AN UPDATE FROM MY BROTHER, TIMOTHY
Celia,
Here are some shots of 911 in NYC.
I rode to Nyack during the day, got home, showered, rested and in the evening I met Pam, an A-SIG associate and fellow Alps trip participant that I rode with during the day, at Paragon near Union Square. We shopped there for gifts for her Austrian boyfriend, Manfred. Later we moseyed over to Union Square to take part in whatever sort of 911 vigil took place there. We felt underwhelmed by the small number of people clustering at the base of the park. There were candles here and there. In place of the throngs of people we expected a number of people were turning the ground into art.
In each hexagonal paving stone they drew a peace symbol in chalk.
The mosaic of peace grew while we watched.
It radiated outwards under the authorship of many different hands.
In the distance two beacons of light stabbed upwards from near ground zero. Pam and I conferred and decided to walk down there. We figured it would take an hour or so.
As we got closer to the lights we began to see flickers and glimmers in the beams of light. At first I disbelieved what I was seeing. It was like glitter was circulating up in the beams and we speculated what it was. It had the appearance of souls flying upwards like sparks from a campfire, but no flames, just these two pure, bluish beams of light.
As we got to near the base of the lights if became apparent that the flickers and glimmers were birds or bats--thousands of them. The sharply glowing sparks were the light reflected out of their eyes. I guess that bugs attracted to the lights attracted the birds (or bats) and they were having a big harvest.
We moved from the lights over to ground zero proper, the area was very effectively contained. People of all walks of life circulated about on all sides of the huge fenced in area. Many stopped to peer through the fences at the blackness beyond.
Nothing to be seen, really, yet each person brought their own images, the emptiness filled to overflowing.
It was a family affair.
Plenty of flags around. This one at half mast.
All nine windows of the top floor of an older building facing ground zero from the south, were lit up with a message, one letter per window, "NO WAR" with peace symbols taking up the extra windows. My photos of that are blurry to the point of illegibility--sorry. But I like that the message was there.
Timothy
