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Showing posts with label tribute. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tribute. Show all posts
Monday, November 11, 2013
Monday, July 30, 2012
Emeli Sande – Abide with me – London Olympics Tribute Victims of 7/7
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Abide with me; fast falls
the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Hold Thou Thy cross
before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
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Monday, July 16, 2012
Tribute to Vandana Shiva - The Poison Seed
THE POISON SEED
Her grandfather, who
had raised her, was exclaiming something loud in the back garden as we toured
all the structures that now were built on the once empty patch of land.
The old man had been allotted this fairly large plot of land by the state. It had been sold to him very cheaply. I estimated the original lot to be about three quarters of an acre.
On that lush tropical landscape had once been many more trees than were now present and situated in between structures. Even so, the existing species of large trees grew avocados, mangoes and bananas. These had helped feed a large family on a state road worker's salary.
The main house was plain. Large dormitory like rooms were where the boys and girls had sleep. There was a common room or living room and a small kitchen. This structure had been built wall by wall, room by room, over the years. Extra savings went into concrete blocks on a regular basis.
The back of the property had once housed a large pig sty. Pork had been the cash crop that supplemented tropical fruits and the staple rice and beans diet. Pork had helped purchase the blocks. Piglets had been temporary play companions to poor children.
In fact, she had told me that as a child, the only dolls she played with were homemade things made of corn husks, the corn of which had fed the pigs. Corn silks adorned the corn husk dolls as hair.
The old man was quite animated.
The land now held five houses where at one time stood one.
As the nearby town grew outward, modest houses started to dot the countryside. Streets were paved. Second generations built a second story onto parents' houses.
Zoning laws changed in the expanded town. No pigs could be raised within the new city limits. Now only a few old hens pecked at the ground and made the occasional stew.
I asked for a translation. What was the old man shouting about?
Her cousin had inherited a one room house on the back of the property. He had recently married and his new bride had planted some shrubs to decorate this desolate corner of the original lot.
The literal translation of the bride's plantings came to words translated as "poison seed".
"It is a poison seed!" was what he repeated over and over again in Spanish.
The old man was upset. Everything on his property in terms of plants had been always been edible. Now, a stranger, the wife of a grandson was planting a decorative plant and not an edible one.
The old man's bubble had burst. The world outside his front porch could have changed in some measurable way over the years but it somehow had not touched a chord.
His sons had gone to college. One daughter was a registered nurse. The ones who had emigrated to the mainland had their own measure of material success in the post World War II boom in America.
He had at least thirty grandchildren and umpteen great grandchildren. All the changes over the last half a century registered in some proportion that matched the land that he stood on and owned.
Now, on this day, paradise seemed corrupted and lost. The people on the land now did not understand his vision for the land. The land must feed his family. A plant, a foreign seed from the outside world had invaded.
The seeds of the destruction were planted. His vision, his temporary footprint in the scheme of things, was disappearing before his eyes. So he shouted in his own way.
His time had passed. Now he knew and recognized that fact.
This he expressed with great passion.
The old man had been allotted this fairly large plot of land by the state. It had been sold to him very cheaply. I estimated the original lot to be about three quarters of an acre.
On that lush tropical landscape had once been many more trees than were now present and situated in between structures. Even so, the existing species of large trees grew avocados, mangoes and bananas. These had helped feed a large family on a state road worker's salary.
The main house was plain. Large dormitory like rooms were where the boys and girls had sleep. There was a common room or living room and a small kitchen. This structure had been built wall by wall, room by room, over the years. Extra savings went into concrete blocks on a regular basis.
The back of the property had once housed a large pig sty. Pork had been the cash crop that supplemented tropical fruits and the staple rice and beans diet. Pork had helped purchase the blocks. Piglets had been temporary play companions to poor children.
In fact, she had told me that as a child, the only dolls she played with were homemade things made of corn husks, the corn of which had fed the pigs. Corn silks adorned the corn husk dolls as hair.
The old man was quite animated.
The land now held five houses where at one time stood one.
As the nearby town grew outward, modest houses started to dot the countryside. Streets were paved. Second generations built a second story onto parents' houses.
Zoning laws changed in the expanded town. No pigs could be raised within the new city limits. Now only a few old hens pecked at the ground and made the occasional stew.
I asked for a translation. What was the old man shouting about?
