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Artinsight |
Report From Ground Zero:
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The New Landscape
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| All photos and text © 2001 by Michael Cook |
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Exiting the subway train at Fulton and Broadway, we were detoured underground for two blocks in order to exit to the street. Security seemed tighter than usual here, and the smell of burnt wood and metal permeated the entire station. Once above ground, winding my way back to Fulton and Broadway to get an escort in, I passed by walls on which people had been allowed to write their messages. It was probably a mistake to stop and read some. There, along with the handscrawled sentiments--many of them religious, many of them patriotic, many optimistic, many just heartfelt expressions of grief and mourning, were the obvious indications of disorientation, confusion, disbelief, fear, hostility, hate, rage, and awe. I took a few seconds to add my own: “Beyond all our grief, let compassion, justice, and reason prevail.” And then it hit me all over again--like a wall, like this wall, inscribed by visitors and volunteers, relief workers, office workers, and tourists from all over the world--these were the expressions of the people on the street who have gotten close enough to witness the ruins where so many thousands had perished. |
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| Looking north up Nassau Street on the morning of 9/15. Although several blocks away from the blast, it looked like a light snowfall, but was only dust. | |||||||||||
| It took longer than expected to regain my composure. Gradually I became aware of all the sidewalk life swirling about me, as people went on with their daily business. Despite seeing walls, phone booths, bus stop shelters and utility poles everywhere papered with images of the missing persons for the past two and a half weeks, this wall, on this day, really got to me. Suddenly, the enormity of everyone’s loss was truly unbearable. And too real to deny. In the face of this horrific reality, all of our stupid little stories, all of the “where I was when the planes hit, and what happened next” anecdotes--are of no consequence whatsoever now. Maybe because so much of my energy and emotional resources have been devoted to just getting on with life, the grim reality of it all continually gets pushed aside. Only on occasions when the extraordinary totality of it all sinks in, do I forget those things that are only superficially important now--our home, our possessions. It sickened me to realize that to a large degree, I had been too busy to feel. Or maybe it was just a self-defense mechanism. In any case, that facade now had large, gaping holes punched in it. Eventually, I pulled myself together, and joined the “business-as-usual” parade down the sidewalk to the National Guard barricades. I had a job to do today too. It took a long time to talk my way in, despite the photo ID and other documentation of residency inside the zone; security was extremely high today, and even though it was an unusual request (to go into the building to retrieve valuables and take them to another location inside the barricade), it took a long time to get clearance. But I was actually pleased that they were being so cautious about letting people in. We now have a lot of security concerns regarding our building, and I waited patiently while they all talked it over. Since I didn’t fit the profile of a terrorist or looter, I was finally given an escort in. The police seemed to almost luxuriate in the scene. They walked very slowly, looking around, joking, and pointing out the sights. It was all gruesome. Maybe it was a macho cop thing, maybe something they do to entertain all those allowed inside, maybe it’s just their way of coping. At one point they stopped to chat with a fellow cop, and joked about his not wearing a mask. “Hell,” he said, “I’ve already got enough asbestos in me to spin a forty-foot pipe!” We all chuckled, but it wasn’t funny. We’re hoping to live here again someday. We were taken down a different route to our building, somewhere I hadn’t been since September 11--down the front of Liberty Street, across from where the World Trade Center towers once stood. Now, of course, it was only massive piles of mangled wreckage and debris, several stories tall. Despite walking down this block nearly every day and night for years, it was almost impossible to recognize. There were no familiar storefronts at all. It was totally transformed. Arriving at our loft door presented another challenge: Oddly, it was now locked, with the doorknob removed. What the hell, it was a cheap lockset, and the door had already been broken in before. I felt I had to get the trunks inside; it wouldn’t make any sense to turn back now, and I wasn’t about to let some junky lock deter me. Nevertheless, it proved surprisingly durable. I kicked about five times, and it didn’t yield. One of the cops took my efforts as permission, and kicked about four more times, before the lock finally gave way. “Ah, police power!” I congratulated. His partner joked about his narcotics training finally paying off. |
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