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AN IMAGE MADE 11.16.11

November 16, 2011 § Leave a comment

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Consider The Holga #20

by Jonnie Coutu

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NEW DAY by Steve Siddle – Photos by Jonnie Coutu

September 28, 2011 § Leave a comment

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New Day.

“Me and the RZA connect…”

by Steve Siddle

Photos By Jonnie Coutu

9/11/11 10 A.M.

St. Paul’s Cathedral in downtown Manhattan stands in the shadow of the World Trade Center. Built in 1776, it is the oldest building still in use in New York City. The fact that this small chapel remained unharmed while the towers crashed down around it is a triumphant miracle. The chapel served as a Triage for firefighters, E.M.T.’s and volunteers for months after the attack. For many people, a trip to St.Paul’s has become a type of pilgrimage.

I , too, felt drawn here this morning. I don’t know anyone who died here in lower Manhattan ten years ago. I am not a firefighter, cop, or an E.M.T. I am a simple citizen. I am just another American whose life was rocked by the violence of that morning and who has felt the tremors of its aftershocks ever since.

It is a beautiful, warm morning and I am sitting behind the chapel in the small graveyard that faces the World Trade Memorial site. Through the branches of the trees I can see one corner of the large screen that is showing the memorial service. Through the flutter of the leaves I catch glimpses of President Obama’s shoulder, the ashen white of President Bush’s hair.

The mood of the crowd around me is somber but not sad. There are few children and most of the men are in uniform. The woman behind me is wearing flowers and her eyes are bright and clear but red around the lashes as if she has just recently stopped crying. The older couple in front of me, who look very much like my parents, are holding hands.

It is very peaceful here and for a minute or two I wonder what has drawn me to Manhattan this morning. I forget, for a minute, the Terror warnings and the Police Dogs lined up at Grand Central Station. I let go, for a minute, of the anger I felt when I walked past the protestors and conspiracy freaks. For a blissful moment I feel the weight of the last ten years lifted.

Names are read and I keep as still as I can. I am grateful to the breeze and I feel at one with the trees, the gravestones and the cool ground beneath my feet. I wonder if this is what it feels like to die. I pray that it is and I hope that all those who died here ten years ago felt like this in their last moment.

Paul Simon has begun to sing “The Sound of Silence” and I am pulled back out of my reverie and I again begin to wonder why I have come here, so far from my home, this Sunday morning.

These last ten years have been hard. I was fresh out of college ten years ago, and I felt invincible. I doubt I will ever again feel as innocent or young as I felt when I went to bed on September 10, 2001. I can barely remember life before 9/11.

Something changed that morning. Some immense wheel of destruction was set in motion and it continued to crash through our lives in ways we never expected for the decade since. The mistakes we made lie piled up like trash bags in the sun.

What hurts most is the hope I felt those first few days after the attack. Hope that we would come together as never before, come together with the world united behind us to fight for freedom and decency. I never felt more Patriotic than I did in those first weeks after the attack and I felt sure that America would become stronger, better, and more free.

I remember feeling grateful that George W. Bush was president because I believed he would pull on those cowboy boots and kick the ass of Bin Laden. Even in that vengeful task he failed.

Make no bones about it; our government has failed us, so too, has our media. The constricting weight of cynicism has made us tired and uneasy as if we have been sleeping with a bullet proof vest on.

But what is even harder to admit this morning, is the ways in which I have failed myself. The sins of commission and omission keep me up at night and most mornings I wake up wondering how I will ever climb out of the hole I dug myself into. Much has been lost since 9/11. Lost jobs, lost love, lost hope in the American dream.

Maybe you too have lost things. Maybe you want, more than anything, to put these last ten years behind you. To be given a chance to start again. To hope and dream with abandon, the way we once did.

There is a small booth inside the chapel that is known as George Washington’s Box. They say it contains the pew where President Washington came to pray in 1789. In the weeks after the Tower’s fell, the pew became a place where tired rescue workers could sit and have their feet massaged by volunteers.

I’ve been thinking about that pew and the historic things that have happened there and it gives me hope. The truth is that we can never erase the pain of what has happened, but we can find strength in the fact that we have survived. Find hope in those moments during the darkest nights when we gathered the strength to comfort one another.

Perhaps I was drawn here not just to lay the past to rest -to put the hard times behind me- but to be shown a glimpse of how strong we were in the face of so much sadness. To be reminded that, even in the midst of making so many mistakes, we were loyal to one another, we never gave up.

I know now, why I have come here to St. Paul’s.

As of this moment, I have decided that 9/11/11 will mark the beginning of new era. One fortified by the hard times that preceded it. A decade inspired by fact that we didn’t die. I was drawn here not to look back in regret, but to look forward in resolve.

Peace, Steve

Read from STEVE SIDDLE

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