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NEW YORK UNEASY

         “TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2001, DAY 30.”  

     Every day at agencies in New York City set up to respond to the World Trade Center disaster, a sign like the one above is posted to keep the workers oriented.  Some work staff are volunteers; some are regular City employees.  The task before New York City is enormous -- the devastated site of the World Trade Center towers and its environs must be cleared (despite the hellacious fires that burn on); surrounding apartment and business buildings that are not structurally damaged but are coated with rubble, debris and soot have to be cleaned; the remains of the dead have to be carted off to the morgue for identification and returned to their families for burials; the air quality must be monitored, the maps must be redrawn, and above all, the unseen enemy must be kept at bay. 

     Since September 11, 2001, New York City has been turned into an armed camp.  The National Guard has been called out, New York State troopers who are usually not in evidence in a city that had, after all, a standing police force of 40,000, have been dispatched to the city, and all police officers are required to be in uniform.  In strategic locations, New York City Police officers are armed with submachine guns, a heretofore unfamiliar site in New York City. At sensitive locations, sharpshooters are seen on the roof. An emergency operations center has been set up at Piers 92 and 94; Pier 92 being the operational center and Pier 94 being the Family Assistance Center.  For three weeks, a Navy hospital ship was docked betweeen Pier 92 and 94; shortly before the American and British war in Afghanistan started, the lovely white hospital ship pulled out, and to block access to either of the piers by water, huge barges were brought in to stretch from pier to pier.  

     Gracie Mansion is surrounded by orange Sanitation trucks loaded with sand, as is the U.N., and as are the various courts around Centre Street downtown.  Single passenger cars are not allowed over the bridges and through the tunnels during rush hours, because every car going into the City is stopped and searched.  Despite all of these measures, people are exhorted to go on about their "normal" lives.   

     And what choice do we have? No mother wants to put her child on a public bus or subway for school, but New York City provides yellow bus service only for the disabled. No worker wants to descend into a subway tunnel that could suddenly fill with gas, but no employer accepts this as an excuse.  When New York families reunite at night, the sense of relief is so great that they stay at home, and the emptiness of the restaurants, the retail shops and the   various evening entertainment emporiums is remarked upon.

     Since September 11, the rains of autumn have begun, wetting down and obliterating posters of the "missing" that are ubiquitous on New York City walls. The families of the missing come back and post them again, and makeshift alters are resurrected each time a storm comes and knocks them about. Fresh flowers under the posters of the missing wilt and die and are replaced with more fresh flowers. Before this, Americans had begun to celebrate Halloween as something more than an excuse for a child's dressing up; it had taken on the fantasy element present in the Latin American cultures.  This year, surveying all of the stubbornly resurrected posters of the "missing" and the makeshift alters that can be found at every turn in the city, I wonder how any celebration in New York of the Day of the Dead could be anything more than an obscene redundancy, a joke in the worst possible taste?   

     All of us are mourning, but like all mourners, there is denial mixed in with the grief. The full reality of our situation has not been sorted out. I found myself looking at a new subway map, where the old A train stop at Park Place (beneath the World Trade Center) had simply been erased. The World Trade Center, in addition to its towers and its mall, had a subterranean life as a crossways of the old subway lines that predated its construction. It was at the Park Place stop that one could switch from the A line, once known as part of the "IND" lines, to the 2 or 3 trains, once known as part of the "IRT" lines.   

     When I first came to the City, the subterranean life of the World Trade Center was one of filth and a refuge for derelicts. To make the quick switch from the A to the 2 or 3 was to pass through a solitary multilevel hallway that seemed to be an ideal haven for a mugger.  The Metropolitan Transit Authority determinedly worked on the tunnels as the City's fortunes rose, and they were gradually cleaned, repaired and retiled. Just two years ago, the tile work was complete, and the long tunnel down to the subway trains was a white tiled passageway marked with interspersed tiles of a single eye, each eye being of a different shape or color.  The intent of the effect was meant to be a celebration of the diversity of the city, but truth be told, the eyes always reminded me of the Egyptian funerary portraits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and they also made me wonder if the message was that we were all being watched.  Above the creepy passageway which marked the connection between the IND and the IRT, a mosaic of a map of the world was installed, and kept clean from the feet of passersby by the means of a plexiglass fence installed at the perimeter.  This mosaic was much cheerier than the solitary eyes, but the plexiglass was a frustration because the mosaic called out for closer inspection. Others must have had similar reservations, for the newly installed tilework was not widely noted nor celebrated; however, the overall sense of menace in the World Trade Center subway system was much lessened from earlier years, and the homeless were diverted involuntarily into shelters.       

   Now the tiled eyes are crushed into a jumbled mess along with the mosaic of the world and not even the derelicts nor the dangerous can habituate the crushed, rubble filled corridors.  The tiled eyes saw much not meant for human eyes; secret agony that will never be known.  I have no stomach this year for the Day of the Dead; every day since September 11 has been a Day of the Dead, and no screaming missile can light a candle of cheer in those blocked and crushed passageways.  

     The earth will keep rotating on its axis and orbiting around the sun, and gradually all of this will pass. The families of the "missing" will accept that the "missing" are dead, and the dead will be grieved.  The fires at the cores of the two towers will someday be put out, the walls of New York City won't be plastered with the smiling, happy faces of the "missing," the flowers won't be put out to wilt and die on makeshift alters, and the war in Afghanistan will be over.  The subway tunnels will be dug out, and a subway rider will be able to hop from the A to the 2 or 3 underground again at Park Place.  And hopefully, no one will find it necessary to install watchful eyes in a long white tunnel that on one September day, lead to oblivion.  

 Your New York Uneasy Correspondent.

all photos and text © 2001 by Sarah Scott

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