Equally woven into the fabric of the city is the response, in all of its many facets. Security, from Coast Guard ships in the East River, to huge trucks blocking access to police stations, hospitals, national guard armories, and various bits of infrastructure. Rescure services, from every corner of the nation. Suddenly, a hospital's back service entrance, is being watched by a group of sherrifs from upstate New York. A bus from Ohio, parked on a side street belongs to an urban rescure unit. A torrent of odd heavy equipment flows, inexorably towards ground zero, and a heavy, ponderous flow pulses, giant trucks lumbering away from the site full, headed mosly towards Staten Island, where the tens of thousands of tons of rubble are being dealt with, then back, empty for another load.
Police sit at bridges, watching traffic, pulling trucks over for inspections, clearing a path for vehicles working with the resuce effort. Police sit in cars with sightlines to bits of infrastructure. Police saturate the street grid, trying to unglue the mid-town traffic caused by trying to squeeze two tunnels woth of cars and trucks through one, while checking suspicious, or even possibly suspicious cars and trucks.
My commute is often perverse. I drop the wife and daughter cross-town, by car several days a week, and then trek out to the suburbs on the West side. Other days, a straight shot up the East side, and out to Westchester. Most days, the trip home is down though the Bronx and into Manhattan.
Driving south on the FDR drive, the view is strange. An absence of boats. Or at least commercial and pleasure craft. We have a fine selection of government boats. Coast Guard, New York City policy, Fire Department, Navy. You name it, it's there. But commerce? None in sight. At the UN, the line of cars, headed for the Garage creeps slowly through the methodical, serious looking checkpoints.
Trudging north, again the Hudon river is almost empty. A few barges, hard by the west side of the channel work up and down the Hudson. Chelsea Piers, The Javits convention center, and random City buildings hum with activity. Trucks, heavy equipment, parked every which way. Tents cover a lot adjacent to one area, and underneath, an amazing profusion of supplies needed to support the rescue effort is stacked. Given search dogs, the huge pallets of dog food clearly visble from the roadside are explicable, if still eyeraising.
Finally, inescapably, there is ground zero. Or, perhaps more chillingly,
there isn't ground zero. From any distance, it isn't what you can see that
haunts, but what you cannot. One of my common paths home from work takes
me down the Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx. There, in a sweeping merge
with
the Bruckner expressway, on an elevated ramp, the Manhattan skyline presents
itself. It has always been a visually arresting moment in the midst of the
commute. Far enough to encompass the full sweep of the skyline, with the
complex geometry of the Hell Gate railroad bridge and the triboro bridge
in the foreground, yet close enough to let the eye pick out a lot of complexity
and texture. One of many classic views of the uniquely dense skyline that
is unmistakably New York's. The twin towers were never a dominant chord in
the visual symphony. They were far back, made less distinct by distance,
and partially obscured by the hulking mass of the midtown towers. And yet,
they were there. And now they are not. Up close, they were not, to my eye,
ever lovely, or terribly attractive. But, from a distance, especially as
the world financial center grew around them, the towers had a purity of line
that was powerful. When viewed as part of the rich composition that was the
skyline, they fit, and fit well.
Suddenly, the Empire State Building looms slightly too large in the view. Donald Trump's new residential tower, the Citibank center, and even the Citibank tower in queens loom too large, as the eye, conditioned by hundreds of repetitions of the view, and prompted by the nagging need to affirm that the towers are indeed gone, scans the skyline. From a hundred different viewpoints, from a thousand different memories, this broken skyline will call to us.
Comming north, from Philadelphia, from Washington DC, or just from visiting friends in New Jersey, the stark, strong lines of the towers have always been part of the home stretch. No longer. From thirty miles east, while sailing, the twin towers poked over the horizon, a powerful affirmation of sheer bulk on clear days. No longer. From hilltops and ridgelines, hiking, twenty, thirty miles away, the top of the towers were visible. No longer. The financial district skyline rushing towards you from the Staten Island ferry, those two boxy pillars looming tall as you neared. No longer.
Whenever the air is clear, the light crisp, and the skyline presents itself, we will be reminded of our losses. It takes a lot to concentrate the mind of Americans. Our lives are busy, our distractions many and varied. But a hole in the skyline is hard to ignore. New York will pick up, and continue. We wiill, after debate, argument and lively,discussion rebuiild the site, although none can say what final form we will chose. But, for a very long time, our sadness, our shock, and I strongly suspect a deeply passionite purpose will be fueled by what isn't there.