| 9/11 - 10 Years Later |
| Written by Natalie Goldberg | |||
| Saturday, 10 September 2011 18:09 | |||
 I don't really believe in fate. Sure, some things that happen are so coincidental they make me shake in my brown Steve Madden boots, but I've never believed they were part of some type of predetermined plan. Still, after the events of September 11, 2001, my favorite city since I first visited, wide-eyed, at the age of seven, shaken to its very core, often turned to destiny to fully comprehend the massive loss of life. We've all heard the famous "just missed it stories." Someone was stuck in traffic and didn't make a flight, someone canceled at the last minute, and most popular, someone just "had a feeling" they shouldn't fly or head to work at the World Trade Center that day. Putting the idea of something being written in the stars aside, we all have to admit that these events do, sometimes, just occur without rhyme or reason. Whatever the circumstances, the real tragedy of 9/11 did not lie in the body count or the amount of dust booming from the massacred buildings. No, the real tragedy was that it happened in New York City. The air here isn't something you can recreate or recycle. It creates an atmosphere for New Yorkers and visitors that just smells like excitement, smells like fun and success. I've lived here for five months now, and, even worn out by the constant job-hunting and subway-catching, I still smell it the same way I did when I was twelve, and my mom took me to see my first Broadway show. When that air was threatened on 9/11, New York realized it was more than air: it was a culture, a comfort, a thrill, all wrapped up in one. "We were feeling the effects of something big, but couldn't emotionally engage with what was going on at all," recalls Julia, now 22, a middle-schooler in Bronxille at the time, "later, my dad told me that he and his brother had walked to Midtown East from Wall Street...after literally standing there watching [the twin towers] collapse from beginning to end." For many, the crumbling of the towers was the crumbling of that 1990s age of innocence...the sardonic, dreamy era of Manhattan that will forever be romanticized. "The Saturday after the attacks, my dad drove me through the Holland Tunnel, and all you could see was rubble and smoke when you looked down the West Side Highway...it looked like the apocalypse," Leah, 22, remembers. The apocalypse stayed on for awhile. Televisions had eyes glued to them, and the city, after an eruption of noise, was quiet. However, silence in a place that doesn't seem to dote on sleep, wasn't quite fitting. Instead, New Yorkers took it back. In the time between September 11, 2001, and September 11, 2011, New York has multiplied in its status as the city of opportunity. People became hungrier for their lives, hungrier for each second. It became more difficult to succeed in New York, so more people wanted to try. After the decline in tourism was swept away by Manhattan's inevitable pull, more people than ever covered the streets, and took over the real estate. The city was packed with loss, but also, something it hadn't heard from in awhile: idealism. 9/11 made the most hardened individual take a good look at themselves. We're all still looking, but the look shouldn't result in a fear of terrorism, or an obsession with trying to make sure the country is practically behind bars in security. Freedom is the only plausible answer, and freedom on all counts. We can't prevent the actions of those who feel such a strong urge to harm us by counteracting them with more hatred, and through the roof anxiety levels. Instead, we'll just remember this day. We'll remember the way we were shaken, the way we worried we might know someone involved, and the day we realized that life isn't a flawless work of art, crafted by someone else to keep us safe. Instead, it's a game of chance, and since chance doesn't take too well to being controlled, we may as well enjoy life in this unbelievable center of attention. Someone might want to blow up another airplane, but New Yorkers are not the types to settle for that garbage. Instead, they look it right in the face, and jump through it, just like they leap through the almost-closing doors of the subway every morning. New York was always where I dreamed of living. Part of that was Times Square. The shows, the scent of something cooking, and that notoriously beautiful air that is most prevalent during a phase of positive thinking, all drove me here. The thrill has been said to have gone sometimes, but it has never left me. Manhattan may have been ripped apart on that day, but it was restored, and built into something even better. What other city could withstand a travesty with so much grace, and so much ferocity? When I look up at the sky, barely visible through my tiny window in the Lower East Side, I remember how important it is to keep that ferocity alive. I remember that day, when I was so far away, wanting nothing more than to be here, and, just as quickly, appreciate today, where I am, right where I wanted to be. We all made it here. The lights in this city burn bright enough to obliterate the biggest disaster anyone could dream up.
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