On the Last Post
I try not to get excessively maudlin in my writing, but I needed to share the experience this morning before moving on to discussing more light-hearted fare.
I attended a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral earlier that same Sunday - March 11. Having only loosely planned on what I would be doing with my friends from work I didn’t realize until afterwards that the Mass and the visit to Ground Zero effectively added a ‘double pilgrimage’ to my trip to New York City to attend a training course.
After a short subway ride,
the station outside City Hall on Broadway would come to serve as our portal to this experience. After walking a few blocks, we found ourselves on Church Street where we came upon a fitting warning as to where we were about to tread - a ‘girder-cross’ from the World Trade Centre was standing metres away from the square.
A dispassionate observer will only see a wide open expanse of space. A huge construction site, really. Only if you lose yourself in your memories do you realize the enormity of what happened here. You thank God it didn’t affect more people than it already did, but you wish and pray that it had never had to have happened in the first place.
The sunlight accentuated the enormous gap left behind at Ground Zero.
I felt like I was hit by the force of the souls of thousands of innocents, taken suddenly and tragically such a short time ago.
A chain-link fence held up various banners and separated us from what has turned into a reconstruction site.
We got to see David Letterman and various other sites. They were amusing diversions, but ultimately felt like shallow fluff in comparison to the very real life and death witnessed live on TV while I was still in university.
I can clearly remember those dark days - wondering whether a mobilization on the scale of World War Two was imminent. The initial shock passed, and bungled wars proceeded with no clear end in sight.
And the governments responsible for prosecuting those conflicts to completion are doing it in a half-assed fashion that seems guaranteed to only increase the risk of bankruptcy in the world’s richest country.
What a difference half a decade makes.
The extremely well documented fiascos called American elections, Iraqi liberation and related events do make one thing clear: we can also be incredibly thankful for the shallow fluff. I don’t think it dulls our rage at the criminal incompetence the poorest people of the world have been subject to – the cheers in David Letterman’s audience mocking the utter foolishness of the Bush administration are proof enough of that – it’s merely just enough to keep people from going mad from obsessing over the sad state of affairs in the world.