2005-01-17 - 6:35 p.m.

this entry turned surprisingly serious

A couple of diarists I read recently mentioned that they were writing their 200th entry and wanted to do something special. I hadn't even noticed what number I was on, so I just looked, and this one will be 240. My 200th entry was about the word "grouse." Oh well. Maybe I'll do something special for #250. Maybe not though, so don't get all excited.

To continue my travelogue of my trip... between the third show and the fourth, I had a couple of days off. One was a flying travel day, and the other was a driving travel/sightseeing day. The sightseeing thing I decided to do was go into Oklahoma City, since I would be nearby, and go to the memorial where the Murrah Building was. I don't really know why I picked that, but when I was researching before I left and went to a site of "things to do in and around Oklahoma City," that's the destination that leapt out at me. Here's the website if you want to take a look.

Since I went on a Monday afternoon that was a normal work day for most, there were very few other people there. I spent some time walking around the memorial itself, and it was really moving. Then I went to the museum, and again, it was really moving and very nicely done. They have computers with touch screens in several areas, and they contain stories about many of the victims and recounting of the events from many survivors. You'd be there forever reading them all, so I chose a few at random. Really heart-rending to read remembrances from friends and loved ones, stories of those who came so close to being lost themselves, and recounting of all too few rescues. On a strictly physical level too, the museum is really well done. You walk through all the "chapters" of the story being easily led from one to the next, never wondering which way to turn next. The whole site was very well marked and easy to find from the highway, too.

Visiting places like that does nothing useful for some people, but it somehow does for me. It puts things in perspective while at the same time bringing home the human reality of what happened. And not to be too rhapsodic or falsely dramatic, but getting in touch with your humanity isn't a bad thing.

The field of empty chairs is a stunning thing. For one thing, the field is built into the actual footprint of the building. I walked around it on the granite path, and it seems such a small footprint. It was as long as a city block, but it just seems so small to contain everything that happened there. The chairs are arranged in nine rows, one for each floor of the building, and each chair is placed in its row according to the floor the victim was on when the bombing happened. The sixth floor was mostly empty on that day, and had only two chairs in its row. That made them stand out a bit more to me. The chairs in the row for the second floor were heartbreaking, as they included adult-sized chairs, and smaller child-sized chairs, signifying the children who were lost in the daycare on the second floor.

The story of the Survivor Tree is interesting. It's an Elm tree that was already something of a survivor even before this event. It was one of several, and when a parking lot was built next to 5th Street, this particular tree, whether because of location or because it's kind of interesting-looking, was chosen to be spared. The parking lot was built around it and it was left to grow up through the asphalt. In the bombing, it was burned and blackened, but it survived, and it still buds and grows foliage every year. That's pretty amazing. It's become a symbol of resiliency and is the literal high point of the memorial.

I think one thing that makes visiting a site like this significant for me is that it helps me, just a bit, grasp at least the scale of the tragedy; because I think that nothing can make you truly grasp the tragedy beyond your own involvement, whatever that is. You read that 168 people died here, and it kind of has a meaning, but then you see the field of chairs, one for each person, placed, relatively speaking, where they died. It's visual. It's physical. It doesn't reduce the impact at all, at least not for me. If anything it makes it stronger. It makes each person not a part of a total of 168, but instead they are each one individual chair in a field. A small field, with so many chairs.

In December 2001, I went with a small group of friends to visit Ground Zero in New York City. I was in town for another reason, and I wanted to go. I don't think visiting that site quite gave me the same sense of comprehension, but I vaguely remembered having been there before, and I completely knew from my memory that standing in front of St. Paul's, I should not be able to see the tall buildings of Battery Park. At the time there was still a surprisingly large number of signs of lives interrupted, if you looked around the streets. As we stood at the barricade, as close as you could get at the time, before the viewing area was constructed, a policeman was quietly and informally explaining to a group of people near me how yes, there really wasn't much to see, but that for people who lived and worked there, the shocking thing was exactly that - how much wasn't there to see any more. For me the striking thing was how much was still there. How much still stood that could easily have been destroyed. The thought that while so many were lost, so many were spared.

