The other day I had to bring my car to the mechanic. While he inspected it, I walked into the park across the street. I’d been in this park before, but on this day I entered from a different side.
As I started walking, a grove of trees caught my attention. I noticed plaques mounted on a rock, and a light in the form of a fake “candle” that was flickering.
I got closer to read the plaque and noticed it was a tribute to local first responders who died on 9/11.
I realized why this park is called Memorial Park.
And I remembered.
For many people 9/11 is history. For me it’s memory.
History vs Memory
History is what you read in books or, perhaps more accurate these days, it’s what you read about online or watch in videos.
It’s information that is often easily forgotten.
History is about another place and time.
It’s about someone else, something else, someplace else.
Even if we can relate with empathy, there’s a disconnection. It doesn’t live in us.
Dates, facts, figures, and stories are history. They are recalled through the mind.
Memory lives in the body. It’s visceral. It’s felt. It’s rooted in experience.
As soon as I spotted the memorial in the park, I looked up and saw the clear blue sky. I felt the slight chill in the air that beckoned me to move into more direct sunlight.
I felt my insides tighten.
I remembered.
When I closed my eyes, I was immediately transported back 24 years ago, to the plaza of the General Motors building in midtown Manhattan. Across from the famed Plaza Hotel, Bergdorf Goodman, and Central Park.
In the quiet refuge of this suburban park, my body started to tighten in response to the confusion of that morning 24 years ago.
The uncertainty of the moment clenched my heart.
Internet access was largely down, and it was impossible to get news. Many of us left the building to see what we could learn from the television screens in the studios of the CBS Morning Show, which faced the building’s plaza.
We initially believed that the first plane must have been a malfunction, a tragic accident. I could feel the lump in my throat when the second plane hit the South Tower, giving way to the stark realization that this was no accident.
Without any knowledge or understanding of what was happening and why, we wondered if our building might be the next target.
24 years later, sitting in a quiet park, without any instant threats, my body was once again paralyzed in fear and panic.
It’s not rational. It’s not logical. It’s not explainable.
It’s visceral. Somatic. Experiential.
Memory does not know dates and times.
It speaks the language of weather and environment, sounds and sights.
A clear blue sky. An eerie quiet morning. A slight chill in the air. A plane that seems to be flying too low. A fire truck or ambulance siren.
History books consolidate, compress, and abstract a moment in time. If you read about 9/11 as history, then you know from the start of the story what the targets were.
Memory doesn’t work that way. The body has its own rhythms and processes. It often dwells in the uncertainty of the moment long after the resolution is final.
We pretend that things on the internet last forever, but much of the media relating to 9/11 has been lost. Some of what existed is incompatible with the evolution in technology; other pieces have been removed to sanitize the internet.
Memory can’t be removed so easily.
What we experience lives within us.
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