Auszug: „Er erzählte mir, dass es zur schmerzlichen Realität für ihn gehört, zu wissen, dass er niemals in der Lage sein wird, es (das World Trade Center, A.d.R.) seinen Kindern zu zeigen. Weil es für ihn die Grandiosität und den Glanz der Stadt selbst symbolisierte.“
I am going home today, to Boston. I really shouldn't be doing it; I am so busy with school, I can hardly afford to take the time off from my studies. But I don't care, I need to go.
It's only been a couple of weeks since the World Trade Center attack, but it feels like it's been years, as if the disaster played with the elasticity of time, stretching it like a rubber band, as far as it can go before it snaps.
I am missing three classes to go home, and I feel badly about that; it just isn't like me to allow myself these concessions. But I need to see my family. And somehow I think I need to see the city I call home, need to make sure its skyline still stands as I left it: The Prudential Building, the Hancock tower -- which hold so many memories for me -- and a brand new building, the name of which I do not know.
The sadness of the World Trade Center is magnified by those who have lived here all their lives. The military guy I spoke of in a previous entry grew up in New York City, and was born after the building's construction. He told me that one of the most painful realities for him is knowing that he will never be able to show it to his children, because for him it symbolized the grandiosity and splendor of the city itself.
For him it was an anchor, and a beacon. In his drunken, crazy 20s, he and friends would stumble out of a bar early in the morning and need only find the towers to know where South was; as he approached 30, a few friends held wedding dinners there, at the restaurant, at the very top.
6000 people dead, and a lifetime of memories stolen from the countless living. I have a memory of the World Trade Center, too. But I wish I could forget it.
