The winter holidays get a much more formal atmosphere, with communities stringing up emblems of their faith and those of their neighbors. Icicle lights above menorahs, shopping bags and red faces, everyone eager to live their own holiday dream, be it receiving or bestowing the perfect gift, or spending the cold, hard night before Christmas with someone warm and soft.
New Years is kind of the same way, except much more raucous: After all, we're one of the 10 or so cities whose parties are broadcast around the globe. Appearances must be kept, girls must be kissed, and the streets must smell vaguely of alcohol, vomit, and good times had by all.
Thanksgiving is of course Macy's Day, but at this point, the non-New Yorker is getting the drift. The city is a living thing, and it's moods are very obvious. We all participate, and we are all part of the show we hold for ourselves. It's what makes the city, The City. But we have one holiday that we haven't internalized yet.
It's the day that everyone who works in a tall office building looks south, and kinda zones out for a bit. It's the day you wonder if the train delays aren't due to the MTA. It's the day you wish the fucking politicians weren't among the usual crowds of tourists. It's the day that we look at clouds and remember that the only cloud we remember from That Day was the one coming from lower Manhattan, and heading out over the river.
One thing I'm glad about is that my memories from that day are getting confused. Parts are still vivid. I remember very, very clearly where I was when I first heard that something had happened. apparently, some plane had crashed. Probably a Cessna, everyone agreed. It had hit one of the towers at the World Trade Center (back when it was the World Trade Center, and not the WTC) and that was all I knew. I remember someone saying, or myself thinking, "Wow, poor bastard, at least the Towers won't be damaged." or something to that effect. I was in the basement of my high school, and I think that I'll be forever glad that I was. After all, it gave me an extra half-hour or so before I left the building, looked across the river, and realized that a part of city I grew up in was gone.
Another thing I'm grateful for is that I didn't directly know anyone who died. I knew relatives of neighbors, parents of people I knew, but everyone I could remember the face of, lived. I guess, more then anything I mourn two things. The first is the Towers themselves. They were, I think, one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. They were the compass by which New York oriented herself, and thus the axis upon which the world turned. When you stood underneath them, you could see them curve over you, as if they grew to fill the sky only they could reach. When you were inside them, you were either Seeing Something Cool, or Doing Something Important. The flags hanging in the atrium were a sign of New York's pull, the urge of everyone to interact, build, make money, become greater, and to do so in the Greatest City On Earth.
And so, now that they're gone, no one can become as great as they could have when the Towers were still in the sky. New York can't heal until our skyline is healed. We can't illuminate the world until we have our lighthouses back.
The other thing I mourn is how our city felt afterwards. If you hadn't lost someone, it was like being a child at a funeral. You knew that everything was wrong. That someone was missing, and you couldn't be sure who. Everyone else was around, but something was deeply wrong, something was missing; and you couldn't remember who it was, until your parents led you up to the casket, and you realized that everyone was in attendance, but one of the guests wasn't in the pews.
As I said, in New York, we have a day that we wish we didn't.
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