[Reader-list] Groun Zero - Ghosts & Echoes by Robin Morgan

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Here's an interesting and moving account from Ground Zero by Robin Morgan, in 
the form of a letter.

Shuddha
_____________________________

GHOSTS & ECHOES
Robin Morgan


Dear Friends,

I'll focus on New York--my firsthand experience--but this doesn't mean any 
less anguish for the victims of the Washington or Pennsylvania calamities. 
Today was Day 8. Incredibly, a week has passed. Abnormal normalcy has settled 
in. Our usually contentious mayor  (previously bad news for New Yorkers of 
color and for artists) has risen to this moment with efficiency, compassion, 
real leadership. The city is alive and dynamic. Below 14th Street, traffic is 
flowing again, mail is being delivered, newspapers are back. But very early 
this morning I walked east, then south almost to the tip of Manhattan Island. 
The 16-acre site itself is closed off, of course, as is a perimeter 
surrounding it controlled by the National Guard, used as a command post and 
staging area for rescue workers. Still, one is able to approach nearer to the 
area than was possible last weekend, since the law-court district and parts 
of the financial district are now open and (shakily) working. The closer one 
gets the more one sees--and smells--what no TV report, and very few print 
reports, have communicated. I find myself giving way to tears again and 
again, even as I write this.

If the first sights of last Tuesday seemed bizarrely like a George Lucas 
special-effects movie, now the directorial eye has changed: it's the grim 
lens of Agnes Varda, juxtaposed with images so surreal they could have been 
framed by  Bunuel or Kurosawa.

This was a bright, cloudless, early autumnal day. But as one draws near the 
site, the  area looms out of a dense haze: one enters an atmosphere of dust, 
concrete powder, and plumes of smoke from fires still raging deep beneath the 
rubble (an estimated 2 million cubic yards of debris). Along lower 2nd 
Avenue, 10  refrigerator tractor-trailer trucks are parked, waiting; if you 
stand there a while,  an NYC Medical Examiner van arrives--with a sagging 
body bag. Thick white ash, shards of broken glass, pebbles, and chunks of 
concrete cover street after street of parked cars for blocks outside the 
perimeter. Handprints on car windows and doors- handprints sliding 
downward--have been left like frantic graffiti. Sometimes there are messages 
finger-written in the ash: "U R Alive." You can look into closed shops, many 
with cracked or broken windows, and peer into another dimension: a wall-clock 
stopped at 9:10, restaurant tables meticulously set but now covered with two 
inches of ash, grocery shelves stacked with cans and produce bins piled high 
with apples and melons--all now powdered chalk-white. A moonscape of plenty. 
People walk unsteadily along these streets, wearing nosemasks against the 
still particle-full air, the stench of burning wire and plastic, erupted  
sewage; the smell of death, of decomposing flesh.

Probably your TV coverage shows the chain-link fences aflutter with yellow 
ribbons, the makeshift shrines of candles, flowers, scribbled notes of 
mourning or of praise for the rescue workers that have sprung up 
everywhere--especially in front of firehouses, police stations, hospitals. 
What TV doesn't show you is that near Ground Zero the streets for blocks 
around are still, a week later, adrift in bits of paper--singed, torn,sodden 
pages: stock reports, trading print-outs, shreds of appointment calendars, 
half of a "To-Do" list.  What TV doesn't show you are scores of tiny charred 
corpses now swept into the gutters. Sparrows. Finches. They fly higher than 
pigeons, so they would have exploded outward,   caught midair in a rush of 
flame, wings on fire as they fell. Who could have imagined it: the birds were 
burning.