Her cousin had inherited a one room house on the back of the property. He had recently married and his new bride had planted some shrubs to decorate this desolate corner of the original lot.
The literal translation of the bride's plantings came to words translated as "poison seed".
"It is a poison seed!" was what he repeated over and over again in Spanish.
The old man was upset. Everything on his property in terms of plants had been always been edible. Now, a stranger, the wife of a grandson was planting a decorative plant and not an edible one.
The old man's bubble had burst. The world outside his front porch could have changed in some measurable way over the years but it somehow had not touched a chord.
His sons had gone to college. One daughter was a registered nurse. The ones who had emigrated to the mainland had their own measure of material success in the post World War II boom in America.
He had at least thirty grandchildren and umpteen great grandchildren. All the changes over the last half a century registered in some proportion that matched the land that he stood on and owned.
Now, on this day, paradise seemed corrupted and lost. The people on the land now did not understand his vision for the land. The land must feed his family. A plant, a foreign seed from the outside world had invaded.
The seeds of the destruction were planted. His vision, his temporary footprint in the scheme of things, was disappearing before his eyes. So he shouted in his own way.
His time had passed. Now he knew and recognized that fact.
This he expressed with great passion.
LA SEMILLA DE VENENO
Su abuelo, quien la
había criado, exclamaba a un ruido fuerte en el jardín de atrás, como hicimos
una gira por todas las estructuras que ahora se construyeron en el parche una
vez vacío de la tierra.
El viejo había sido
asignado esta parcela bastante grande de la tierra por el Estado. Se había
vendido a él a precios muy bajos. Estimé el lote original de estar cerca de
tres cuartos de acre.
En ese paisaje
tropical había sido muchos más árboles que ahora estaban presentes y situado
entre las estructuras. Aun así, las especies existentes de árboles de gran
tamaño creció aguacates, mangos y bananas. Estos habían ayudado a alimentar a
una familia grande en el salario de un trabajador por carretera estatal.
La casa principal era
evidente. Dormitorio grande como las habitaciones donde estaban los chicos y
chicas tenían el sueño. Había una habitación común o sala de estar y una cocina
pequeña. Esta estructura había sido construida la pared por pared, habitación por
habitación, en los últimos años. Ahorro extra entró en bloques de hormigón
sobre una base regular.
La parte trasera de la
propiedad había albergado una vez a la pocilga de gran tamaño. Carne de cerdo
ha sido el cultivo comercial que complementa las frutas tropicales y el arroz
de primera necesidad y la dieta judías. Carne de cerdo había ayudado a comprar
los bloques. Los lechones habían sido compañeros de juego temporales a los
niños pobres.
De hecho, ella me
había dicho que cuando era niño, las muñecas sólo jugaba con las cosas fueron
hechas en casa hechas de hojas de maíz, el maíz que había alimentado a los
cerdos. Sedas de maíz adornaban las muñecas de hoja de maíz como el pelo.
El anciano estaba muy
animado.
La tierra ahora en
manos de cinco casas en las que en un momento se quedó uno.
En la cercana ciudad
creció hacia el exterior, casas modestas comenzó a aparecer en el campo. Las
calles estaban pavimentadas. La segunda generación construyó un segundo piso en
las casas de los padres.
Las leyes de
zonificación cambiado en la ciudad ampliada. No hay cerdos podría plantearse
dentro de los límites de la ciudad nueva. Ahora sólo unas pocas gallinas viejas
picoteó el suelo e hizo el guiso de vez en cuando.
Le pedí por una
traducción. ¿Cuál fue el viejo gritos?
Su primo había
heredado una casa de una habitación en la parte posterior de la propiedad. Se
había casado recientemente y su nueva esposa había plantado unos arbustos para
decorar este desolado rincón del lote original.
La traducción literal
de las plantaciones de la novia llegó a las palabras traducidas como
"semillas de veneno".
"Es una semilla
veneno!" era lo que repetía una y otra vez en español.
El viejo estaba
molesto. Todo en su propiedad en términos de las plantas había sido siempre ha
sido comestible. Ahora, un extraño, la esposa de un nieto estaba plantando una
planta decorativa y no un hongo sano.
Burbuja del anciano se
había reventado. El mundo exterior porche de su casa podría haber cambiado de
una forma medible a través de los años, pero por alguna razón no había tocado
la fibra sensible.
