Yesterday I pedaled to Point Lookout. The ride takes me from the Botanical Garden through concrete canyons to houses on small patches of land in Queens and, finally, a peninsula bounded by the ocean and bay that looks more like a New England seaside idyllic than part of suburban sprawl.
Today’s ride was very different, from the Bronx all the way downtown in Manhattan. Ironically, I left my apartment without a set itinerary, in contrast to yesterday’s trip, in which I followed a route, with slight variations, I’d taken many times before.
Today started cool but turned summer-like as the afternoon progressed. High clouds drifted across a blue sky. Many streets were closed off for what I believe is the last of “Open Streets” Saturday, in which motor vehicles are prohibited, and for various street fairs. But everywhere I looked, streets teemed with pedestrians and cyclists.
Twenty-five years ago yesterday, hijackers crashed two passenger airliners into the World Trade Center. The day after, from what I’m told, areas of Manhattan removed from the scene were all but empty, the silence interrupted only by ambulances and other emergency vehicles. I said “I”m told” because I was living in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and no one was except police, firefighters and other emergency workers were allowed to enter Manhattan.
It would have been difficult, I imagine, for people I saw today, many of whom weren’t yet born on 9/11, to imagine how different the city looked from the one they were enjoying today. And I guess some, like me, who witnessed it firsthand or were nearby and experienced the immediate aftermath, couldn’t imagine or not imagine it whether or not we want to: smoke wafts and screams echo in our minds, in our nightmares.
The festive atmosphere along downtown streets where people’s worlds were shaken twenty-five years ago reminded me of the first time I visited Place de la Concorde: On that pleasant June day in one of the world’s most elegant public squares, it was difficult, though not impossible, to recall accounts of the square filled with blood (because the drains were to small to carry it away) from the 1100 people guillotined there during the Reign of Terror.
One important difference between today and my first time in Paris was that there were no living witnesses to the Reign of Terror. Anyone who thinks about it knows about it the way I do: from written accounts, art and perhaps what they were taught in school. The day will come when the same holds true for 9/11. For now, many of us still can remember, whether or not we want to—even during a pleasant afternoon bike ride.
