Ground Zero

I walked here from South Ferry Park after lunch. Sitting on a park bench on the water, the Circle Line Ferry appeared mysteriously, almost empty, and floated by, bobbing like a kitschy Marie Celeste, "New York, New York" blaring, distorted, from her loudspeakers. Three office workers sat next to me and discussed evacuation procedures for the building in which they were working. I sat for a long time, perhaps almost an hour, and their topic of conversation did not move to anything else.

I walked here down Wall Street and passed Federal Hall, where George Washington was sworn in as the first president of the United States of America in 1789. New York was the first capital city of the new, idealistic republic, potent symbol of a New World Order.

I walked here up a side street and saw the word "triage" spray-painted in black, dripping, on a wall, with an arrow pointing around the corner.

It's just a huge, matter-of-fact hole, it looks like a construction-, not a destruction-site. There are not that many tourists - just a few here across the road and behind barriers. The subway rattles on under the grid beneath my feet. The Burger King on the corner of two one-way streets has "NYPD Temp HQ" painted on the wall. It is the only building with visible scars, the rest are surprisingly intact. WE WILL NEVER FORGET on a pedestrian shelter beside the work site. The scribbled numbers on the concrete barricades in front of the site look almost Arabic. The surrounding buildings are scaffolded or covered or have enormous cables hanging from them. Creer-Boma New York Disaster Relief Fund. It seems that every nationality is working here. One of the neighbouring glass towers with cables hanging from it has even floor numbers painted on its windows: 14, 16, 18, ... 22, then 27. It is empty, like all the others. At the front of the construction site is a cross constructed from iron girders. From every direction, orange Ferrara Bros cement trucks approach and rumble past.