 |
|
Emptiness at Ground Zero
May 30, 2002
by John Bloom
NEW YORK, May 30 --The emptiness of Ground Zero
didn't really bring the emotional release we expected.
There were remarkably few tears at the closing ceremony, as
the caissons brought out first the empty stretcher, then the
flag-draped 58-ton steel girder. The drummers tapped out a faint
tattoo, pipers marched slowly up the ramp, and the honor guard
for the missing led the serried ranks of policemen, firemen and
all the other uniformed civil servants who represented the ghosts
of the place.
Ground Zero is illuminated 24 hours a day, and sometimes in
the middle of the night you can see yellow and orange men with
rakes and hoes, moving in isolation like characters in a Beckett
play. They finished their job this week. They had been looking
for pieces of bodies, fragments of stone or metal that might
belong to an unidentified dead man. There was very little talking
among them. There was the realization, however, that as many as
1,700 people had been vaporized or cremated to become particles
of debris or perhaps the dust on the backs of their necks.
There was a feeling that a formal closing ceremony, a
memorial, a marking of the moment, would somehow be a healing
moment for both the kinsmen of the dead and the living who moved
among these ghosts.
But under a warm haze--a sadder, more overcast sky than the
beautiful brightness of September 11th--there was never that
moment of catharsis, and the whole thing seemed slightly off-
kilter and improvised.
At precisely 10:29 a.m., the minute when the second tower
fell on September 11th, a bereaved captain rang a fire bell 20
times, in four sequences of five, in the traditional dirge for a
fallen fireman. It's not a solemn gong but a tinkly tiny clang,
and after each sequence he would muffle the last note so that the
sound was unfinished.
The symbolic stretcher had 14 "bearers," but they couldn't
all get close enough to touch it. The fife and drum corps
shuffled at first, as though uncertain as to when to begin.
As the tractor trailer moved up the ramp, Column 1,001-B of
World Trade Center 2 was adorned with a floral arrangement and
flanked by police officers in hard hats. Two buglers, one for
fire and one for police, played the echo version of "Taps," but
the first bugler cracked the first high note.
Five police helicopters flew over Ground Zero in a "missing
man" wedge formation, and then the bagpipers played "America" and
the dignitaries applauded the officers and firefighters and
widows bearing photos of their lost husbands. A riderless horse
followed the procession as it moved past "Point Thank You," the
viewing point where people have stayed for eight months, 24 hours
a day, for no other reason than to applaud each rescue worker as
he leaves his shift.
And then it was over. People milled, but no one left. It was
eerie to see Ground Zero empty. Something didn't seem quite right
about it. I could sense that some of the yellow men and orange
men with their rakes and their hoes would awaken the next morning
and be confused by having nothing to do.
But it was a fitting symbol, creepiness and all. Downtown
New York has changed. All the major companies that resided in
these towers have moved away, to midtown, to New Jersey, to
Connecticut, to Long Island, and only one or two have any
definite plans ever to come back.
There are tourists downtown every day now, in a neighborhood
that had very few tourists before. I have a feeling that there
will continue to be tourists here, as there were at Gettysburg,
long after all the people involved are dead.
There were no speeches and, except for one strain of
"America the Beautiful," no music. It was what was needed,
because it offered no false hope and it summed up the futility of
all the volunteers who showed up last September, hoping to rescue
people and save lives. After the first two or three hours, there
weren't really any to be saved.
And you understand that when you see the size of the hole,
seven stories down, silent and tuneless.
© Copyright 2002
United Press International and John Bloom