September 11th and Beyond:  from Hanover

by Adam E. Tanney

On Wednesday, September 12, night spread its cloak upon our Green for the second time since darkness befell our nation. Our luminated clock saw our beloved Dartmouth Community gather beneath its spire—each soul holding candles and holding back the tide of nightfall. We joined (as Dean Stuart Lord said):

"As Americans and citizens from abroad, as Jews, Muslims, Christians, and persons of all faiths and all walks of life, as friends, indeed as brothers and sisters across our country and across all world borders, we stand together in the midst of tragedy, bereaving lost loved ones, and asking ‘why them?’

"We may stand in chasm of the unknown, waiting for light to break where darkness seems unending, yet we must continue to seek the light of peace and love in each other."

And so a ceremony began. I can give it no name other than ceremony, though to some it was a vigil. For some, it was to remember; for some, to heal; for some, to listen; though for most the time was neither wrong nor right to do anything but give themselves quietly over to the emptiness that subsumed us all—hoping only later we may find something to sustain this thing, life. I suspect for many—like a heart that keeps beating though we instruct it not—most found their way to the Green that night because a pulse guided them to stand amongst others who themselves could give no reason other than to find a place, amongst others, in which to keep on being.

Of all I saw and whom I saw and all their outpouring of anguish, no memory will be more enduringly affixed to my mind, than the clamorous, than the clamant need to do something. Surely, screaming, crying, fearing, loathing, loving, tearing at teeth, sockets burning blind, ‘are you my angel?’ WHY! WHY! became us and become us still. None can deny that our hearts burst upon our minds. But we were born to not only think and feel, but also to act. Help, dig, claw, blood, lift, (your feet are bloody from walking; here take, my shoes) care for an unfed pet. Little girls bake brownies for the hungry. Old men find out who, Who, WHO. Some join hands; some blunt them bloody, burrowing for a voice. We all fall to our knees and pray.

Hundreds of miles away is Hanover. No one anywhere in America felt safe. But who would not have taken the next train or bus down to Washington to unearth lost brethren?

We want to act.

We want to find solutions to tragedies, not merely ways of coping with them. We are an academic community, yet sometimes we cannot just seek to understand. We have to be engaged with our hearts and hands. Anything, anything, so long as it is something, anything. Like a droplet in a winter’s brook, if we do not keep moving, if we cling to the bank for just one moment, I fear we will freeze.

We shall not make it to the River.

Television, cell phones, the Internet: "Only connect." Is this community? We stare at the news for hours on end, bleary, fatiguing.

Writes Robert Frost, "Some feel they must keep going on, But not to call [us] back or say goodbye." Not to pretend everything is alright, not to forget; but to sickle ourselves in the hue of contemplation.

The voice of an American spirit—Emerson: "Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired." Move, continue, take care of business—a second conscience.

How do we move on but not leave part of ourselves behind, only to find it return to torture like banshees, chaining us (as Allen Ginsberg said) to

"subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bornx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,"

How many were there that evening? I never turned around to survey the crowd behind me. I didn't have to look to know how many. I felt. Was it two hundred, was it six hundred? Is one life here less than 4,287 missing?

President Wright, noting that we fight few urges stronger in such a time than the simple wish to somehow escape it all, offered some lines from Robert Frost's "Birches." As he spoke the words, I closed my eyes, dreaming of sleep and wondering when it would again bring rest. Who would relieve the rescue workers in New York of burdens heavier than steal, darker than soot?

"I’d like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don't know where it’s likely to go better."

Earth’s surely the right place for love. I didn’t know where it could be needed more. And yet there was so much of it already, how could one act of iniquity take all that away? Only if we let it?

Rabbi Boraz and Muslim Minister Amin Plaisted ascended the dais together. In unison they spoke: "We pray that from the rubble and the ashes comes a community resolved to defy the destroyers by building something even better, together. We pray for the spiritual and moral health of our country, and the community of nations and peoples across the world." For what they prayed matters little. That they prayed together means everything if we at Dartmouth and as persons across our world can begin to heal it.

But who was this small, intrepid, mangle-haired woman with eyes reaching to peer above the podium? "Hello," her voiced frizzled hoarsely. "My name is Grace Paley. I live in Thetford, but my city is New York." This I knew before she had finished uttering the words. Her accent was redolent of the Brooklyn of Ebbet’s Field and Nathan’s hot dogs; her humble gait, the New England of quiet cottages and country stores. But the timbre and simple dignity of this raspy voice told me this was a woman who had seen and suffered much.