Sus hijos se habían
ido a la universidad. Una de sus hijas era una enfermera registrada. Los que
habían emigrado al continente tenía su propia medida del éxito material en el
post boom de la Segunda Guerra Mundial en Estados Unidos.
Tenía por lo menos
treinta nietos y bisnietos incontables. Todos los cambios a lo largo del último
medio siglo registrados en una proporción que coincide con la tierra que se
encontraba en la propiedad y.
Ahora, en este día, el
paraíso parecía dañado y perdido. La gente en la tierra ahora no entendían su
visión de la tierra. La tierra debe alimentar a su familia. Una planta, una
semilla extranjera del mundo exterior había invadido.
Las semillas de la
destrucción fueron plantadas. Su visión, su huella temporal en el esquema de
las cosas, fue desapareciendo ante sus ojos. Así que gritó a su manera.
Su tiempo había
pasado. Ahora que sabía y reconoció ese hecho.
Esto lo expresó con
gran pasión.
जहर के बीज
उसके दादा, जो उसे उठाया था पीछे बगीचे में जोर कुछ चकित था के रूप में हम सभी संरचनाओं कि अब देश के एक बार खाली पैच पर बनाया गया था का दौरा किया.
बूढ़े आदमी राज्य द्वारा देश के काफी बड़े भूखंड आवंटित किया गया था. यह उसके लिए किया गया था बहुत सस्ते में बेच दिया. मैं बहुत मूल के एक एकड़ के तीन तिमाहियों के बारे में होने का अनुमान है.
कि रसीला उष्णकटिबंधीय परिदृश्य पर एक बार बहुत से अधिक पेड़ से अब मौजूद थे और संरचनाओं के बीच में स्थित किया गया था. फिर भी, बड़े पेड़ों की मौजूदा प्रजातियों मक्खन फल, आम, केले और बढ़ी. इन मदद की थी एक राज्य सड़क कार्यकर्ता वेतन पर एक बड़े परिवार को खिलाने के.
मुख्य घर सादा था. कमरे की तरह बड़े छात्रावास थे जहां लड़कों और लड़कियों की नींद था. एक आम कमरे या कमरे में रहने वाले और एक छोटा रसोईघर था. इस संरचना दीवार, कमरे से कमरे से किया गया था दीवार पिछले कुछ वर्षों में, बनाया गया है. अतिरिक्त बचत एक नियमित आधार पर ठोस ब्लॉक में चला गया.
संपत्ति के पीछे एक बार एक बड़े सुअर शूकरशाला रखे था. पोर्क नकदी फसल है कि उष्णकटिबंधीय फल और प्रधान चावल और बीन्स आहार पूरक किया गया था. पोर्क मदद की थी ब्लॉक खरीद. बेबी सूअरों गरीब बच्चों को अस्थायी खेलने साथी गया था.
वास्तव में, वह मुझसे कहा था कि एक बच्चे के रूप में, केवल गुड़िया वह साथ खेला घर मक्का कोर किए गए बातें, जिनमें से सूअरों को खिलाया गया था मकई थे. मकई रेशम बाल के रूप में मकई भूसी गुड़िया सजी.
बूढ़े आदमी काफी एनिमेटेड था.
भूमि अब पांच घरों जहां एक समय में एक खड़ा था का आयोजन किया.
पास के शहर के रूप में जावक वृद्धि हुई है, मामूली घरों के ग्रामीण इलाकों डॉट को शुरू कर दिया. गलियां, पक्का थे. दूसरा पीढ़ियों के माता पिता के घर पर एक दूसरी कहानी का निर्माण किया.
भवन निर्माण कानूनों का विस्तार शहर में बदल दिया है. कोई सूअरों नए शहर की सीमा के भीतर उठाया जा सकता है. अब केवल कुछ पुराने मुर्गियाँ जमीन पर उठाया है और कभी कभी स्टू बनाया है.
मैं अनुवाद के लिए पूछा. क्या बूढ़े आदमी के बारे में चिल्ला रहा था?
उसका चचेरा भाई संपत्ति की पीठ पर एक कमरे के घर विरासत में मिला था. वह हाल ही में शादी की थी और अपनी नई दुल्हन कुछ झाड़ियों मूल बहुत से इस उजाड़ कोने को सजाने लगाया था.
दुल्हन लगाए झाड़ियों के शाब्दिक अनुवाद "जहर बीज के रूप में अनुवादित शब्दों के लिए आया था.
