The Spirit of My Fellow New Yorkers

The Spirit of My Fellow New Yorkers, originally uploaded by wlotus.

I will be honest: I do not like ceremonies commemorating 11 September 2001. I do not look at the photos. I do not buy commemorative art of the towers. That is because I relate very strongly to others' pain, and exposing myself to those things means my mind puts me in the shoes of those who had to choose between jumping and burning. That waking nightmare is NOT a good place for my mind to go. But I went into Manhattan this morning to see the U.S.S. New York, a new navel ship built from steel taken from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. To me, the ship represents the unstoppable spirit of New York. It means we are recovering, creating a new normal, and going on with life. So I visited to remind myself we can build good things from the wreckage of a horrible tragedy, given the time and resources (emotional and material).

The USS New York Is Open to the Public

The USS New York Is Open to the Public, originally uploaded by wlotus.

The U.S.S. New York is docked at 48th St. and 12th Ave. in Manhattan, and it is open to the public for a week. In the lower right side of the photo you can see people lined up for the free tour.

Reality Sets In

Janie stood where [Jody] left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered.

~Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston


As I walked through Maple Grove Cemetery today, I saw this broken headstone and photographed it while thinking about this quote. Both the image and the quote remind me of how Christianity fell off the pedestal it had occupied in my heart a few years ago.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie was a faithful, loving wife to Jody. He came by when she was a young girl and swept her off her feet with his high talk and big dreams. She ran away from her first husband--what a horrid mismatch THAT was!--to marry herself to him. But he was a mean person under the flowery talk, and after a few years his meanness started to show. Nothing she did was good enough, and he magnified her mistakes into mountains. He became more and more critical of her and projected his own weaknesses onto her. One day her dinner was not up to snuff, and he slapped her. The above quote is from just after that slap.

How familiar, from a spiritual standpoint.

The good news is that after Jody died some time later, Janie regained her freedom and rediscovered her joy.

That's familiar, too.