Scientists maintain that time is linear. I get that. Events are cyclical. I get that too. But clearly there is something of a conflict here.
September has always been a significant marker on the calendar - always summer ending and school starting. A sort of renewal.
In New York it is also is also the time of 9/11. I know this is not specific to New York, but the gravity of it is felt here in a way that few other places can relate to.
Instead of time helping to heal, the perspective here does not change much. We hit September 11 like a wall. Going forward, yet going around again, and a little stuck.
New York is a friendly home for ghosts. Anyone living here long enough sees them all the time. Shadows cast from buildings long gone. Smells from closed restaurants. Rallies and marches from years ago that still echo in the streets. I still see Kurt Vonnegut carrying his dry cleaning up Second avenue and Katherine Hepbrun waiting online at a deli.
There will always be room in New York City for these more-than-memories, as it should be. This is a big place. When trying to catch my bearings coming out of the subways I still look for "The Towers" and they are still there, in a way, and always will be. Together we are stuck in the marshmallow of time.
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