"यह एक जहर का बीज है!" वह क्या दोहराया और स्पेनिश में फिर.
बूढ़े आदमी परेशान था. पौधों के मामले में उसकी संपत्ति पर सब कुछ हमेशा किया गया था खाद्य किया गया. अब, एक अजनबी, एक पोता की पत्नी एक सजावटी पौधे रोपण किया गया था और नहीं एक खाद्य.
बूढ़े आदमी बुलबुला फट था. अपने सामने पोर्च के बाहर की दुनिया कुछ औसत दर्जे का रास्ता में पिछले कुछ वर्षों में बदल सकता है लेकिन यह किसी भी तरह एक ही राग नहीं छुआ था.
उसके बेटों को कॉलेज के लिए गया था. एक बेटी एक पंजीकृत नर्स थी. जो मुख्य भूमि के लिए कूच किया था के बाद अमेरिका में द्वितीय विश्व युद्ध के बूम में उनके सामग्री सफलता के अपने खुद के उपाय था.
वह कम से कम तीस पोते और अनेक महान पोते था. पिछली आधी सदी से अधिक सभी परिवर्तन कुछ अनुपात है कि कि वे देश पर खड़ा था और स्वामित्व मिलान में पंजीकृत.
अब, इस दिन पर, स्वर्ग और भ्रष्ट लग रहा था खो दिया. भूमि पर लोगों को अब देश के लिए उसकी दृष्टि समझ में नहीं आया. भूमि उसके परिवार को खिलाना चाहिए. एक संयंत्र है, बाहर की दुनिया से एक विदेशी बीज पर आक्रमण किया था.
विनाश के बीज बोए थे. उनकी दृष्टि, उसकी चीजों की योजना में अस्थायी पदचिह्न, अपनी आंखों के सामने गायब था. तो वह अपने तरीके से चिल्लाया.
अपने समय के पारित किया था. अब वह जानता था और है कि वास्तव में मान्यता प्राप्त है.
यह वह महान जुनून के साथ व्यक्त किया.
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In Honor and in Tribute to the work of activist Vandana Shiva on behalf of the poor voiceless people of the world.
(As I stated previously, William Blake already beat me to the title The Poison Tree. I change it gladly to The Poison Seed in order to help the poor of this planet achieve Nutritional Freedom.)
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Monday, August 4, 2008
A Vision of 911
The seventh anniversary of the tragedy of 911 is upon us shortly in another month. No great resolutions or finished monuments or buildings are there in downtown Manhattan.
The hole in the ground at "gound zero" is in a way a microcosm of the greater hole in the moral or neighborly way that is missing in the new godless economic global equation.
Until I see or touch the rebuilt World Trade Center, I feel that the world has a gapping hole in its side and a crown of thorns sits upon our future global vision of things to come...with the words of Yeats ...” what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? “
People deal with death and grief differently. Here in New York City, we still in many visible and sometimes in silent ways walk around the ghosts of the tragedy of 911. No friend, acquaintance or relative of mine died that day. I have heard a lot of stories about friends, acquaintances and relatives that bit the dust that day.
Forgive me for using that word dust but many did not have so much as a grain of dust or a positive DNA test to take to any graveyard or memorial. Many have nothing to hold on to, nothing to plant for a seed of hope for some future day when memories would not be clouded with a tragedy or a media event in a greater historic footnote.
One of the most detached and archival things I witnessed regarding that event was a death certificate of someone who died that day. It was a sterile looking NYC form with at least a three or four dozen boxes to place a check mark next to. The two marks next to (x)“murder” and (x)“at work” summed up the bureaucratic statistic of that day for many.
I could go on and on as to how real friends and real relatives dealt with the tragedy. I can only deal with this as something of an outsider’s view even though the event happened within my touch or grasp of things living here in New York City, living in one of the outer boroughs.
“Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.” wrote the poet Dunne.
In a way of tribute to the many that died that day, to the many known and unknown souls who met their fate that day, I grieve with others at a distance and as part of a greater community. We here in this city, directly or indirectly, were shell shocked by the event. I wrote the following as tragic relief and or tribute some one to two years after the event:
Thoughts do travel.
…and if only in a second, a thought occurs, it then fades. All is black and yet the mind does wander in thousands of possibilities to label the moment. The mind cross-references and distills. The moment projects common, already acceptable explanations and then begins to search hidden archives on the fringes of reality. It is in this far reaching realm that fear and or fears often hide or live if that is the word and then…?
