Pillars Of Light

I was working late last night on Staten Island, and on my way back on the Ferry, I saw the Pillars of Light that are a memorial to September 11^th. They are astonishingly beautiful – the twin towers projected up into the sky in the form of two blue lazer beams. At certain times when the cloud cover is the way it was last night, they project above the clouds and the reflection that bounces off the lower part of the clouds makes it seem as if there is a vertical beam attached to the two horizontal ones, making the image of a cross. The first time I saw that was seven years ago, when I was living all the way up at the top of Manhattan. I was living in an apartment on a hill and was on the top floor with a wall of windows that opened up with a view straight downtown. It was the first time since 2001 that I’d spent that day in any place other than downtown Manhattan, and it amazed me that I had such a perfect view. Where I live now I don’t have that same view out of my windows, but coming home at night as I did last night there is a perfect view all the way home.

At the class I’d been teaching I had a conversation with a woman as we were getting ready to leave about the time we’d both spent on that day 12 years ago. She was saying that she didn’t like to work on that day and was taking it off, and I said I didn’t either but I had to this year. I’ll be in a training all day which somehow seems very odd to me to be doing. We talked about how we both felt somehow that even though we knew it was important to go on with your life, we felt the need for some recognition that something had happened on that day. We both have our stories as everyone does of that day, and there is something that is deep within us that needs to recognize that we went through something – that so many people went through something – and that some people didn’t survive it. She used the word “respect,” and I agreed with her – there is something that on a very human level calls out that those lives that were lost and those people who went through so much need to have respect given for what happened.

The phrase people use around that day and those events is “We will never forget,” and I think that’s very true. How can you ever forget something that happened in front of your eyes, to people you know, in a place where you walk and live every day? The twin towers were visible from everywhere for miles around, and if you lived downtown or even midtown, you’d use them as a directional marker almost without even knowing you were doing it. You’d get off the subway and check to see where they were and then you’d be on your way in the right direction. There were some routes that I’d walk where I’d see them at every turn, and even still on foggy days when I can’t see them I think, wow, the fog is really thick today, before I remember that I’ll never see them again except in pictures.

For some people “We will never forget” is a battle cry, but for me it is something of deep sorrow. I will never forget those towers – I spent some memorable days on the top of them, a special gift from God I know now, in the summer of 2001. I had the opportunity to do a voice over describing the view from the roof deck, and I went up there twice I think to go over the script with the technician who was recording it. About a year before that a friend had invited me to go to the roof top lounge where there was free admission for dancing on one night of the week, I forget which one now. The restaurant was called Windows on the World, and the bar and lounge where there was free dancing was “The Greatest Bar On Earth.” And once even longer ago on a trip to New York City, I took a photograph of my first love sitting outside in the plaza. We were on a school trip for our high school youth orchestra, and they stopped there on the way to wherever it was that we were staying. I don’t know where that picture is now, but the memory of it will always be in my mind, even now that first love is long a thing of the past.

There are things that we must forgive in our lives or else they will haunt us and cause a bitter root to grow. But even as we forgive, there are some things that we cannot forget. And there are things that are so big that it takes us long to forgive – try as we might the pain just goes so deep that it seems to have a radioactive half-life. I didn’t lose anyone I loved that day, but I know that there were many people who did. I wasn’t in the buildings, my health wasn’t affected, and I didn’t have any visible problems except for the rats from downtown that relocated for a time in my apartment. That was awful, but it was all a part of that surreal time, and they are as long gone as that apartment and my old life is. And yet even though I did not lose anything physically that was precious to me, I still cannot forget the trauma of that day and that time. I lost something of my innocence I guess, a sense that even if my life was full of drama, the things around me would always be there to catch me if I fell. I lost a sense that daily life outside of me would go on the way it always had, in spite of what was going on in my own.

But there were so many people who lost so much more that day, and my heart and prayers are with them now. If I have not been able to forget, I don’t know how it is possible for them to forgive, and I know that forgiveness is something that we need to set us free.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan