A Wrong Turn

So yesterday I went out with my friend Laura and we went to an Italian festival in the Village. We walked around for a while and then parted ways at the subway. I took the train downtown, in search of this store I'd heard about to do some shopping and she took the train uptown to meet her family.

I get off the train and look around. The area I was in was not immediatley familiar so I walked a couple blocks...and found myself face to face with Ground Zero. It was bizarre because Laura had mentioned that she was wary of days that were as clear as yeaterday because one thing she always remembered about 9/11 was how clear it was. So there I am and I walk closer to it until I'm at the protective fence and I stood and stared for a while until a toursit came and stood next to me and was snapping pictures. I had lost my appetite for shopping. It was wierd to me how there could be a big department store across the street and the people that were going in and out didn't seem to notice where it was and what they could see.

My family and I had gone a while back to visit Ground Zero and to pay our respects, but when we had gone, I had expected to go. It wasn't an accident that we went there. But yesterday, I felt shaky as I walked away from it because I hadn't planned on going there. The one positive thing was that apparently the vendors that had been selling tastless souvenirs had been chased away. I always wondered...it is worse that people sell that shit or that people buy that. Becasue people wouldn't sell World Trade Centre hats if no one was buying them.

As I walked back to the subway, I figured I'd stop somewhere and use the Ladie's Room and I went into a church that had it's door open. But inside, there were all these roped off areas housing the impromptou shrines people had created just after 9/11, and signs with picutres of loved ones and one table covered in NYPD and FDNY patches, memorializing the officers who had died. I finally found the bathroom and I was in such a daze that I didn't notice the line and when the man in line reminde me there was one, I didn't join it. I couldn't do something as normal as wait on line for the bathroom. I just walked out of the church and got on the subway and left.