A blinding distraction appears on the retina. An essence, the crystal of light, of inspiration, flashes a bulb giving temporary brilliance. Outlines appear in levels focusing out away from the former center of brightest whites. These outlines disappear and seem to be reborn but less brilliant with pulsating, diminishing energy traveling down through grays and finally to the darkest shades of dark into blackest black.
A mindstart; a thought.
Is this dream or is this death?
A heartbeat. A throb. A thunder from another world. Silence!
Silence and the echo of the last heartbeat, of the last sound, of the last verbal human moment.
Silence to reflect. Silence to wonder. Silence and the dreaded fear realized, dealt with, melted and dissolved away in an instant of time.
No time here. How long is a second of time where there is no time?
A flash of the shades of gray emerging from the black anti-thought, anti-time, anti-self world are suddenly present. Grays merge backwards into the original flash of inspiration.
Blinding light. Pure white. Inner sight is born.
I am trapped, no, suspended in a single moment of time. No past movement; no forward.
The image emerges.
I am sitting at my desk trying to sign onto the companies e-mail system. The system is slow and was no doubt expensive. Computers and software are the tribal magic of this modern age. Nobody is ever quite sure if Bill’s voodoo is better than Blue’s voodoo.
My head is turning. It senses something. Something unbelievable. I can hear screams from the Mexican counter staff in the coffee shop where I usually buy my coffee and bagel. How can I hear screams? That coffee place is floors above me or is it below me. I am in space. I am on the what floor? My mind races for facts to justify ?
Justify what?
What am I seeing outside the narrow slit of glass across the room. What is that object? That round circle both dark and reflecting light like a highly polished metal …?
OH MY GOD! HOLY SHIT!
IT’S A PLANE!. A JET.
I DON’T BELIEVE IT!
IT cannot be!
The moment, a split second before and after presentation of a universal law of physics. The moment passes with my limbs frozen in the last thought of what is it, it cannot be etc. The final moment was real. The last moment existed. But there was no follow up moment to savor or analyze the previous moment. The previous moment was a bitch!
Locked into some disreality of thought. Or perhaps it is a previously unused or unrecognized way of seeing things.. I am outside myself and looking down at some ?
…and if only in a second, a thought occurs, it then fades. All is black and yet the mind does wander in thousands of possibilities to label the moment. The mind cross-references and distills. The moment projects common, already acceptable explanations and then begins to search hidden archives on the fringes of reality. It is in this far reaching realm that fear and or fears often hide or live if that is the word and then…?
I am in comfort. A truly comfort zone enwraps me. I am enveloped in some great benign spirit of the moment. I am merged with dozens of similar hearts and minds thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same feels, realizing the same new realities or possibility of realities.
This must be a dream.
Calm.
I am floating above some child’s play area. Below hundreds of ants are scurrying out of a broken ant farm. The tiny bits, the dark colored entities are fleeing. Some are fleeing in every direction. Others are following others in predictable patterns. Pieces of the clear plastic ant farm cover are falling down on the ants as they try to escape. I focus for a closer view. These are not ants. They are people. They are not fleeing an ant farm. They are trying to escape the wounded entity. Entity? The entity’s name is World Trade Center One.What an unusual name for a creature? Entity yes. Creature? I don’t understand.
A blinding distraction appears on the retina. An essence, the crystal of light, of inspiration, flashes a bulb giving temporary brilliance. Outlines appear in levels focusing out away from the former center of brightest whites. These outlines disappear and seem to be reborn but less brilliant with pulsating, diminishing energy traveling down through grays and finally to the darkest shades of dark into blackest black.
The flash of light was the impact of a jet onto the outside skin of WTCONE.
In a same measure of time, my skin, my former skin merged with the skin of WTCONE (a name? – an entity, a creature? Has to have a name, a label? How human to label things. Was I once a thing???)
Our skins merge in a force of energy, the crash and the instantaneous spark of fire. Fireball. FIRE. LIGHT. HELL!
I withdraw back into my comfort cocoon. Best to replay this tape from a distance. Yes a distance. A safe marked boundary from that other world. That other world?
A mindstart; a thought.
Is this dream or is this death?
This is not a dream.
