Procrastinet

Resurrection

filed under: Hey, What's The Big Idea

I'm flying out of Newark tonight, so this morning I drove there and parked the car, then took the AirTrain/NJ Transit/PATH to work, coming in at WTC station.

I've passed Ground Zero a number of times in the last four years, but only peripherally. I've still got a vague, irrational distaste for the tourist element of it, and have never wanted to join in the gawking.

The PATH train left Exchange Place, went what felt like a fairly short distance through a tunnel, and then emerged into the light. I looked out the window, and was dumbfounded to see the slurry wall looming above us. It was a moment I hadn't braced myself for, to be down in the bottom of The Pit.

It felt claustrophobic, like being underwater, as the train crawled around the periphery of the smoothed, cemented basin. Standing on the escalator, rising towards streets that I haven't seen from that direction in over four years, I was keenly aware of the thousands who never got to make that walk, who never got to rise out of that pit.

And strangest of all - it's already a daily place again, in the mundane use of tens or hundreds of thousands of commuters who pass through twice a day.

I know Easter is the holiday dedicated to resurrection, but Christmas is also about the faith that in the cold of winter life and hope will come around again - not yet, but some time.

Stay warm, hug your loved ones, and have a Merry Christmas and happy, happy holidays.

Posted by rjt at December 23, 2005 10:13 AM