A mishap in the email sent; it didn’t reach most subscribers. I apologize if you’re receiving this twice.
Two weeks after September 11, I drove into Manhattan.
Nine months earlier, I had moved to an island off the mid-coast of Maine. Friends and neighbors there and in New York urged me not to make the long drive.
But Manhattan had been my home for forty years.
I wanted to see people I loved. I wanted to listen to their stories and grief, to cry with them, hug them, and perhaps help soothe something that could not yet be soothed.
The city I entered was unrecognizable.
A plume of smoke spiraled upward near the West Side Highway. Streets ordinarily filled with people, cars, horns, voices, and movement were nearly empty. Tanks and military men and women carried heavy weapons.
And silence.
Except for helicopters circling overhead.
I stayed with a friend who lived near the Armory, where hundreds of photographs of those still called “missing” had been posted. She suggested I take a walk.
I carried my backpack with two film cameras and rolls of color and black-and-white film.
I took many photographs.
Only one remained with me.
I rounded a corner and saw a weather-beaten sheet of paper taped to an iron gate.
Imagine.
I took the photograph.
And then, for years, I didn’t show it.
I thought it wasn’t good enough. The paper was battered, the words indistinct. Somehow I had arrived both too soon and too late.
Years later, I returned to the original film and digitized the image, careful not to disturb its integrity. The words still refuse to come completely into focus.
Perhaps they don’t need to.
I first wrote about this photograph years ago. I am sharing it again today because I remember, along with the horror and unbearable loss, something else.
For a little while, we reached for one another.
The world reached toward us.
John Lennon imagined humankind living as one.
Years after that piece of paper hung from an iron gate in a wounded city, I find myself looking at it again.
And listening.
Can we still imagine?
—l.a.m
So incredibly powerful and moving. I’m thankful that you shared your photograph and the story of its taking, your heartbreaking homage to your longtime home. Sometimes our words are somehow beyond words, and that’s what you’ve done here. Your depth of expression is beyond itself and well-aligned with John Lennon’s own never-ending reach. I grew up loving Lennon and dreaming of New York. I talk about 9/11 with my students every single year and how I had been teaching in Baltimore that morning. We were all sent home, and I fell asleep to the 24/7 news coverage well past midnight. The next day, I didn’t want to open my eyes. The tv was still on, and I could hear what they were saying. I wished so much (and still do) that it wasn’t true. But I’ll never give up on the song or the city or all the people in my heart. I LOVE NEW YORK. Thank you for reaching, Lee Anne. Maybe peace is still possible. And the world…