This is death. ---
What an artist thinks…No…What an artist feels is what I perhaps now feel. I am connected with all the chaos below. I am floating. No I am standing in the midst of screaming, of blood dripping, of detached limbs and heads and emptied torsos, crushed oozing bodies, flames, of sirens sounding, of a thousand screams, no, ten thousand prayers to a living GOD. Where is God today in all this confusion? No answer. Perhaps an answer later. Perhaps.
Valley of tears is a phrase from a childhood prayer comes into focus to label this instant. Life on Earth can indeed become a trek through a great valley of tears. Lord have mercy. Amen.
An artist inspires. An artist touches the souls or is it the spirits of others when they look at his creation, his painting, his music, reads his book. At this moment I want to look away. I have no choice. I am part of this moment. The moment sculpts reality into eternal pictures.. Thoughts and photographic images, real in the human sense, real in the spiritual sense are being formed.
The living and the dead will no doubt in their own time stand back and admire or not understand or may even despise the art of this present moment. Where is the museum? It is here. Time stands still on this planet or at least slows down. Time pauses from second to second. A hundred lives passed in one second. Then two hundred lives passed on not the next second but the second after that. And so on an so forth. Statistics amass.
Amidst the screams and sighs and puzzled thoughts of the unexpected dead, a silence comes. I slip from this macro of life and fade into some micro aspect of my former existence.
I come to a bright sun filled prairie. A simple wood clabbered, white washed house stands in stark contrast to clear blue sky and rich green vegetation textures. A woman with her back to me is hanging wet laundry on clothes lines a short distance from the house. A small barn is also in view. On a short stone wall sits an old woman in a plain white robe. She is watching a small child, a girl in a gingham dress walking about the yard area. The old woman looks in my direction. I recognize her. She is Myrtle. I had been her elder in a church I belonged to. The last church I had belonged to. Haven’t been to church for a long time.
She smiles a faint smile at me. I never made it to her funeral. She never had a funeral when she died at 94. Her body had been willed to science.
The thought occurs to me that she is perhaps dreaming about some scene from her own childhood in early twentieth century rural Illinois. Myrtle gives me non-verbal nods to my questions to her. She had made it to the other side. I would not consider donating my mortal coil to be entrusted to the likes of some smirking first year medical students…
The smell of charred meat. How I always hated that smell. Leaving the roast in the oven too long to dry up and then to burn.
More like a barbecue smell. The teacher in eighth grade wrote in chalk on the slate blackboard common American words that originated in other languages. Barbecue had Spanish origins I think. I remember this as the pungent smell of burning meat rolls off the olfactory senses of a wandering creature all bent over as if in pain. Clothed in a thick dark outfit, he climbs stairs, step after step after step after bloody, dusty step.
The fireman’s breathing is labored. He occasionally reaches for assistance in breathing from the tank hanging off his back. Crackling noise of walkie talkie sounds mix with breathing, and hisses and the smell of burned meat dance around senses in a misty fog of smoke coming and going. The smell of burning petrol and plastic add to this undefinable barbecue sauce.
Why do I smell human smells if I am truly dead? Why am I suddenly connecting in consciousness to the senses of one living man, this fireman? Why am I connected back to the world of the living?
People push by on the dark stairs.
The fireman’s flashlight wavers back and forth to give momentary assistance to the descending surviving refugees of terror.
The fireman’s goal is upward, ever upward. A ladder to heaven is not possible but in this behemoth structure heaven might in fact be at the top of this arduous climb.
- -
The hole in the ground at "gound zero" is in a way a microcosm of the greater hole in the moral or neighborly way that is missing in the new godless economic global equation.
Until I see or touch the rebuilt World Trade Center, I feel that the world has a gapping hole in its side and a crown of thorns sits upon our future global vision of things to come...with the words of Yeats ...” what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? “
People deal with death and grief differently. Here in New York City, we still in many visible and sometimes in silent ways walk around the ghosts of the tragedy of 911. No friend, acquaintance or relative of mine died that day. I have heard a lot of stories about friends, acquaintances and relatives that bit the dust that day.
Forgive me for using that word dust but many did not have so much as a grain of dust or a positive DNA test to take to any graveyard or memorial. Many have nothing to hold on to, nothing to plant for a seed of hope for some future day when memories would not be clouded with a tragedy or a media event in a greater historic footnote.
