But there *are* no smokestacks in Lower Manhattan.

[earthrise]

Steve's voice on the Mp3 Experiment track said to point to the ugliest cloud in the sky. I was running late, and as I sprinted across Vesey Street, I pointed at the sickly gray smoke seeping up into the sky from what I figured was a chimney or smokestack over what I didn't realize till then was a condemned building across the street. There weren't

Comments

[ecmyers]

Yikes. This is the first I heard about this... That must have been eerie.

[sheeniebeanie]

Maybe you've learned not to panic about something that was, essentially, nothing to panic about. It's a New York response I've already learned to appreciate moving out here, where I think people are still panicking about bridges falling down, etc.

[earthrise]

A very good point. However, for the first five years or so after 2001 I avoided the WTC site at any cost. I'd literally turn heel and run the other direction if I saw a gap in the sky that looked like it might be an Absence. It was just too big and too raw.

This was really my first time spending any sort of time nearby, and it was only because I was pretty much forced to run past on my way to the World Financial Plaza. And I was surprised by how not-unnerved I was, beyond a vague feeling of discomfort and wonder that nothing really seemed to be different from what I imagine it looked like 5 years ago.

See, it just felt weird to be there for the first time and have something happen, again, and not feel like anything was hugely out of the ordinary in one of the biggest scars in this country. It's not a matter of it being something to panic about, but rather something to feel uneasy about.