the hardest part about the day for me was controlling my hostility toward the tourists.
I sat and watched load after load of eager tourists disgourged from double-decker tour buses, digital cameras in hand, jostling to get a good shot of the site of the World Trade Center.
They actually stand in front of the construction site, arms thrown around one another and grin for the camera. As if this were the fucking Grand Canyon. How can this be? Why is this a tourist destination for these sheep from Cincinnati and Orlando? I am appalled.
"But what about you?" A voice whispers in my head. "Why are you somehow the exception? Aren't you here for the same reason? You don't live here either, you're an outsider, a gawker."
I tell myself, no, I am here for other reasons. Not just to snap a few pictures then slink around the corner to Century 21 to do some discount shopping. Not to linger over the vendor's card tables of Twin Towers t-shirts and snowglobes. I come back every year to remember. Because I was part of the recovery effort. Because I was here when the fires were still burning and teddy bears were left on street corners with photos of the missing. Everyone really believed we were all in this together and we still thought someone could have possibly lived through it and was waiting to be found and so there was hope.
These days I'm not so sure of anything I was certain of four years ago
1 comment:
I live in Oklahoma City and helped with the recovery effort after the bombing here. I know your feelings. When I drive by the OKC Memorial and see people posing for photographs it seems so wrong. I know what it was - the broken glass and the dust and the blood. It is beautiful now, but it is still a place of horror for me and I can't fathom it being anything else - especially a tourist destination. My only hope is that the museum inside will bring some amount of reverence to those who, moments before, smiled for the camera.
Please accept this as a hug of understanding. May you be blessed.
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