One of the most detached and archival things I witnessed regarding that event was a death certificate of someone who died that day. It was a sterile looking NYC form with at least a three or four dozen boxes to place a check mark next to. The two marks next to (x)“murder” and (x)“at work” summed up the bureaucratic statistic of that day for many.
I could go on and on as to how real friends and real relatives dealt with the tragedy. I can only deal with this as something of an outsider’s view even though the event happened within my touch or grasp of things living here in New York City, living in one of the outer boroughs.
“Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.” wrote the poet Dunne.
In a way of tribute to the many that died that day, to the many known and unknown souls who met their fate that day, I grieve with others at a distance and as part of a greater community. We here in this city, directly or indirectly, were shell shocked by the event. I wrote the following as tragic relief and or tribute some one to two years after the event:
Thoughts do travel.
…and if only in a second, a thought occurs, it then fades. All is black and yet the mind does wander in thousands of possibilities to label the moment. The mind cross-references and distills. The moment projects common, already acceptable explanations and then begins to search hidden archives on the fringes of reality. It is in this far reaching realm that fear and or fears often hide or live if that is the word and then…?
A blinding distraction appears on the retina. An essence, the crystal of light, of inspiration, flashes a bulb giving temporary brilliance. Outlines appear in levels focusing out away from the former center of brightest whites. These outlines disappear and seem to be reborn but less brilliant with pulsating, diminishing energy traveling down through grays and finally to the darkest shades of dark into blackest black.
A mindstart; a thought.
Is this dream or is this death?
A heartbeat. A throb. A thunder from another world. Silence!
Silence and the echo of the last heartbeat, of the last sound, of the last verbal human moment.
Silence to reflect. Silence to wonder. Silence and the dreaded fear realized, dealt with, melted and dissolved away in an instant of time.
No time here. How long is a second of time where there is no time?
A flash of the shades of gray emerging from the black anti-thought, anti-time, anti-self world are suddenly present. Grays merge backwards into the original flash of inspiration.
Blinding light. Pure white. Inner sight is born.
I am trapped, no, suspended in a single moment of time. No past movement; no forward.
The image emerges.
I am sitting at my desk trying to sign onto the companies e-mail system. The system is slow and was no doubt expensive. Computers and software are the tribal magic of this modern age. Nobody is ever quite sure if Bill’s voodoo is better than Blue’s voodoo.
My head is turning. It senses something. Something unbelievable. I can hear screams from the Mexican counter staff in the coffee shop where I usually buy my coffee and bagel. How can I hear screams? That coffee place is floors above me or is it below me. I am in space. I am on the what floor? My mind races for facts to justify ?
Justify what?
What am I seeing outside the narrow slit of glass across the room. What is that object? That round circle both dark and reflecting light like a highly polished metal …?
OH MY GOD! HOLY SHIT!
IT’S A PLANE!. A JET.
I DON’T BELIEVE IT!
IT cannot be!
The moment, a split second before and after presentation of a universal law of physics. The moment passes with my limbs frozen in the last thought of what is it, it cannot be etc. The final moment was real. The last moment existed. But there was no follow up moment to savor or analyze the previous moment. The previous moment was a bitch!
Locked into some disreality of thought. Or perhaps it is a previously unused or unrecognized way of seeing things.. I am outside myself and looking down at some ?
…and if only in a second, a thought occurs, it then fades. All is black and yet the mind does wander in thousands of possibilities to label the moment. The mind cross-references and distills. The moment projects common, already acceptable explanations and then begins to search hidden archives on the fringes of reality. It is in this far reaching realm that fear and or fears often hide or live if that is the word and then…?
I am in comfort. A truly comfort zone enwraps me. I am enveloped in some great benign spirit of the moment. I am merged with dozens of similar hearts and minds thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same feels, realizing the same new realities or possibility of realities.
This must be a dream.
Calm.
I am floating above some child’s play area. Below hundreds of ants are scurrying out of a broken ant farm. The tiny bits, the dark colored entities are fleeing. Some are fleeing in every direction. Others are following others in predictable patterns. Pieces of the clear plastic ant farm cover are falling down on the ants as they try to escape. I focus for a closer view. These are not ants. They are people. They are not fleeing an ant farm. They are trying to escape the wounded entity. Entity? The entity’s name is World Trade Center One.What an unusual name for a creature? Entity yes. Creature? I don’t understand.
