Now, of course, that mecca is a rugged hole in the ground, and I routinely take narrow streets and sidewalks to seek relief from its maw by avoiding the sight of it on my way to work. Except on days like today, when it's cold and I'm foolishly underdressed, and I cut through the warm interiors of the Wintergarden and the World Financial Center. Then I get to cross over the West Side Highway via the pedestrian skyway, which is truncated at one end where it used to turn sharply left and connect to the WTC. It's been grafted to a makeshift pedestrian bridge that's not sealed from the weather and is floored with industrial gray diamondplate. To get from its height to street level I have to trundle down a long, steepish stairway. There's a lift for handicapped access, but it's often chained with an OUT OF ORDER sign clipped to it.
At the bottom of the steps, I slogged along the asphalt path at the South side of Ground Zero, through the uniquely urban winter mixture: black slush, icemelt pellets, and gritty sand. The plywood wall of scrawled messages is now a nearly indecipherable mass of ink; words on top of tangled words.
For lunch I had some Teas' Tea Pure Green tea, made by Ito En of Hawaii. You may view a diagram of this tea product here. While drinking it, I read the label and discovered that this pure, vitamin C-enriched, unsweetened, calorie- and preservative-free tea product is mighty:
"Made to refresh. Made to renew. Feel its power to transform. To make you whole once more."
I found myself wondering how many bottles of Pure Green Teas' Tea it would take to fill Ground Zero.
Actually, after drinking it I feel a little sloshy and bloated, but I suspect that its amazing restorative properties may be counteracted by pizza.
I am always fascinated by the coincidences that routinely emerge from the ever-increasing complexity of our world and its human relationships. Minoru Yamasaki designed structures for the House of Saud, inspired by classic Muslim architecture, and those structures were most probably built by companies owned by the bin Laden family, which made its fortune in construction. I started out the day feeling dragged into the muck, and purchased tea that promised to renew and transform me, to make me whole. V-8 certainly doesn't promise that. Whether the tea can deliver on its promise or not isn't really the point; it's the peculiarity of the sentiment, found on a mundane plastic bottle on this day, in this place, when I'm in this mood, that interests me.
It's been said that humans are pattern-seeking creatures. I think that's true, although I'm not sure whether that's evidence of how the world is ordered or of the nets our neurons are woven into. Today, I found connections between architecture, terrorism, and green tea. Tomorrow, I may find them between the sunrise and divine revelation.
We'll see.
Nice piece today.
What I can never figure out is whether we find those patterns because we're looking and thus inclined to see them everywhere or whether we're interested in the first place because the world is constructed of all those patterns interwoven (like the graffiti on the plywood, indeed), and as creatures born of these patterns, it's natural to expect them everywhere.
Posted by: Valencia | January 7, 2003 02:22 PM