Ground Zero

By Mark Z-Man

Plastic bag over GROUND ZERO Mark Z-Man 5/8/02

After eight months I finally unlodged myself from underneath that subway grate. It was good to be free and back out in the city air. A wind blew me quickly across the street and all the excess dirt and soot tumbled off me. The last time I saw the light of day was that fateful day when the city was in chaos. I bounced around all over the streets and a hot black wind forced me down into a grate where I became stuck! More trash compacted over me and there was only blackness.

Now I could let the warm spring wind guide me about. The smoke and fire was gone. The sirens quiet. I wandered a couple of blocks back to the scene of it all. Upon my arrival, everything was blocked off. A car sped by with "Wasted away in Margaritaville" blarring out of the window. I drifted on. Trailers and make-shift fences obstructed the view. I looked up into the sky remembering how the two solid white buildings there once looked. Now there were clusters of people standing around hoping to see something. I needed a wind to gust me up above everything. It was so secretive. As if they were hiding Godzilla in there. The day was still sunny and calm, so it was hard to make the connection of that horrible morning 8 months ago when the two monolithic towers that stood here came crashing to the ground and sent people scurrying about. There were no signs of any disorder now.

A boarded up Burger King had words spray painted on it. It once served as a make-shift medical care unit. An even smaller sign scrawled on the door announced where you could get in touch with the manager of the former Burger King. There were lots of letters and signs tacked up on the fences. A Disneyland-esque graveyard eerily stood across the street. It was in an old church-yard probably built 200 years ago. On the fence in front of that there were many notes with photos. Mostly thank you's to the firemen. I glided up a ramp. Some people looked through a pin hole through some sheet metal. I guess this was the observation platform. I waited til they left and squinted to peep through the hole. Just a big grey pit about 50 feet deep with a couple earthmovers casually combing around. It looked like a quarry oddly placed on the edge of a big city. The handful of surviving buildings stood around the pit like tall trees on the edge of a pond. Some of them with protective drapery on them. Some with there entrances still boarded up.

On the far side by the water you were completely removed from it. People skating and reading and eating and sleeping. I coasted through vacant lobbies to continue my circumnavigation. I thought about the chaos that went on that day, before I got sucked underground. Now it was quiet. It was Sunday. It was all over. A wind blew me up into the sky and I glided over the entire site and then down to some soft grass in a park. A maintenance man skewered me with his pole and stuffed me into a trash bag.

(Alt ending) A wind blew me up into the sky and I glided over the entire site and then out to sea.

Mark Ziemann
zmanart@flash.net
phone: (646) 785-7171