Keep this area clear of buzz words.

I hesitate to make mention of this subject because it seems so hackneyed now, but I experienced such an emotional response to it that I wanted to share it.

This morning, I was walking by that huge pit across from St. Paul’s Chapel. It’s the infamous World Trade Center site that people seem to delight in referring to as “Ground Zero.” I don’t use the term, partly because I always thought that the term referred to the exact location where a bomb had been dropped. That didn’t happen there. With all of the president’s nonsense about terror and now with Oliver Stone’s new movie, I always thought that using the term was buying into the culture of buzz words that dilutes the significance of things, the September 11th attacks included.

If you don’t see the World Trade Center site every day, you might not know that they’ve recently moved the visiting area on Church Street. They moved all of the memorial signs that used to hang high over the heads of tourists that would visit there to a more confined area near the PATH station entrance. They’ve set up a number of trailers just inside the steel barriers that are serving as offices for the police and security, so you can’t see much from the original location.

While I walked south on Church Street this morning, a small arrangement of white flowers wrapped in cellophane caught my eye. It was stuffed into the grating that keeps everyone out of the pit, near a sign that asks that you don’t leave things there. Stapled to the bundle was a small card, the kind that florists have. In a woman’s hand was written “Happy Birthday.”
Watch those buzz words. Ground Zero, heroes, 9/11, a generation’s defining moment. So many iconic images. I didn’t realize how desensitized I’d become. I allowed the whole desecration of the site by the media, politicians and those damn morbid tourists taking pictures in front of it, to take my heart away. I never embraced the horror of September 11th for what it could do for me, but I have entered the WTC PATH station in a hurry, without being completely mindful of the significance of the place.

The weather was perfect this weekend. I had a great bike ride in Central Park. Someone else had a birthday celebration, with a little bundle of flowers and a simple message, next to the most famous construction site on the planet.