i spent the day living vicariously through my own imagination, fueled by my scant knowledge of history and my surroundings... walking down the esplanade (i think) from the financial district to the staten island ferry, seeing the statue of liberty silhouetted in the sunset, and whilst on the ferry itself, cruising along in the waters... thinking, although this isn't the exact skyline that so many people, my own great-great grandparents included, yearned for, that copper woman on her lil' island was the sight they had all heard about... how glad they must have been, just for the sight of land after how many days, weeks, across a massive ocean... and i complain about jet lag after an 8 hour flight... how nervous, scared, and tentative about the unknowns that awaited on that shore... the anxiety with the legal process of immigrating... so many emotions on those ferries...
new york is one of those places where i can imagine some parts of history, like wall street and all that jazz... its what i do in the UK alot, also... except in the US, we're not as keen on keeping our old buildings, we'd rather have a plaque in the sidewalk outside of the skyscraper that now covers the area where something used to be... i guess there's a lot of mystery behind our fascination with history anyway... why do we dedicate massive buildings to put old stuff in? and we pay to walk around and look at this stuff, glimpses of the past, whether its a portrait, castle, or belt buckle...
its also the home of ground zero... its a massive construction site, which on a selfishly morbid thought, was somewhat disheartening for me... i like my photography, big fences, cranes, and orange vests aren't that photogenic... but that aside, its 6 years later... its time to rebuild... visiting the WTC memorial building brought me to tears today... the photos of the new york city skyline pre-9/11.. those towers were massive. walking along with the amoeba of corporate america and looking out windows to see construction, not a set of massive, glass-enclosed buildings looking back at me... i never saw the world trade center, but again, living vicariously, i can't imagine what it must be like, to see a gaping hole where a business center stood... my friends live 10 minutes walking distance, in a straight line, from where the twin towers stood... close enough to have felt the ground shake, smelled the fuel burning, hear the people scream... i can't imagine what it would've been like... so many buildings, so many people, so close together... and the heart of it all was slashed away...
so yes, today i cried... not because it affected me personally, nah, 9/11 has yet to mean something personally to me... so many others were hurt though, personally... they lost, they were left, they sacrificed...
right now, ground zero is not much to see... but its something i think every american should see... tragedies happen every day, everywhere, this is true... thousands of people are needlessly killed everyday... but taking it all on is highly overwhelming... oh i'm drifting... you get my point...
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