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An Empty Sky
It is one year later and the empty sky is always present. All the shock and horror, the memories of that day, they still speak silently in an empty sky. The year has been long, the year has gone by as fast as all the others do now, but the differences lie in an empty sky. In trying to grasp what meaning can be found here I wonder how much I’ve really changed, how much any of us have really changed. Can we appreciate what we have more, is having what we are here for? I think mostly of my family now, making art or doing business is still secondary. I find myself watching my children more, the color of my daughter’s eyes or the shape of my son’s face, and I feel these moments are what living is all about. I don’t erase their voice mail messages on my phone for weeks, I listen to them again as I wait in yet another airport, wishing I were home instead. The barrage of remembrances has begun and I am beginning to feel the same way as I did in those awful days. Any reference on television pulls my attention even when I don’t want to watch. I feel obligated to read any story, to look at any picture that comes my way, because to not do so seems to deny that loss. But that loss is always present, in the most painfully meaningful and selfishly superficial ways. It seems too early to commemorate, in many ways it just happened. It is useful to stop and think, but we are always reminded. At every cross street in Manhattan, from across the Hudson or the East River, there is that sky. There is that empty sky. John Reuter 9/11/02 Return to Biography |