Silverware Thief

Note: The following piece was written shortly after the events of September 11th, 2001. This website was not in existence then, and I am republishing the essay here, five years later. The tone of writing reflects the time in which it was written, and I felt it might form an interesting pair with my retrospective published yesterday.

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During a visit to New York City when I was young I was taken up to the top of the World Trade towers. At the top you could see for miles. It was a wonderful day, clear and bright. The air was cool and pleasant and I remember being surprised at how gentle the breeze was. I had thought that at half a mile up in the sky the wind would be stronger, something more threatening.

They didn’t let you go out to the edge on the top of the tower, but a few stories down on the observation deck you could press your face against the glass and stare at the city below. Peering down, you had the smallest hint of how high up you were. The world below was so far away it looked unreal. Cars were smaller than matchboxes. They looked about as big as the end of your thumb. Could you really be that high up? Why wasn’t the building swaying like the top of a tall tree? You peered through the glass at the silent world below and wondered. How high was half a mile, really? How could the building stand up? Why didn’t it fall over like the tower of dominoes you built? What would happen if the glass you were leaning against broke and you went tumbling out?

It’s all gone now. Gone. And that is hard for my adult mind to grasp.

The twin towers were huge. You could see them like glittering spires across the water when riding into Manhattan on the subway. When you stood at the base of them and looked up you weren’t sure if you were seeing the top, it was so far away. They’re nothing more than piles of rubble now. Twisted metal and shattered cement.

There are those first reactions to skyscrapers: How do they stay up? Why don’t they blow over? Why don’t they fall over? What would happen if they did fall? What would happen if there were an earthquake, or a tornado, a hurricane? What would happen if there was a fire? If a plane crashed into them? Morbid questions it might seem, but questions that children ask, and adults think. Skyscrapers force the questions on us until the answers and assurances are repeated, a chant that dulls our minds to the skyscraper’s rebellion against gravity.

When the towers came down it was as if a part of our adult world had collapsed. We couldn’t believe they were coming down. Why not? I puzzle over my own reaction. Was it really unbelievable, impossible? The slimmest chance? Or was there really a big chance all along and we simply came up with statistics to tell us otherwise? I don’t know. Certainly all the assurances that they would stay up, that they were strong, and safe, were torn down. All the surety, the rationality of planes never crashing into buildings, never bringing them down, was destroyed. But what does all this mean?

Were we trying to hide from the truth? When children ask all those silly questions about tall buildings, are they really silly, or do we call them silly because we were trying to hide from the truth of their words? Are there other “silly” or “dumb” questions that we are denying? “From the mouth of babes . . .” Yet, what difference does it make if the questions are good questions? Should that make us change anything? Or should we simply realize the truth of our world: It isn’t safe. It isn’t sure. And continue to live as before, but with a realization of the fragility and preciousness of our lives–exactly how fleeting they are?

People talk about rebuilding–about returning to normal–but is that a good thing? I’m not speaking of the physical, I mean our minds. People say our world has been changed forever–is that bad? People talk about how we will never be able to return to how the world was and yet in the same breath they seek to build some new security, some new surety. Isn’t that going back to saying the towers will never fall, nobody and nothing can take them down? Should we say and do something else, a different attitude to life, or our surety about things?

I don’t have the answers. I still struggle with my own thoughts. I wonder and puzzle over our shock, and our surprise. It was a horrible, terrible thing, yes. But does that obscure one of the things revealed in this tragedy? Why was it a surprise, why was it hard to believe?