hmmm
I'm not one for really commemorating much of anything, but somebody posted this quote in literaryquotes for today, and it's one of my favorite books, so I couldn't help but pass it on--because it was obviously a beautiful passage for decades before 9/11, even, and I would have re-posted it even if it had been posted in the middle of June. So, much love to those of you who have more of a mind for commemoration than I do, and to those who feel a specific turmoil that I've never quite been able to feel over this (tragedy, don't get me wrong...but I'm not as empathic as I once was, and don't really feel the inner trouble that many others do--six years later that day still doesn't feel anything but a little surreal to me. I doubt it will ever feel anything else, as I've never been to the city, so I wouldn't know it any other way than the first time I'll see it):
"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body."
-Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Although, obviously, as an archaeologist I also see the sublime in those crumbling temples.
"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body."
-Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Although, obviously, as an archaeologist I also see the sublime in those crumbling temples.