I woke up in sunny, gentle, quiet Portland at my friend Turtle’s house where I am staying for a couple days. She is in California for the weekend and I am alone in her homey three story house. I’m glad to be here, regrouping after such an eventful trip. There are still so many untold stories that I plan to share with you. Here is one I wrote on the way back.

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Yesterday I visited the 9/11 Memorial. I went because it was on my list of things to see in New York, more akin to the monuments of war and veterans in D.C. than to other landmarks in the City, but still mostly a tourist attraction in my mind. It ended up being much more.

Where the twin towers used to stand are now two reflecting pools, each about an acre in size. They are identical except for the names of the victims inscribed around their borders. A cascade of water pours from their perimeters down about fifty feet into a pool. From there the water cascades again into a square hole in the middle, itself about fifty feet across. The entire thing is made of black and dark grey stone. There is no bottom to it; the water simply disappears into nothingness.

Before I knew it I was crying. It startled me at first. I was taking pictures of the pools and the names of the dead, some with white or red roses stuck into them by people who cared enough to search them out. All of a sudden the starkness of the place struck some deep chord in my heart. I wasn’t even sure why I was crying, the feeling was so immense, a grief and despair deep and old.

I sat on a stone bench beneath the oak trees and wept for twenty minutes. Tourists milled by, taking pictures of the memorial, smiling and laughing. I just wanted someone to give me a hug, to recognize and validate how I was feeling. But, no one noticed; I was alone. I cried for the names on the memorial and the people who loved them. I cried for this city and this country. I cried for all of us. Hate and violence fueled the September 11th attacks and hate and violence have come out of them. The world is still so full of warfare, genocide, and violence between individuals. We still fear the other, perhaps even more so. With the news full of drones and beheadings it is hard to be an optimist. Perhaps we are disappearing into darkness, into the total futility of our own fear and hate. Is there any hope for coming out on the other side?

I believe there is, but it is difficult to hold sometimes. Let us honor our dead but not get bogged down with retribution. How can we untangle this wicked web of fear, hate and ignorance with the narrow and unyielding tactics of war? Somehow we must give space for peace to bubble up. Let us remember that the lines we draw on our mother Earth are arbitrary. We are specs of dust on a particle floating in space. What is there to own, to conquer, or to fight other than ourselves? Fear begets violence begets suffering, which begets more fear, violence and suffering. All of this starts with ourselves, the orientation of our hearts, which informs our tongues and hands, and in turn, our speech and actions. We have the ability to travel amongst the stars but still are ignorant to ourselves. Perhaps, like a dying person, we will open our eyes at the eleventh hour and utter, in awe, “Wow.” Or, perhaps, we will go screaming into the abyss with eyes closed, still clinging with all our might to our dogma, our scruples, and our divisions. For humanity, I hope with all my might for the former.

I ended my time at the memorial by searching out the Survivor Tree, a callery pear tree that was pulled from the rubble of the twin towers and nursed back to health. It is the only tree in the memorial that is not an oak and the only one that predates the attacks. It was a good reminder of the enduring quality of creation. Nature can’t help but continue in the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth; it is simply so. With that in mind I walked on to get some lunch, leaving the load of my grief in that place and trying to remember what love feels like, letting that sooth my weary heart.