What, exactly, is the difference?
A Collision of Worlds
Manhattan -- Sept. 26, 2001
A few nights ago, Karen and I went down to the site of destruction, where the Twin Towers once stood, just a few blocks north of where the Dutch "bought" the island of Manhattan. To say the least, it's disturbing. Huge crowds with heavy feelings, praying for thousands of newly-dead souls struggling with new-found liberation from the weight of existence. Rarely have I seen so many police, not since New Years' Eve in Times Square, where in 1997 I saw them billy club revelers for daring to get too close to the action. This time the cops are more serious, and are backed up by machine gun-toting battalions of the National Guard. Firemen stream in from the Midwest, studying maps of lower Manhattan ... Toto, this isn't Kansas anymore. So many survivors looking for their loved ones, pushing in on the rescuers, holding up photographs, "Have you seen my sister?"
On a soot-encrusted window on one of the surviving skyscrapers, someone has scrawled, "An eye for an eye." Beside that reads, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind - Ghandi." Below that, "This is America. Be original." People disagree, that's America. But people argue, that's New York. I bump into a man, and we look tenderly into each other's eyes and say, "I'm sorry." That's when I realize that New York really has changed. Amidst all this horror, we've become human. For a few weeks, anyway.
Through the smoke, one makes out the remains of the South Tower, seven stories of twisting steel facade topped by one proud American flag. It's the image we've all seen on TV, an apocalyptic version of Monet's Houses of Parliament, whose towers were vaguely silhouetted through the fog by the sun, in shimmering beauty. Now in New York, again the towers are man-made, but so is everything else -- the putrid smoke, the eerie floodlights, the massive destruction -- and the difference is terrifying. Someone sings the Battle Hymn of the Republic, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," but such glory belongs only to those blinded by anger. The horror of the terrorists' action seems eclipsed only by the reaction here in America, where demagogues goad the public to nuke one of the poorest countries on the planet, and angry mobs march on mosques. TV commentators say Ground Zero is different in person ... and in person, mine eyes have seen the folly of the bombing for the Lord.
I find it all so sad ... and then, finally, liberating. Just a test, a preamble, perhaps. The question, answered so well by all those heroic firefighters and policemen -- of all people! -- the question really is, how do we want to define our life? How can we find in death the strength to make a better life?
Getting closer to the site of destruction, one can make out tiny figures, in fluorescent orange jackets, climbing over a heap of rubbish taller than a Kansas grain silo. Slowly the firemen search for survivors, while metalworkers cut through beams of steel, readying them for the game of pick-up-sticks played by the cranes overhead, ever wary that collapse of the structure could spell death for any unlikely survivors. Survivors? Yes, survivors, just ask the firemen who search for their brothers, risking their necks as if self-sacrifice were more important than life itself. Teaching all of us that, in fact, it is.
As night falls, more floodlights come on; it's now brighter than Yankee stadium, and we watch the true heroes slip and slide over the wreck of steel structures that were once Manhattan's most bombastic symbol of wealth and power. Kansas wheat fields are fine for day dreams, but in New York the dreams come true. Those who dreamt of money saw in the Twin Towers two arrows, always pointing up -- way up -- to possibility, to wealth, to power. In their collapse, some now hope to salvage from bankruptcy their ruined corporations, while others hope merely for salvation.
A few Muslim extremists who dreamt of salvation saw only symbols of an imperialist economy; in turn, their sacrifices are answered by Americans who dream only of vengeance. The Twin Towers, once the world's tallest buildings, were twin testaments to the power of physical poetry, but perhaps also to a bankrupt morality, one that met its match in a few morally-bankrupt young Arab men hell-bent on destroying them, and us. Too high above the ground, the collision of dreams, the collision of worlds -- east vs. west, money vs. God, Bible vs. Qur'an -- leaves the innocent dead and an entire city in shock. At this site of destruction, these twin towers once sang of the power of dreams; today their wreckage is the cry of a terrible nightmare. "Have you seen my sister?"
Of course, the irony of calling it the "site of destruction" is that much was destroyed to build them -- mountains forged into steel beams, beaches into glass windows and forests into conference tables. Ironically, the towers now lay where an inlet once was, and exactly where, in November of 1613, some of the very first European "explorers" of New York lost their boat (The "Tiger") and all its supplies in a terrible fire. Without the help of the First People of this land, they'd never have survived the winter. Turned out to be a pretty bad deal for the First People.
All of Manhattan sits upon destroyed forests, streams, animals and the graves of Native people. Only the conquerors still wait for Armageddon -- for Native People, the Book of Revelations is old news. State-backed terrorism has long been a threat to Native Americans -- specifically, the terrorism backed by the United States. After centuries of genocide, deforestation, plagues, state-backed terrorism and religious intolerance by a country founded upon an ideal of religious tolerance, by a country whose very system of democracy was inspired by the First People of the Iroquois League, some of the First People of this land may see both irony and justice in recent events. We are all innocent, and none of us are innocent. You could pardon the First People for caring little for our recent suffering. And yet they do.
Two miles north of Ground Zero, at Union Square, is a collection of shrines to the fallen. Four-foot models of the Twin Towers are lovingly surrounded by thousands of flowers, candles, photos of the missing, messages of peace -- and hundreds of New Yorkers searching for peace, for meaning ... for community. If New Yorkers can come together, anyone can. Sharing our pain, we've humbled ourselves in ways previously foreign to this city. The tallest shrine to the Twin Towers, about 10 feet high, is surrounded by the most candles, the most people. And tonight in the middle of all this, surrounded by quiet, prayerful New Yorkers, is a Navajo medicine man, singing and blessing the stranded souls with the smoke of sage and a fan of eagle feathers, tiptoeing between thousands of candles lit as working prayers for the dead. He has no reason to care for his oppressors, and yet he does. After he cries for our loved ones, and for us, he talks to us, and we New Yorkers ... listen.
He tells us who he is, the name of his family, of the land from where he comes. He talks not of endings, but of beginnings. He mentions the past 500 years, but talks mostly about the future. "My grandfather told me, 'You are not the future. The children are the future.'" He talks not of evil, but of good. That the ones who have committed this evil act have also done good, for they have brought us together, and brought out the good in all of us. He ties an eagle feather to the little tower in the center of this democratic shrine, and says, "This is for all of you. I live with the white man, the black man and the yellow man. You are the future. All you beautiful people. We cannot change reality. We cannot change what has happened. But we can change the future."
His tears are matched by ours. I can scarcely believe what I'm seeing: New Yorkers crying openly, in public, looking for comfort from strangers. For once, I am heartened by the reaction here at home. Will those abroad feel our pain? Abroad, in Washington, D.C.? Will our pain be used to ask the world for justice, or for vengeance? Which dream shall triumph?
This is the reality of New York, that it is a land of symbols and dreams for all the world, where all the world sees hope or despair. Perhaps here we find the essence of what this world has become; perhaps here we can find a way out of the mess we have created. But tonight, on the street, we merely mourn for all that we have lost. We've become human.
-- Brett Clippingdale
Originally an email sent to friends and family, somehow Parabola Magazine got it and published an excerpt (with my permission).
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What, exactly, is the difference?
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The Earth is precious ... and rare. There's no such thing as a smart bomb.
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