The bombing of the Twin Towers has left a hollow in the American spirit. I sense that whenever I travel to the US, and specifically New York. People are quieter, softer. This is not the New York spirit.
The memorial for the destroyed towers and the 3,000 dead dwells on death. Or, on the nihilism of these deaths. It is not a memorial as much as a hollow pit (or two hollow pits) where there is insatiable grief. Memorials are not happy places, of course, but they should have some dignity for the dead. In this case, the two pits look like mass burial holes. The names, which no-one will read in their entirety, look like carved lines.
To give these 3,000 names more meaning, they should have made crosses with the names carved on them. No-one will take the time to read them all, of course, but the combined presence of these 3,000 crosses would give a deeper, more spiritual meaning to the deaths.
The lights, which emit from these pits, go upwards. I thought this was an attempt to send the souls of these dead upwards towards the sky, if not to heaven. But no! These lights are "search lights." Still searching for more dead bodies?
The argument against these symbols would be, how about those that are not Christian? Therefore, the lights cannot go to heaven, and the crosses cannot be used. Our meaningful symbols are too specific, and what we're left with, in our multicultural era, is a depressing, generic memorial, which has become the norm in our godless, non-spiritual world.
But, ordinary people still want meaning in their lives. People reacted so negatively to the dark, empty granite sheath that stood for the original Vietnam Memorial, that another, showing soldiers in combat, was finally put up.
I suggest that such a sculpture be erected around this mound of granite at Ground Zero, since it is impossible to remove that mound now. It can be something as mundane as a sculpture of one of the passengers on a cell-phone, trasmitting information about the hijackers. Something which would show the bravery of an ordinary citizen, thinking about life, or the living, instead of death.
Memorials should of course be about the dead. But, they should also raise the spirits of the living, if only to say: Never Again! A defeatist memorial will produce defeated people, who will not be ready and vigilant enough to say "Never Again" let alone act to prevent atrocities from happening to their country.
A defeatist, nihilistic symbol will produce a defeated people. That is what the 9/11 memorial does. Of course, the name also has to go. What memorial gains any gravity when remembered as numbers? "The September 11 Memorial" or simply "The Twin Towers Memorial" can give strength back to New Yorkers, and to Americans.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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