Where I Was From

Red Letter Day

Nobody close to me was particularly affected by 9/11, but as an American I figured I would be remiss to ignore the five-year anniversary. So yesterday I set out to Manhattan to visit Ground Zero and pay my respects. I had trouble finding my way to the site (the grid system starts a ways north of it) but the sight of a crowd of protestors in shirts reading "9/11 was an inside job" (conspiracy theory much?) helped me get my bearings. Just turning the corner to see that gaping hole in the skyline up close made me shiver up and down. You can get a closer look into the pit from the Path station that runs through it. Hard to imagine that this empty space was the site of such a recent major calamity. I'd opted to go in the afternoon to avoid the crowds who showed for the four-hour morning ceremony (besides, I've no business taking up space that belongs to families directly affected by it all), so the scene wasn't too chaotic. There were policemen and firefighters all over the financial district in their dress uniforms, and bells were ringing out across the street.

My next stop for the day was the city library, where I'd intended to look for ghosts in the stacks and maybe take a photo with the lions out front. I got off the train at Grand Central, which became an event in and of itself. The building is massive and ornate and I couldn't get enough of it. The friggin' ceiling has golden constellations on it. I just think of the way I have to hold my breath through the entire lobby when I'm in the Transbay Terminal at home (holy mother of urine stench!). Did the Transbay Terminal ever look like this? No, sir, it did not. I could hang around there all day - except I was library-bound. But since I am a genius at event planning, I failed to look up the hours before setting out, and lo and behold, the library's closed on Mondays. But it really didn't matter, as there was a sharp-dressed choir standing on the steps before a big audience. They started their set with the national anthem and the director announced that they were the one and only Boys' Choir of Harlem. Effing class act, all the way. Accidental outdoor concerts make my world brighter. You don't even know. A crazy barbershop-style mens' chorus sang a set in between the boys' choir's two sets. Hey, what's funnier than Elvis? Forty old men in khakis pretending to be Elvis!

I had some time to fill before hopping the train to the Village, so I stopped by the Soup Nazi for some lobster bisque, which came with a truffle and was so good I felt drunk after eating it. Then it was off to the New School's graduate program in writing for a presentation and panel discussion by writers who'd respectively authored historical, fictional, and poetic accounts of 9/11. How chilling to hear personal accounts. It's not like seeing that TV footage. It suddenly became real for me.

Labels: travel

posted by Leah @ 5:50 PM