From HMMeister at aol.com Mon Apr  7 13:28:51 2003
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 12:42:21 EST
From: HMMeister at aol.com
Reply-To: johnny at charm.net
To: johnny at charm.net
Subject: NYC March 11



Dear Digesters,

Last night, March 11th, I returned to the city from Providence in the clear 
cold.  Approaching from the north, my train pulled into sight of the 
Manhattan skyline at a few minutes before ten.  I put aside the Jane Jacobs 
I'm reading, rubbed my eyes, and gazed out the window at the giants: The 
Projects and bridges, Citicorp, Chrysler, Empire State, and so on, moving 
south.  It's a dazzling sight on a clear night; the dense blacks setting off 
bright yellow-white and colored lights which shimmer and multiply, glistering 
on the river. Of course I knew there'd be no Twins to see, but I'd completely 
forgotten about the light memorial.

So, as we trundled south along the length of the island (and before rolling 
down, into the earth beneath it, and the station), as the southern tip of 
Manhattan came into view, I was anticipating The Pang.  I've become, in six 
months, habituated to looking for nothing in the place where they used to be; 
sighting that particular absence has become reassuring in some perverse way I 
had not considered until last night.  (It used to be the same in reverse: 
driving to the city from Annapolis, four hours on the road and approaching 
from the south, I'd see the towers from the highway in New Jersey and 
instantly be both exhilarated and comforted.  Now I come back from the north 
and look for a nothing.)  So I was taken completely by surprise, which is 
undoubtedly the best way for it, to find not nothing, but the twin beams of 
halogen-white light boring into the night sky, towering above the skyline, 
fading, it seems, only after blasting miles above the earth.  It is a great 
and fitting memorial: light.  Just light.  

We should talk about materials and memorials some time, about how the ones 
made of water are memory and forgiveness while those of stone are loss.  (I'm 
thinking of Maya Lin's civil rights water stone.  The one you have to touch, 
putting a fingertip through the cold clear onto a carved name, interrupting 
the flow, scumbling the view until you withdraw.  Do you know it?)

Today the sky is low and grey.  I am hoping for rain tonight.  I'll go out 
onto the roof of my building to see those pillars of light incandescing the 
mist they penetrate.  My eyes and mind will follow them upward, deeper into 
this desert.  And back again, down into this home, this beautiful place.


Howard