A couple of strong memories for me of that day:

Before we realized how close we were to the site, we were waiting to cross the street, and facing the other direction, toward the park surrounding City Hall. One of my friends was looking across the park at some building, and wondering aloud what it was. My friend is from Alabama, and so was clearly identified by her accent as "not from around here." As the rest of us all chimed in that we had no idea what the building was, a woman who was also waiting to cross the street spoke up and volunteered the information. I don't remember any more what the building actually was. But the woman identified it, and my friend said in her Southern drawl, "thank you." The woman smiled and answered, "Thank you, for visiting our city." Then she went on. That touched me. Then we turned around, and I saw Battery Park, realized I shouldn't be able to, and said to my friends, "Guys, we're here." Then my eyes moved downward and I saw St. Paul's, with all the memorial items hanging on the fence in front, which somehow we hadn't noticed yet.

One other thing I will always remember happened after we had crossed the street, and were walking along the fence, looking at the items people had left there. Across the street, it seemed there had been normal noises of traffic and conversation. Here, just a few yards away, it was quiet and reverent. There was no conversation and only the sound of soft crying and sniffling. As we passed along the gate almost in an organized viewing line, a young woman probably in her 20s stepped up to the fence, turned around, and smiled, as her companion took her picture. The shock among the people nearby was tangible at someone having such a lack of sensitivity and such little apparent understanding of her surroundings. As quiet as it had been, the silence suddenly became total. I can only speak for myself on this aspect, but it didn't help that the couple was Asian, and I began to think things like, "You're outsiders; this didn't happen to you; this obviously hasn't damaged you the way it's damaged the rest of us here. How can you stand there and smile in the midst of all this pain?" I'm sorry to admit that I thought that, but I did. Then without any preceding discussion on the subject, a man near me said softly to no one in particular, and in a completely non-accusatory and comforting tone, "I guess we're so conditioned that if you put us in front of a camera, we automatically smile, no matter what." And the tension dissipated. Everyone in the immediate area exhaled. If that man was not an angel, then at the least, that statement was the result of divine inspiration. When I was feeling blind anger because of the inadvertently hurtful action of a stranger whom I had judged "not like me," another stranger's action reminded me that a better way is reason, and calm, and forgiveness, and an attempt at understanding. He reminded me that she was not a "them." She was an "us."

I haven't mentioned the tsunamis and that entire situation here. I can't comprehend it. The numbers are staggering. Some of the before and after satellite images go a little ways toward helping my mind visualize the reality, but I just can't grasp it. The numbers are unimaginable. The number of lives lost is six times the population of my town. It's one-eighth the population of my state. That vaguely says "huge" to my brain but really has no solid meaning. Unimaginable. In my imagination and based on my previous faulty knowledge, a tsunami meant a huge tall wave, hundreds of feet high, that roared up and broke onto the beach and deluged tall buildings in one swoop. I see some of the video that was taken of the beaches in Thailand and Sri Lanka, and I can understand how people could just stand there watching, thinking nothing more than, What's that? That's different. That doesn’t look quite right. The waves weren't that outrageously tall. They just didn't break, and didn't stop coming. But they were big enough that the scale must have been disorienting. You'd think it was much further away before you realized it was right there at you. The lack of the wave breaking would have made it even more difficult to judge distance. By the time you knew this was seriously and perilously not right, there was nothing you could do. It's terrifying. There aren't words.

If there's a way to bring this back around to my original topic, I guess this is it: to really oversimplify, the world can be a really bad place. I don't think it's possible to be a thinking, caring person and ignore that. So you have to learn how to deal, how to heal, and how to grow. It's really hard after this entry to repeat one of the themes from my last one, how everything happens for a reason. I certainly don't understand the reasoning here. I doubt I ever will come close to understanding while I'm alive. But I still do believe that. Because I know that the world can also be a really good place.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -