The letters, crafted from the steel of the towers, and etched into the wall at the entrance to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum on the grounds of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex read, “No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time.”
The quote, taken from Virgil’s Book IX of The Aeneid, evokes the power of remembrance and is part of a larger art installation entitled, “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning,” by artist Spencer Finch. The letters are nestled in 2,983 watercolor squares, each its own shade of blue to commemorate the number of victims from the 2001 and 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center.
The color of the sky on that September morning is often referenced as the first memory of what would become the most horrific day. Before the sky turned black, thickened with smoke and ash, the piercing blue, known as “severe clear” in aviation, was truly remarkable.
The quote was never intended to be more than an elegant phrase about memory as time passes, separate from its literary context and not intended to spur the viewer to read Virgil’s Aeneid for clarity, where they would learn the quote was taken out of context and does not accurately describe the horror of thousands of civilians indiscriminately murdered by religiously driven, fanatical men. To distance the misplaced sentiment The Aeneid was removed from the installation.
An awareness of detail seems lost in our social media obsessed society where we breed forgetting by constantly diverting our attention and reduce the ability to concentrate.
We create blocks around memory and choose not to recall distressing experiences, portioning events into our conscious and unconscious minds. Because of the way traumatic experiences settle in the body, these mental blocks create safety by compartmentalizing what is remembered.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I left my apartment and began my daily commute to my job as a Legal Secretary at a law firm on the 40th floor in the South Tower of the World Trade Center by walking to the Staten Island Ferry terminal to board the 8:30 a.m. ferry.
I sat in a quiet area and settled in to begin reading Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. It had been on my list for a while, and I was ready for the challenge. I held the book in my hands, felt the weight of its pages, and stared at the missile on the cover. I opened the book and read the first line: “A screaming comes across the sky.”
The irony of these words remains fresh to this day, as the bookmark remains stalled on page twenty-eight which begins, “Mark, Reader, my cry! Bend thy thoughts on the Sky.” The last words read before disaster struck and a screaming did come across the sky was a reference to Emily Dickinson: “Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.”
The World Trade Center was completed in 1973, designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki who envisioned the complex as a symbol of world peace, far from the definition of American capitalist domination it globally portrayed.
The twin towers were always a part of my life. As a kid, from my perch on the St. George waterfront, they were the giant two front teeth of the city. As a teenager exploring Manhattan, I used them as a compass point visible from many miles away to find my way home. As an adult, working there in a secure, well-paying job was an accomplishment of which I was proud.
I often found myself staring out the window wondering how I got there. The views were particularly beautiful in the evening.
From my place at the window, the city lights sparkled in the darkness, reaching in all directions for miles, and cast a seemingly supernatural glow, making it appear otherworldly. Without the many distractions of daylight, perception changed, and the darkness narrowed focus. My vantage point high above the city streets made me feel like anything was possible for me now. I lived in the greatest city in the world.
—Kathleen Rose Morgan, The Seller of Secrets: A Memoir
Each person’s trauma is as unique as their fingerprint and for me survival was intentional ignorance and dissociative amnesia. The strategies I used were largely successful for many years but over time they became gradually more ineffective. It was staring out those windows where I began to allow my mind to begin to acknowledge what happened and that somehow, I survived the adverse childhood experiences and domino effect of trauma that smothered my young life.
On September 11, 2001, terrorism, attacks on humanity itself, found its way back to New York City to finish their failed attempt to take the World Trade Center down in 1993. Through the failures of a global superpower with highly skilled intelligence agencies and a fortified military, nineteen fanatical men armed with boxcutters, and a bloodthirsty malevolent dogma succeeded this time.
We are reminded to Never Forget. But what, exactly?
That after ignoring the blaring signals of threats, the Bush administration blamed everything but the impotence of his administration and the failures of the intelligence community who later admitted in testimony before a Congressional Joint Inquiry on June 18, 2002, “mistakes” and "systemic weaknesses" were made in the years leading up to the attacks?
Should we forget that September 11th was preventable, and the flashing warning signs of an imminent attack were ignored?
I will never forget the sight of the massive ball of flame and thick black smoke streaming out of the top portion of Tower One, the collective fear, the anguish and worry I felt for my colleagues who arrived early at the office.
I will never forget walking past Battery Park when the booming noise of a giant jet thundering across the sky appeared just above the treetops, the way the ground trembled, and how I had to steady my body as the force of the jet engines’ thrust enveloped everything below it. The logo, United Airlines, in blue lettering, the windows, and the screams of absolute horror on the street as it crashed into Tower Two.
I will never forget the immediate realization that this was not an accident, or the woman who grabbed my hand and pulled me back toward the ferry, or the view of a mutilated downtown Manhattan that came into focus as the ferry pulled out of the dock as the boat crew’s walkie-talkies transmitted, “Terrorist attack. All New York City tunnels and bridges shut down. All subways and buses shut down. Advise passengers to put on life jackets.”
I will never forget staring at Tower Two, trying to count the floors where the plane hit, envisioning huge bursts of explosions and fire in our office, as I tried to calculate how long it might take to walk down forty flights of crowded stairs.
I will never forget what I saw on the television screen after making it home, both towers burning, the absolute horror of seeing the people who were trapped on floors above or directly below the fire, the inconceivable and dreadful choice made by many to jump, watching as Tower Two pancaked into itself and was gone in a matter of seconds.
I will never forget the scroll at the bottom of the screen showing our firm’s name and a phone number to call to be accounted for, the Pentagon, the field in Pennsylvania, the collapse of Tower One, images of thousands of people walking in the streets and over bridges, many looked like ghosts, covered from head to toe in the dust and ash from the massive plume clouds, the smell of smoke in my apartment just across the water.
I will never forget seeing the view of Lower Manhattan without the towers there for the first time late that night.
As time moved on, I was able to tell this part of my personal story. In the first few years, it was hard to put words together to describe it. I was not injured physically. I was not in the building. I did not have to navigate forty flights of stairs to escape. I did not have to run for my life through a massive cloud of debris. What I did not understand until much later was the amount of emotional trauma I absorbed in an already-crowded space.
The sorrowful complexity of that day lives eternally in my mind.
Amid a devastating crisis, the city, the country, and the world came together on September 11, 2001.
But the history of American efforts to force democracy in other lands seems to have only served to leave our own fragile idea of it in shambles. Today, I am reminded of how quickly the lessons were forgotten and how we stand apart as a nation, divided and facing many threats, not from foreign extremists but from homegrown ones, sloppy thinkers, and incompetent elected officials.
Hours after the attacks, their dear leader called into a local New York City television station to proclaim:
“40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually before the World Trade Center the tallest, and then when they built the World Trade Center it became known as the second tallest, and now it’s the tallest.”
A grotesque, selfish statement after such shocking devastation. No surprise here, but it is also not true. In fact, the nearby 70 Pine Street is twenty-five feet taller than 40 Wall Street.
In fifty-four days, we will have a chance to leave this unserious man and his erratic, aggressive, and unstable energy that permeates our society behind us.
It is time to reshape our collective story to one of non-violence and peace.
It is time for a woman to lead this country.
Never Forget.