Evening of the 9/11 Anniversary

Friends of mine had been to Ground Zero and said it was just a big hole in the ground. But on the evening of the actual anniversary, I spontaneously decided to go down and have a look at the site. Perhaps it had something to do with the Towers of Light which had been beamed up into the sky in the days preceding. Like a moth, I'm attracted to lights and bright colours.

These glass towers for sale were the first thing I saw as i came out the subway. Further along the site there are signs asking people not to sell anything. There were a lot of people milling around; at some stage the Hells Angels (or the American Rifle Association, no idea) thumped past on Harley Davidsons. There were a lot of photos and flowers stuck in the fence around the site. People were there telling their stories from the backs of fire engines. Others were making brass rubbings of a copper memorial plaque. Mosts people there were tourists with cameras, but there was still a charged atmosphere. At some point, a middle aged man started ranting about the muslims and got quickly taken to one side by the police, who were out in force.

The site of Ground Zero has a suprising, newly-built train station (link to New Jersey) in the centre of it. The twin spotlights were not not coming out of the Ground Zero site itself, but from some buildings a little to the south. The posters of the police and fireman as saints were an extreme form of the way they are seen as heros here.