A blinding distraction appears on the retina. An essence, the crystal of light, of inspiration, flashes a bulb giving temporary brilliance. Outlines appear in levels focusing out away from the former center of brightest whites. These outlines disappear and seem to be reborn but less brilliant with pulsating, diminishing energy traveling down through grays and finally to the darkest shades of dark into blackest black.
The flash of light was the impact of a jet onto the outside skin of WTCONE.
In a same measure of time, my skin, my former skin merged with the skin of WTCONE (a name? – an entity, a creature? Has to have a name, a label? How human to label things. Was I once a thing???)
Our skins merge in a force of energy, the crash and the instantaneous spark of fire. Fireball. FIRE. LIGHT. HELL!
I withdraw back into my comfort cocoon. Best to replay this tape from a distance. Yes a distance. A safe marked boundary from that other world. That other world?
A mindstart; a thought.
Is this dream or is this death?
This is not a dream.
This is death. ---
What an artist thinks…No…What an artist feels is what I perhaps now feel. I am connected with all the chaos below. I am floating. No I am standing in the midst of screaming, of blood dripping, of detached limbs and heads and emptied torsos, crushed oozing bodies, flames, of sirens sounding, of a thousand screams, no, ten thousand prayers to a living GOD. Where is God today in all this confusion? No answer. Perhaps an answer later. Perhaps.
Valley of tears is a phrase from a childhood prayer comes into focus to label this instant. Life on Earth can indeed become a trek through a great valley of tears. Lord have mercy. Amen.
An artist inspires. An artist touches the souls or is it the spirits of others when they look at his creation, his painting, his music, reads his book. At this moment I want to look away. I have no choice. I am part of this moment. The moment sculpts reality into eternal pictures.. Thoughts and photographic images, real in the human sense, real in the spiritual sense are being formed.
The living and the dead will no doubt in their own time stand back and admire or not understand or may even despise the art of this present moment. Where is the museum? It is here. Time stands still on this planet or at least slows down. Time pauses from second to second. A hundred lives passed in one second. Then two hundred lives passed on not the next second but the second after that. And so on an so forth. Statistics amass.
Amidst the screams and sighs and puzzled thoughts of the unexpected dead, a silence comes. I slip from this macro of life and fade into some micro aspect of my former existence.
I come to a bright sun filled prairie. A simple wood clabbered, white washed house stands in stark contrast to clear blue sky and rich green vegetation textures. A woman with her back to me is hanging wet laundry on clothes lines a short distance from the house. A small barn is also in view. On a short stone wall sits an old woman in a plain white robe. She is watching a small child, a girl in a gingham dress walking about the yard area. The old woman looks in my direction. I recognize her. She is Myrtle. I had been her elder in a church I belonged to. The last church I had belonged to. Haven’t been to church for a long time.
She smiles a faint smile at me. I never made it to her funeral. She never had a funeral when she died at 94. Her body had been willed to science.
The thought occurs to me that she is perhaps dreaming about some scene from her own childhood in early twentieth century rural Illinois. Myrtle gives me non-verbal nods to my questions to her. She had made it to the other side. I would not consider donating my mortal coil to be entrusted to the likes of some smirking first year medical students…
The smell of charred meat. How I always hated that smell. Leaving the roast in the oven too long to dry up and then to burn.
More like a barbecue smell. The teacher in eighth grade wrote in chalk on the slate blackboard common American words that originated in other languages. Barbecue had Spanish origins I think. I remember this as the pungent smell of burning meat rolls off the olfactory senses of a wandering creature all bent over as if in pain. Clothed in a thick dark outfit, he climbs stairs, step after step after step after bloody, dusty step.
The fireman’s breathing is labored. He occasionally reaches for assistance in breathing from the tank hanging off his back. Crackling noise of walkie talkie sounds mix with breathing, and hisses and the smell of burned meat dance around senses in a misty fog of smoke coming and going. The smell of burning petrol and plastic add to this undefinable barbecue sauce.
Why do I smell human smells if I am truly dead? Why am I suddenly connecting in consciousness to the senses of one living man, this fireman? Why am I connected back to the world of the living?
People push by on the dark stairs.
The fireman’s flashlight wavers back and forth to give momentary assistance to the descending surviving refugees of terror.
The fireman’s goal is upward, ever upward. A ladder to heaven is not possible but in this behemoth structure heaven might in fact be at the top of this arduous climb.
- -
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