Yesterday’s date did not pass unnoticed despite my current absence from the United States. Just before 3pm here in Amsterdam I was finishing a late lunch and absentmindedly turned on CNN. The names of those lost were being read at the World Trade Center site.
I immediately remembered our phone ringing in Seattle seven years prior. It wasn’t even 6am and, slow to rise, I missed the call. When I retrieved the message a few moments later, my mother’s voice – strained but even – declared: “Luke, this is your mother. The United States is under attack. There are planes flying into buildings in New York. Please call me.”
The day unfolded from there. I returned her call, she explained what she’d heard. We didn’t own a TV so we listened to NPR, but at 9am we headed to the nearest department store. Entering the electronics department we saw a wall of smoke as all of the televisions were tuned to the same image of lower Manhattan. After much long, silent staring, we bought a small set. At home we watched until we realized it was getting dark outside.
There were two great pieces about 9/11 in yesterday’s New York Times that featured photography at their core. The first was a story and slideshow featuring Fred J. DeVito’s images of logos and packaging that still feature the Twin Towers. The photos sharpened that awkward mix of sorrow and nostalgia I get when I see a graphic silhouette of the Manhattan skyline that still shows those two unmistakable rectangles.
The other was a photograph and a short reminiscence by one of my favorite artists Ed Ruscha. The picture is from 1961; Ruscha took it from the back of the Staten Island Ferry and downtown is a clump of shapes on the horizon. In an interesting rumination on time and personal memory, Ruscha says he looks for the towers in that picture, despite the impossibility of them being there.
I suppose for many older than me, the destruction of the towers is akin to a negation of time, a sort of perceptual twist that skews the linearity of memory. There was New York pre-Twin Towers, then with the Towers, and again without. The iconic weight of those buildings, those structures as “ideas” inhabiting our memories rather than “things” is an effect whose power is amazing to consider.
After watching television all day on September 11, 2001, we took a walk and watched as the sun set behind the Olympic Mountain range, casting their jagged peaks in stark contrast. I remember feeling relief knowing that those mountains would never suddenly disappear.
Image Credit: Edward Ruscha, image courtesy of Gagosian Gallery
