The Gong Show

Some thoughts on the 9/11 anniversary.

I saw ground zero for the first time this year. I didn’t even mean to go… I was trying to get to a theatre for the TriBeCa Film Festival, and I accidently had to walk over the land bridge past ground zero. It was wild. It reminded me of rubbing old scars: I think about the event that caused them (mtn biking, horsing around, etc), and I think about how much it hurt at the time, but I don’t feel the pain. In place of the pain there’s just a numb knowledge that there was a lot of pain, but it’s gone now.

I went to NYC dozens of times in the first few years after 9/11, and I always intentionally avoided going to ground zero. I didn’t want to see the fake Oakleys and Louis Vuitton bags for sale. I didn’t want to think about Bush or Rudy or anyone else that built a career on the pile of rubble before me. I didn’t want to think about what it must have been like in the buildings six years ago. I thought that seeing ground zero would somehow make all those things more real. Ironically, by intentionally not going to ground zero, I probably ended up thinking about those things more than I would have otherwise.

But, now I’m glad I went. I think I built the whole experience up in my mind to much. Let my imagination run wild. Now I’ve been, and it will be much easier to go back. But, it’s still a scar I prefer not to rub.