I woke up early this morning to plunder and remember. Here in Seattle, the local glass artists at Art by Fire have been busy. Together they’ve been blowing glass balls to mark the second anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. Last night, after dark when the park was closed, they tucked nine hundred and eleven of them into the sea grass and between the breakwater boulders of Golden Gardens at Shilshole Bay. In the morning residents were invited to comb the beach for these colorful surprises. I was at the park by dawn’s early light. The park, popular in the summer but typically abandoned at 6:30am on a Saturday, was crawling with people, empty handed and disappointed. One mother I passed was trying to explain to her sleepy child that people had “cheated” by coming before daylight. I kid you not, the child replied, “Look at the big ocean mommy!”

I felt chagrined that I had come so eagerly out of bed to find a bauble. I knew that I would not have come if it were to hang ribbons on a tree or to run a race to raise money for some sort of rebuilding effort. But because there was something beautiful involved, and it was free, I was there. I knew that I would not have gone to purchase such a memorial, at sixty dollars or a hundred, in one of the many glass stores in the area. I wanted to be a part of an artistic Easter egg hunt, and I felt small about it.

I live as far away from the sad events of 9-11 as anyone in our country can. The only thing that ties me to it is a deep love for the city, a lifelong yearning to live a year in New York, and the fact that when you come to the base of the hill I live on, the eye is cut with a silver thread of towers which lines my sky. Still, despite this tenuous tie, beyond the fact that I wanted to hold something pretty and fragile, I think there is something in me that wants to hold on to 9-11, something terrible and hard. It is like a scar somewhere deep in the fascia. You can’t really feel it unless you press, dig around a bit with the pads of your fingers. But then you find it, a long hard line that rolls a bit when you push on it, there on the soft underside of your forearm. I’m not sure what that is, but I’m sure I don’t want to forget about it, to let it become an un-noticed part of my physical landscape.

I decided to stay at the beach this morning and I perched myself on an outcropping rock a few feet below the edge of the walking path. I wished that I could tell myself, “What are all these people doing here disturbing the sanctity of my every-Saturday-morning holy spot? Oh? There are artworks floating on the surface. I had no idea!” But I could not convince myself of this meritous tale. So I did my best to hide from the throngs, to feel the wind which was coming strongly from the southwest, and to appreciate this urban delight which April misses so much. It took me a long time to tune out the conversations above me, and the last desperate searchers peaking under each outcropping below me.

What has 9-11 really taught us? How has it changed us? Angry men crumbled our symbol of commerce. Has it made commercialism less of a deity? A desperate team destroyed life on the altar of military might. Did it cause us to remember the wise teachings of Buddha: “All men love life. All men fear death. Remember that you are like unto them and do not kill or cause bloodshed.”? The Twin Towers, the Pentagon – symbols of wealth and power. Did we redouble our efforts to distribute some of the wealth and power to those in need? Did we remember Dafur? Did we treat the orphaned fall out of AIDS? Did we recruit youngest and impoverished men and women to training schools, to college grants? Did we seek peace?

If the goal of those terrorist was, in part, to punish us for our greed, for our hoarding of resource and might, then it is true, they did not win. But if their goal was to take a nation with ideals of freedom, and wrap it in fear, well, then three years of ‘code orange’ and random acts of aggression would certainly indicate a victory.

When those artists dreamed of floating fragile beautiful things in the edge of the sea, perhaps deep called to deep. Maybe, below the scar, it reminded me that somewhere in an even deeper place there was something in me that wanted to resist the victory of fear. Maybe the fire blowers touched that. Maybe they caught that up in some collective consciousness and melted it into symbol. Perhaps they were calling to all of us to be victorious in more ways than one. To give away things that would otherwise bring us wealth. To harness the power we have access to – fire and breath – and offer it as a gift, unexpected and unbidden. And perhaps my muse caught on to the brilliance of their muse and wanted to be there. Maybe that is what drew me out of bed on a stormy weekend morning. I’d like to think so. I’d like to hope.

originally posted 9/11/04