first of the WTC construction to be finished, opening in 2006. On one side, its massive winows give an arial view of Ground Zero, a milling map of cranes, trucks, trailers and dirt. This side, the opposite side, gives a panoramic view of manhattan - the buildings of far away midtown rising out of the brown mist to meet me up here. It almost feels as though I should be gasping for breath this high above the city at the very tip of the island, clinging to the railing or flying paper airplanes off the top into the wind. But instead Im safely sealed in glass, surveying my new city from the quietest place in all manhattan - above it.
In this chair in the sky, I have all of Ground Zero behind me, and all of Manhattan ahead of me. A little nobody from Boulder, Colorado looking over the heart of the modern world, like some tiny, frightened empress surveying the masses of her new kingdom. How did I get here? What am I to do now that Im here?
Im seated in a glass conference room in the shiny new 7 World Trade Center - a building behind the twin towers, destroyed with them on 911. This is the first of the WTC construction to be finished, opening in 2006. On one side, its massive winows give an arial view of Ground Zero, a milling map of cranes, trucks, trailers and dirt. This side, the opposite side, gives a panoramic view of manhattan - the buildings of far away midtown rising out of the brown mist to meet me up here. It almost feels as though I should be gasping for breath this high above the city at the very tip of the island, clinging to the railing or flying paper airplanes off the top into the wind. But instead Im safely sealed in glass, surveying my new city from the quietest place in all manhattan - above it.
In this chair in the sky, I have all of Ground Zero behind me, and all of Manhattan ahead of me. A little nobody from Boulder, Colorado looking over the heart of the modern world, like some tiny, frightened empress surveying the masses of her new kingdom. How did I get here? What am I to do now that Im here?
6 months before, November 8th, 2007 - Its a sunny, warm day of fall in Boulder, Colorado. The people in my quaint little hometown are going about their usual business, visiting their usual coffee shops, talking with their usual neighbors, running their usual routes around wonderland lake, and yep, they are enjoying it. Life is good, usual, healthy, happy.
I'm in a ball underneath the desk of my cubicle on 1877 Broadway, Boulder Colorado. My office phone is ringing, coworkers walking past on the other side of the cube wall asking each other where I've gone, the sales team is on its way to lunch discussing which place has the best salads. I am in upright fetal position, knees to my mouth, my new dress pants absorbing the running of my nose, my hands smothering my nose and mouth to stifle the sobs. Im surveying the dark quiet cover of my desk, the only safe place in the world that I have to fall apart, in between meetings. The only time and the only place. In the dark of that tiny desk I'm surveying the ruins of my expectations, my relationship, my clear career path, my grad school aspirations, my dignity, absolutely all my plans, my life...and thinking, "I dont think I can survive this."
Back in 7 World Trade Center, chin to chin with the empire state building, watching the mach-5 construction of my life in New York City (a life that surely can;t be mine, can it?), this hustling and bustling just-who-does-she-think-she-is?? new self, the beginnings of something shiny and new while riddled with pot holes and unsightly cement mixers...I cant help but smile and think 'rebuild, renew, exceed'. 0 to 60 in six months flat.
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