Sifting Through the Debris

I walked through my neighborhood today, as the autumn weather is perfection, the light golden.
I grab a slice of pizza (a “comfort food” moment), and walk past the Islamic mosque on 11th Street. There is a man’s wailing broadcast over the outdoor speakers. Some men in long robes and grey beards stand and talk on the sidewalk. They look just as uncertain as the rest of us. Two police officers sit quietly in a car across the street. I pass a first-floor apartment window from which I hear a woman loudly weeping and lamenting in Spanish, as if she has just heard the worst news for the first time. Children are happily playing in Tompkins Square Park. Votive candles have been placed and lit there under the big tree; I can smell the melting wax, like the inside of a church.
The sky is Della Robbia blue, with the exception of that cloud of dust and building and human beings where there used to stand an eternal monument to the ambition and achievement of man; for all too brief a time.
It’s just a collage of contradictions . . .
There is a raucous drum and sax combo playing in the park, dog walkers, pot smokers, old people pausing to rest.
I walk again towards home, the evening light making the bricks warm and golden. For all it’s bombastic glory, I enjoy most the New York which is human-scaled. I in fact love it. And it’s strange, amidst all this tragedy and chaos and fear, how calm and aware I am.
Today is still limbo, I tell myself. Tomorrow, work. Tomorrow, back to life.

© christopher peifer