Dear All
As anniversaries go, the 17th is not auspicious. For wedding anniversaries, the traditional gift on the 17th year is furniture—and I’d expect a married couple to have adequate furnishings by then.
Being selective these days about the news I consume, I was able to ignore mentions and descriptions the 9/11 anniversary entirely.
But life, and death, have a way of intruding regardless of what any of us mere mortals may have planned.
First, I recently received my copy of “The AIDS Activist Project,” a book of portraits of AIDS activists a quarter of a century ago, taken in many cities by ACT UP comrade Bill Bytsura.
Opening it, scanning the rich black-and-white images of activists—most far younger than I am today, and some of whom I knew—returned me to the early 1980s, when a group of people came together because they were scared, angry, and dying, and no one cared about them.
The photos of those whom I knew who died, most within five years of the portrait, look the way I remember them 25 years ago. The still-living all look so very, very YOUNG. I guess we all were, once.
The book made me sad, contemplative, and reflective, rather than sparking the anger and urgency I expected. Its mission is simply to honor the people, living and dead, as they were then, when they came together for a life-or-death reason. No more, no less.
Second, I got an e-mail today telling me a friend had died in his sleep.
Luke had just celebrated his 45th birthday, and he may have been the most optimistic person I know in New York. He knew everybody, and everybody knew Luke.
He was the consummate networker, a man who continually sent notes saying, “Hey, let me connect you to So-And-So who’s looking for Such-and-Such, I think you guys would enjoy each other.”
Brought up in an artist’s loft in SoHo—when it was very different from today’s luxury housing—Luke took a brief sidestep to Palo Alto, then came right back to NYC and never left.
It’s almost inconceivable to think that he’s not part of my NYC landscape, much left that he died at an age 15 years younger than I find myself.
Last, as I walked to the river to sit and reflect, I passed the customary huge wreaths, plaques, notes, and memorials outside our local NYPD precinct which, like virtually all the rest, lost officers and workers on 9/11.
Sitting by the water brought a measure of tranquility, eventually. Tranquility in a NYC context of sound and motion, anyhow.
From where I sat on a public bench, in a park that didn’t exist when I moved to the area 28 years ago, I could see, hear, or experience …
– Pedestrians of all ages, single and in groups and in families
– Cyclists, even split between their own bikes and the ubiquitous blue shared Citibikes
– Joggers and serious runners of all ages, genders, and attire
– Traffic grinding along during rush hour on the elevated highway behind me
– A commuter ferry dock with arrivals and departures every 12 minutes or so
– Cargo barges and water taxis on the river
– Float planes landing and taking off
– A world-famous bridge off to one side
– The smell of cheap cigars
– The smell of weed
– Construction cranes and smokestacks and church spires and high-rise towers, dozens of towers everywhere I looked
The icing on the cake was a group of two dozen people gathered at the railing, the men in skullcaps, presumably celebrating the end of Rosh Hashanah. I heard a snatch of song; the runners and cyclists were content to dodge around the back. It’s the New York thing.
Historians observed within days of the 9/11 attacks that such events rarely brought down major cities. Instead, cities waned and died due to changes in technology, economic factors, or climate.
In 1913, poet Ezra Pound wrote:
Is New York the most beautiful city in the world?
It is not far from it.
No urban nights are like the nights there.
I have looked down across the city from high windows … it is then that the great buildings lose reality and take on magical powers.
Squares and squares of flame set and cut into the ether.
Here is our poetry, for we have pulled the stars down to our will.
Watching the panorama of NYC life from my bench gave me perspective; the city is bigger than any of us, and it will endure long after all of us are gone.
Seventeen years ago, in the sequence of “9/11 Letters,” I wrote a great deal about the struggle to get back to “normal,” though for many it took a decade or more, and for a few it has never happened.
It remains the role of a global capital to lure young people from Somewhere Else, determined to come and make their mark, better themselves, and succeed. Some will, some won’t.
But already some portion of the city’s 8.5 million residents were not here on 9/11, and may not even remember the day except as a story told by older people. That’s a good thing. When I moved here in 1981, by the way, it had 7.1 million people.
Finally, a statistic: 2,996 people were killed on 9/11 and in its aftermath, which continues as workers of all ages and occupations succumb to effects of the poisons they breathed in the immediate days after the event.
On August 28 this year, a rigorous total was finally issued for the number of people who died in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria. It was 2,975.
Consider: Which set of people is more honored? Who is valued more? And why? What have we learned? How will we change
To the U.S. citizens in my list, please vote in all your primary elections, and vote again in the November 6th general election.
best, jv.