Dear Editor:
It’s over two weeks since the collapse of the World Trade Center, and Ground Zero is still burning. The only thing that seems to change is the wind direction. Today it stinks in Hoboken.
I feel like I am part of the walking wounded. It’s the hurt that doesn’t go away. Maybe if it would stop smoking I could start feeling better.
I don’t have to go up on my roof and see the smoke. I just can’t help doing it. I just have to look. At night the flood lights for the rescue workers illuminate the smoke and make it bright between the darkened buildings that surround the site. It’s almost as if someone had made a funeral pyre in the middle of Stonehenge, and all the huge stones were paying homage to their fallen comrades. Who knows what was really in the center of Stonehenge? Who knows what depth of evil could be in those men who did this to our New York City skyline.
Sometimes even when I am downstairs in my apartment not thinking about the fire, the wind changes, you smell the smoke, and you think of it again. When the fire goes out it will mean they have put it out and have given up hope of finding survivors. As sad as this is, at least by then the fire storm itself will be extinguished, and maybe we can all start to heal the hurt within us.
There is so much I don’t understand about world politics. From Desert Storm to troops in the "Holy Land," I do not know how right or wrong we have been. But I do know that we wouldn’t have done this to them. For all our faults, we do strive for America’s founding ideals, liberty, equality and justice. They do not.
This destruction of the World Trade Center shows that what they believe in is nothing but a poisonous brew of hatred, ignorance and religious fanaticism. Theirs is a toxin that destroys the humanity of those who drink it and more unfortunately destroys the lives of many who do not.
So the fire will go out, the smoke will go away. We will clean up the mess and bury the dead the best we can. However, the pain will never go completely away. That is the burden of we the living.
We must learn how to live with this, not just for us but for all that is good and right with the world. For all those innocent people who were murdered on the 11th of September. We shall live for their untimely deaths.
Right now it is more important for us to live for the good in life than to punish the bad, though this is important too. Let not evil destroy us in our daily lives or in our hearts. May we all carry on the best we can and slowly rise from these ashes of despair.
It’s up to us, and we must do it!
John Cheney