Rise and Fall and Rise
I am writing these words on September 11, 2011, ten years after the horrible attack known simply as 9-11. A decade has passed since the day the “Twin Towers” fell. Finally we are able to catch a quick glimpse of that event through the eyes of history, and not just through the televised images seared onto our retinas on that terrible day.
To this day, I cannot look at a beautiful, clear September day without seeing that 9-11 blue sky that made the burning towers pop with almost surreal clarity.
At age 18, when I made my first trip to New York City, the World Trade Center was just being completed. I was fascinated. The two towers were, for a short time, the tallest buildings in the world, and they dominated Lower Manhattan. Like the American flag on the moon, they were symbols of the times. Years later, when I lived in downtown New York, they were my visual anchor in the city and I never tired of looking at them. No matter how many times I passed near them, I always looked like a tourist and could not stop gawking in open mouthed wonder.
The towers were not something any of us ever expected to see fall. No, I didn’t say that right. The towers were not something any of us could ever possibly conceive of falling.
In the first couple of years after 9-11, I couldn’t make myself go to Ground Zero. By the time the towers fell, Steve and I had been living in Rehoboth for a number of years, but on our trips back to NYC I consciously avoided the area. As time passed, however, I began to make an annual pilgrimage to the site and became increasingly fascinated by it; watching impatiently for a new building to fill that great, empty void in the sky over downtown Manhattan.
I confess I find it hard to stay away from wtc.com. I love watching 1 World Trade Center (formerly known as Freedom Tower) and its sisters rising out of the jumble of streets and levels that make up the site. 1 WTC is located on the northwest corner of the World Trade Center site in the place where the original 6 World Trade Center once stood. Once completed (in 2013) it will reach the symbolic height of 1,776 feet and be the tallest building in the US.
As I contemplated the rise of 1 WTC, I was struck by the fact that in our lifetimes we have witnessed the triumphant rise of the original towers, their devastating collapse, and now a rebirth—a towering symbol of hope, and yes, humility, at the same time. It is impossible to look the empty footprints of the original North and South towers, and not remember the pain and loss they represent and honor.
From what I can see, ten years ago we were as a nation a more arrogant people. We felt untouchable. Now, after of decade of war and deep recession, we are a people in need of hope. As hard as it is to admit, 9-11 and the years that followed have dealt a serious blow to our collective ego. Now, as the new World Trade Center rises, it inspires us, and we hope to rise with it.
In a way, the rise and fall and rise of the WTC could be seen as a representation of a cycle that is part of who we are as human beings. Life comes at us in waves, doesn’t it? Sometimes we rise on the crest; sometimes we fall in the trough. Always we rise again.
Here at CAMP Rehoboth we are pleased to have made it through another summer season and another Sundance. Like all non-profits these days we continue to work overtime to make ends meet. Our building may not tower in the air and our terrorists are only mortgage payments, but we very much need the support of this community to keep the light of CAMP Rehoboth shining brightly through the fall and winter.
Thank you to all who supported Sundance. Thank you to all our members. All of you make a tremendous difference to the work we do here at CAMP Rehoboth and in our community.
We rise, we fall…we rise.
Murray Archibald, Founder and President of the Board of Directors of CAMP Rehoboth, is an artist in Rehoboth Beach. Photo: Construction on 1 World Trade Center on August 3, 2011.
The following piece was written sometime in the late 1980s. My article this week triggered memories of it, and so I included it as a sidebar. —Murray Archibald
One Day I Rise
One day
I rise on the everpresent breeze
to fly, unchecked and free
with the birds on a yearly migration
One day
I fall as a dying maple leaf
to be reborn
as sandy silt and rich dirt
One day
I plumb the depths of the blackest sea
in iridescent shapes that float
as stars in the night
One day
And one day
And one day
I flow in uninterrupted silence
from a tiny spring high on an aging mountaintop
and repeat the ancient cycles in my quest for the sea
(how clear the newborn waters
how blue the sky reflecting
how green the riverbed rocks)
I attach myself to a minute sprig
that clings tightly to rounded rocks
a flash of silver approaches
and I am swallowed
instantly
I become a meal for a tiny minnow
for a trout
and endlessly on until
One day
I sprout and thrust a point of green
from a mud bank I have never dreamed
One day
Today
I stand as a man
on the threshold of new discovery
and lightly ponder
the migrating birds
the earth
the water
a trout
and a mud bank
I have ever dreamed.