I moved to New York the Wednesday before September 11th, 2001. The planes hit the morning of my second day of school. My mom called me from California, waking me up, to tell me that a plane had flown into one of the twin towers and I should walk down to the Brooklyn Promenade nearby so I could see what was going on. She isn’t a worrier and didn’t raise me to be one either. I pulled open my shade and saw a black column of smoke. I told her, I think I can see it from my dorm room! I turned on the TV and watched the second plane hit. Minutes later the cell tower on top of the World Trade Center ended our call (and communication until I had a landline installed a couple of weeks later). Those of us still in the dorms (I didn’t have class scheduled until 2pm) went up to the roof and I took a couple pictures before the towers fell. Those who had class that morning had to walk to Brooklyn Heights from 24th Street, but I spent the next two days getting settled in my dorm room, organizing my closet and putting up posters. On Thursday classes resumed and the subways were packed like sausages. Pressed up against strangers, it was dark and quiet as the train slowly made its way under the disaster that shocked the nation. I didn’t realize the magnitude of what had happened until I exited the subway at 23rd Street and saw the station lined with Missing People posters. It was then that I understood how many people had died and how many people were left behind hurting. I was there, but I didn’t lose anyone. I got to live in a safer New York than the one before that bookmark in history. My family came to visit for my birthday in February 2002 and we went to ground zero. There were fences around the wreckage with memorials of pictures and flowers. I hadn’t been back since. I thought about visiting the 9/11 Memorial museum, but the $24 entry fee didn’t seem worth it to me.
There’s the big building that replaced the two!
There are fountains where the towers stood.
I found it creepy. I did not like it there. The fountains look like huge drains — all this energy pouring into a dark hole. If this memorial is about always remembering, it’s definitely depressing. What I remember was the feeling of community. There was a theme of “we will not let them ruin our lives– we will live and thrive in spite of a small group of people who want to take us down.” 2001 was a stellar year for me– in my senior year of high school I c0-wrote and directed a one act play, was nominated for a local award for my performance in Into the Woods, I found the perfect college for me in New York City and changed my plans from moving to LA to moving to my favorite place in the whole world, I graduated from high school, my mom took my sister and I on a 64 day road trip to see the country (where I caught the travel bug that informs my choices to this day), I moved to New York and felt my life expand in ways I couldn’t articulate in my first 3 months of training. New Years eve 2001-2002 I went to see my sister in a play, and the director introduced the evening by saying it had been a hard year. Not for me! That was not the story I wanted to tell.
As it turns out, I had a similar experience on New Years Eve 2016-2017. A friend of mine was starting to let the election results inform his perspective. We made lists of the top 10 favorite things of 2016. Mine was hard to narrow down– I’d flown in a private plane and a hot air balloon among a variety of other dreams that manifested creating experiences where I could hardly contain my joy.
I digress.
So– I didn’t like the fountains and I didn’t like being there. Amanda suggested that I go visit the Irish Famine Memorial while I was in the neighborhood. I found it a couple of blocks away. It was sitting in the shadows on a sunny day.
Hard as I tried, I couldn’t get a good picture. 
This memorial is so odd in a way that delighted me. It’s like they carved out a hillside in Ireland and put it on a flat piece of land (though there are plenty of natural hills in Manhattan). The stones lack the ancient-ness of the ones on the other side of the water, but those fences did make me reminisce.
Here is the view from the back.
That afternoon, I saw Jason Alexander in The Portuguese Kid by John Patrick Shanley. 
I laughed at the jokes in the first act, until it began to dawn on me that this was a play consisting of five people constantly insulting each other. Plus I’m not a huge fan of plays and movies about dumpy, not very interesting or likable men have hot women fawning all over them. I didn’t like that either.
I walked out of the theatre and shifted my perspective. I walked through the streets of New York and let my joy of being in this city wash over me.