IN MEMORY OF 9/11

September 11, 2001 --


“Jim, they jumping out the windows man, they jumping out the windows.” Mike hung up the phone crying. I held on to the phone praying. I was in midtown Manhattan, safe, (or so I thought) while he was in Tribeca, which would later be called Ground zero, traumatized. Little did Mike know a whole nation would be traumatized. THE BUILDINGS FELL, and along with it our mystique – that’s the, “Problem with image.” A Harlem story.


The Problem with Image

As we stepped out of the Movie Theater on 14th Street & Broadway, my sister and I really couldn’t find the words to describe what we had just seen. You see we had just watched DENZEL WASHINGTON”S new movie “TRAINING DAY” and believe me it was a Denzel that you are not use to seeing. Homeboy did a complete 360. He was a corrupt cop who was the head of a narcotics division in LAPD. Talk about playing both sides against the middle and putting the knife in your brother’s back. He called it “chess not checkers” with your emotions. So there we stood, grasping for the perfect way to sum up this nouveau Denzel. I broke the silence, “that was a hard core performance by my man. “To tell you the truth he had me scared”. My sister is always pretty genuine with her observations, and she doesn’t take her critiques as serious as I do but she said “Great acting sad ending”. I couldn’t have agreed more. We rambled on about the movie until we exited the theater on 13th street.

Walking out into the street we saw the usual sites and sounds of the city. JAY Z”S new record blasted from a nearby car, a young woman on roller blades cut through the rush-hour traffic like a running back. It was 7:00pm, a FRIDAY night, early fall, and a comfortable 71 degrees. Both of us realized that we better seize this moment because our warm days were numbered. So we plotted what our next move would be. She wanted to go the village and look at some leather coats. Me, I was content to just take the walk. So we headed down Broadway and then I smelled it. At first it was subtle and smelled like nothing more than paper burning in the distance. As we continued to walk it began to smell as if it was garbage that was on fire. Instinctively I surveyed the area to see if I could spot it. Suddenly, it occurred to me what that smell was. I looked at my

sister and said, “that’s not a fire that’s the World Trade Center.” Indeed it was. The smoldering residue from that horrific day still lingered in the air. It was a humbling experience to both of us. Since that day, I hadn’t made a move past 34th Street. I purposely remained Uptown. No need for the constant reminders. We both knew the further we went downtown the closer we got to that day. An eerie silence fell over us as we trudged on.

My sister spotted a shoe store and we decided to go in. As she perused the latest styles of boots, I plopped down on a seat in the corner. Immediately, I started to think about all the lost lives, wondering if they suffered, hoping they all made last calls. I thought about those people who took that jump into eternity. A slight chill went through me. “Jim, how you like these” my sister said as she waved a pair of beige leather boots. “These are the ones I’ve been looking for”. I smiled assuredly in her direction, “Thea, those are cool, try them on”. I was glad for the diversion. My mind was starting to wander down Cortland Street. “Damn, that’s why I didn’t want to come down here” I said to myself.

A beautiful caramel sister strode past me in a pair of black high-heeled boots. She walked from one end of the store to the other testing the comfort of the boots. She wore black designer frames and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. As she walked I could feel the confidence ooze from her. I don’t know what made me think about a conversation I had a few days earlier in which a coworker and I were discussing the sleepless nights we were starting to experience. He said his nerves had really become bad. Every plane that flew overhead made his body tense. I told him “ we’re all shook, we have an emotional gash right in the center of our souls.” Time will heal it but the scars will always remain. You know it’s there when you jump at certain sounds, you know it’s there when you smell the smoke of burning wood, and you know it’s there when what was once normal seems abnormal.

I glanced at my sister; she had begun to walk from one end of the store to the other. “Boots look good, you should get them, I said”. She nodded in agreement. I spotted the young lady again, this time her boots were off and she sported a pair of nylon footies. You know the ones that are usually given out when you need a stocking to try on shoes. When she stood up, I noticed how small she looked. Her walk didn’t seem as strong and the glasses that appeared chic suddenly made her appear studious. She walked over to the salesclerk to inquire about another pair of boots. But something was missing, she seemed very unsure as she asked the clerk “can I see that black pair in a size seven, or maybe the gray in a size 8, I don’t know what do you think”. The swagger was definitely gone. “Fake height,” I thought to myself. It was kind of symbolic of New Yorkers right now. We had lost something that came to define us.

As my sister and I stepped out into the warm breeze and started to make our trek uptown I thought about Denzel’s movie again. For some reason it bothered me to see him play this wild and crazy cop. After all, this was the same cat that had played Malcolm X, the same cat that bought virtue to even the shadiest of characters. I had become so used to seeing him in these good guy roles I couldn’t see him any other way. I finally came to the conclusion that Denzel didn’t change, but my perception of him had. And herein lies the problem with image. Sometimes we get so caught up in the look or style of a person we forget who the real person is. This can prove dangerous especially when someone wants to change or has to change.

Since September 11th, New Yorkers are faced with the monumental task of re-defining themselves and putting things in perspective. I watched the young lady as she walked down 8th street empty handed. A tinge of guilt rushed through me. I had judged this sister solely by her clothes; not realizing she was much more than her clothes just as New York is more than its buildings. There’s no better time than the present to put faith in the things we can’t see than the things you can.