She was one of the founders of the Greenwich Village Peace Center in 1961, born in the Bronx in 1922. She was awarded a Senior Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in the spring of 1987. She taught at Columbia, Syracuse, Sarah Lawrence, and Dartmouth. She wrote three collections of poetry. She has a son living in Chinatown, New York, whom she had been calling every three hours. She shared with us her fears and brought us into New York. She had done, lived so much. And yet, I had just then heard of her, far-wandering, grey-eyed, Ms. Paley:

"IN THE BUS"

Somewhere between Greenfield

and Holyoke

snow became rain

and a child passed through me

as a person moves through mist

as the moon moves through

a dense cloud at night

as though I were cloud or mist

a child passed through me

On the highway that lies

across miles of stubble

and tobacco barns our bus speeding

speeding disordered the slanty rain

and a girl with no name naked

wearing the last nakedness of

childhood breathed in me

once no

two breaths

a sigh she whispered Hey you

begin again

Again?

again again you'll see

it's easy begin again long ago

Birth and re-birth. The human condition.

Stuart Lord asked that the gatherers take five minutes to share with each other before the "vigil" concluded with a prayer. The Baker bells would then toll "America the Beautiful."

I am as we all are, still half myself, a shade, half belonging to somewhere else or wondering who I am. What does it mean to be alive, to be free and of the responsibility it entails? Where do we go from here? Morning comes in eight hours.

Who had it right? Nietzsche or Mill, Ayn Rand or Rawls?

I turned to a neighbor unexpected. His name was Craig. "Was it Harriet Beecher Stowe who said, ‘The bitterest tears shed over graves are for deeds left undone and words left unsaid.’?"

Prolix, too pensive, but show me where is written that the Sun it must rise tomorrow. Mother father, sister brother, lost but unforgotten friend, girl-I-never-told-it-to—I wanted, haven’t seen since you went West. When will you come back? Givemeonemorechance. You mean very much to me…Very, very much. If I, if we do not say it now, then when?

I love you.

"I'm still alive,"

But what good is it? "Why" some cry. I keep asking "Why not me?" For what great destiny was I spared? For who?

Ginsberg again through my mind:

"Where are we going, Walt Whitman, The doors close in an hour.Which way does your beard point tonight?

(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)

Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?"

And then Stuart interrupted:

"Ever-Present God,

"Were you there when the faith of our families and friends hoped for forgiveness and deliverance? Lord, hear our prayers…

"Everlasting God,

"When will the day ever again be able to hold happiness? Lord, hear our prayers…Questions can no longer carry the weight of our cries and concerns…We need assurance, O Lord, that in our longings and our laments… redemption of lost lives and reconciliation of our earlier selves."

It was the only thing we could do. Simply to continue to be, to hold those candles that night, but above all, continue to hold onto one another. Are we family? In times of adversity families circle their wagons, they draw closer, they do not speed off to hide in the hillsides though it may seem safer.

In a realization I did not quite appear to me, so much as I seemed to know what I had seen all my life, I found the human spirit. Or should I say I felt it.

That vigil, that night, it wasn't an answer I could know, but a swaddling of togetherness I could feel. Like the echoes of some distant philosopher, I thought, "Yes, the heart may have reasons the mind cannot understand. The heart in accepting may find solace in questions, where the mind, in searching, find itself only more lost."

And as Rousseau said, "We learn as children to endure;" this we do alone. As adults we seek to overcome; and that we do together.

Still shuddering from Stuart's prayer, the first note of "America the Beautiful" displaced the silence. The tolling of the bells and the melody of history and heartache their chimes dealt swelled and ebbed through us.

As their proud, solemn monody swept across the green, each shoulder stood straighter. Each eye lifted higher. At first imperceptibly, like a voice caught deep in wilderness, from long in the past, and flown to me now on the wind, I heard it.

It swirled for a second, then hid, and from behind me swung across my ears.

Then it built gently until I knew it was of us then and there.

Before I knew the sound, I had joined it. It swept from its perch on my lips. "America the Beautiful" we sang. Not a mouth remained silent. We were hundreds, but the sound was not but a soft gauzy blanket of singing swaying across that flickering field, rising from each one’s heart and falling tenderly upon our ears. Lips could no more hold inside words rising from hearts than I could squeeze back tears pooling in my eyes.

A stranger put a hand on my shoulder.

I was an American.

I was a man.

We were human beings.

I almost smiled.