ADVENTURES IN NEW YORK CITY VIII

February 25, 2014

ADVENTURES IN NEW YORK CITY

The 9-11 Memorial

Passing block after block of towering buildings, modern glass and steel mixed up with stone dragons and gargoyles, brick and marble, we come at last to the barricades.  The fence is high and covered with ad papered boards and blue plastic tarps.  Signs tell us we are here: the 9-11 Memorial.  Behind the fencing is a construction zone; diggers and dumpsters and pipes and piles of dirt surrounding half formed buildings.  I wonder who will work or play there someday?

Looking up I see a triangular building of glass stretching above all the others, its pointy tower trying to prick the clouds.  “That’s the Freedom Tower,” says my friend.  Officially known as One World Trade Center, it is now the tallest building in the western hemisphere, fourth tallest in the world, soaring 1,776 feet above the pools where once the Twin Towers stood.  It grew out of the debris of Tower 6.  Tower 6?  Just an insignificant 8-story building damaged in the 9-11 attacks and later demolished to make way for the reconstruction of the current One World Trade Center. 

We join the bunches of people being directed to line up and walk soberly between the ropes that guide us behind the plastic curtains out of sight of the hurrying pedestrians.  We offer our donations and wind our way down the sidewalk and through security.  Just like the airports.  Bags in bins, coats in bins, phones and cameras and computers in bins.  Really?  We are this afraid?

Huge signs tell us to be quiet; this is a sacred sight.  There—the two pools where once the Twin Towers stood.  Here—a pear tree struggling to make a come back after being blown apart on 9-11.  Across from us a memorial museum that will open soon.  And over all, the Freedom Tower.

I stare up wondering.  Is this a monument to the freedom we claim to possess and will fight to the death to protect?  At least we’ll send someone to fight and if necessary to die to protect “our way of life”.  I can’t help but wonder though if the real truth is that this is a monument to the fragile shell of our freedom, a freedom that broke apart disintegrating into dust and ash that morning a dozen years ago.  Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…he took a great fall…and not a one of us have been able to put him back together again. 

My friend is looking around; she sighs.  I look around at the people milling about.  I look at the signs.  I look at the names etched into the marble wall surrounding the pools where the Towers once stood.  A four-sided waterfall, the water falls down into a lower pool, and then disappears down a large hole at the bottom.  The walls weep eternally for those who died here.  I weep silently for those who were caught in the Towers that disappeared before our eyes; who never came home to kiss their sweethearts and hug their children.

I weep for the lies and the corruption and the Great Scam we have willingly allowed to be perpetrated upon us.

Why are we so unwilling to wake up?  I stand there in the center of the plaza thinking about the movie The Matrix—thousands of people going about their lives—none of it real—the people didn’t know the difference.  They didn’t want to know. 

I have told friends and family members about the research and information regarding 9-11.  They resist.  Now, as we stand in that very place, I tell my friend about the theories of controlled demolition supported by so many intelligent, educated men and women—engineers, scientists, architects.  I tell her about Judy Wood, the courageous scientist who has dedicated her life to researching what happened to the World Trade Center on 9-11…her impeccable, scientific research made public in a book titled, “Where Did The Towers Go?”   

My friend is silent. 

I trail my fingers along the marble wall of the South Pool, over the names etched deeply there.  I nod to the Pear Tree.

We leave the park and head for the Staten Island Ferry.  As we churn through the waters I gaze at the Statue of Liberty, imprisoned on her tiny island. 



Manhattan falls away behind us, the Freedom Tower looming above the skyline.