FOR THOSE WE KNEW,
FOR THOSE SAVED,
FOR THOSE WE LOST
THESE
WERE OUR TOWERS
AND THIS
IS HOW THEY SHOULD BE REMEMBERED
THE BROODING CYNYX HAVE NEVER AND
WILL NEVER POST ANY PHOTO OR IMAGE
OF THE WTC TOWERS FROM 9/11.
IT HAS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE OUR POLICY
TO USE ONLY PHOTOS THAT
PORTRAY THE WTC AS THEY WERE AND,
AS FAR AS WE ARE CONCERNED,
OUGHT TO BE RECALLED
(September 4, 2019 Cedar St, NYC)
There are many shadows in this neighborhood; these narrow streets are among the
oldest in our City originally cobble-stoned by the Dutch settlers who purchased
Manhattan Island from the Natives for a pittance. The narrowness of these shadowy canyons
shouldn’t let anyone assume that the buildings that block the overhead sun
aside from a few brief minutes each noon are inconsequential. This is just one border of the famed World
Financial Center with the “catchall” Wall Street, as the heart and soul of
commercial finance, banking and trading.
Here, on Cedar Street is O’Hara’s an old time NYC “Irish Pub” in the
classical sense of the term. It’s a fine
place for a power lunch or for happy hour Monday through Friday; dinner is as
good but the joint closes around midnight.
For a Manhattan bar O’Hara’s is almost an unheard-of oddity but it is
common for establishments in this part of Town that rely on the “Wall Street
Crowd.
Between the end of lunch and
before the after-work rush of commuters wedging a few quick drinks before
heading out to the suburbs and home, this is a bar that knows how to treat a
single patron. Good drinks at a fair
price, bartenders who actually know how to tend bar while delivering fine
service for the lone drinker. On this
first Wednesday of September, a month many of us have come to dread, we met
here for a few cocktails and to catch up.
Some of the cohorts have long since retired; others of us are still On
The Job. This early September gathering
had become an annual ritual that began in 2002.
It began casually enough but has persisted for 18 years. After a few drinks, a couple of bad jokes,
and some plain old bullshit small talk the conversation shifts and becomes
focused; an individual set of memories that are at least collective in their
experiences that craft the images, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, loss and
anger into a cohesive telling of that which can only be told by those able to
tell it; only by those who lived it.
This is not a conversation for outsiders and the memories given voice
will never be heard by ears that did not hear what this small band of comrades
did on that painfully clear Tuesday morning, that day of infamy, September 11,
2001.
Next Wednesday will mark the 18th
year since the terrorist attacks on our City, Towers, and Country. The events of that day and the immediate
aftermath have altered the passage of time for some. In ways the time since then has been elongated
by the continued sense of sorrow and loss.
In other iterations time has been compressed as survivors have watched
children grow and mature; perhaps humans never again undergo a more important 18-year
period of their lives. Humans go from newborn infancy to the adolescent
threshold of young adulthood in the first 18 years of existence; from complete
dependency to a rebellious stage as they attempt to find some measure of
independence. No matter how you cut it,
18 years is a long time and the fact that for many families of the 9/11
deceased, these past 18 years have been a disorienting trek. It is for this reason, if no other, that it
is vital to keep our memories of those prematurely taken alive and vibrant.
Our small cadre of greying MOS
knows the gravity of remembrance. It has
become a duty, a Sacred Duty at that, to keep the memories of those we lost
alive. Not in the hyper-sensational
portrayals of bumper sticker slogans and “Salute To Heroes” banners. No, our Sacred Duty is to the men and women we
knew, men and women some of whom we depended on for our lives over the years
before 9/11. That day was not an
aberration, it was not in any way unusual.
Every day before and since 9/11 MOS respond to the calls that come in;
the incidents, the conflicts, the response to the injured, wounded, trapped,
suicidal, victimized, scared, and every other scenario under the Sun the men
and women of the FDNY, FDNY EMS, NYPD, and PAPD respond and render the
assistance they are able to. The rest of
the United States and the media made a large fuss about the unselfishness of
our MOS. What they failed to recognize
is that, initially at least, no one among those who responded knew or could
have imagined the nature of the disaster nor the scale and scope of the
calamity that was to followed within minutes.
All MOS where simply doing their job; yet merely by being who they were,
who we are, and what we do, that was just another “day at the office” until we
learned otherwise.
And “otherwise” it was; an
egregious assault on us as Americans in general and New Yorkers in
particular. But we all rose to the
challenge from the brawniest MOS to the most slender office worker, we rose to
the challenge of an event that we had no way of realizing just how much our
world would be changed once we escaped the highly pressurized, noxious-fumed
fires of Our Towers. And make no mistake
about it; they were OUR TOWERS…Bless all who perished, all who survived, and
those left to mourn unconscionable death…
Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2019 © All Rights Reserved
Copyright Brooding Cynyc 2019 © All Rights Reserved
