A Room With A View

        As the dust settles and the smoke clears comes the realization that the clear view afforded me by my lofty penthouse perch has become a view of not. "A Room With A View" has been transformed into "A Room Without A View". As I walk out the door I am all too apprehensive that the former luxury of being able to simply look out and glimpse the WTC Towers has been violated. The simple trust of taking it for granted, to merely glimpse the two monoliths as I scanned the skyline in more relaxed and leisure times is a trust now raped if not forfeit. I feel much the same as I did when I held a ground level loft in the East Village. There I never locked my doors and often left them wide open all night while I slept through warmer summer nights of peace. That is until one peaceful summer morning when I awoke to find a band of thieves had walked in and helped themselves to more than eight of my most favored musical instruments.
        Here in the penthouse there are no bars on my windows nor chains on my doors. Silly as it seems that anyone could or ever would come up here. Even so I find that I have once again been violated. Some thief in the night has come and taken again a most treasured and valuable instrument of pleasure, enjoyment, and inspiration. Though I laxly refer to taking the sight of the Twin Towers for granted one must understand that to do so was more than not a matter of trust granted to us all that they would always stand as tall or strong as before. Quite often I would sit out on the southern deck and watch the lights flickering from the glass paneled facade. I would try to make out symbols of signals in their patterns. Many of New York’s landmark trusts coordinate a display of colored lights each night to decorate our night time skyline with celebrations for equally varied nationalities, holidays, and both national and international pride. I remember the time that the window light patterns on the towers seemed to be playing a game of hangman with those window lights from the Empire State Building. A game that ended with the Empire forming a big "Smiley Face" glaring downtown from midtown.
        Often enough I would go out and watch the planes that fill the night sky like fire flies in a summer garden. You don’t notice them so much at day as most don’t fly over head or come that close to the city. Yet each night as the first stars twinkle and I try my skills at hanging from Orion’s belt to attempt a swinging vault into Big Dipper’s cup I would find myself looking into the WTC and wonder who might be there looking back at me. As I marveled at the construct of these towers and the full open view of Manhattan I would try to form a symbiosis with the powers that were both harnessed and housed here. To affirm and assure myself that I was indeed part of this scheme and had taken my place within it all and was working toward the greater goal and glory that we trust to be humanity and human kind (and kindness). Though much of my Hudson River view is being eaten away by developments in nearby Chelsea on many a clear day I still try to see beyond New Jersey and out into Pennsylvania to Ohio and further to Chicago. Even though I know that the curvature of the earth would prevent such clear vision beyond the rolling hills and rising landscape. I even try to bounce my thoughts off the reflecting sunset as the greater orb of the sun moves over to warm the flesh of fellowships and friends bathing on the beaches of California. To many of us the World  Trade Center symbolized that from New York we could at least reach out and touch the world if not see it.

        On closing might we speculate for a bit and ask ourselves how may we react to this much more than symbolic gesture of removing our symbolism of world unity (not world dominance) as our virtual "window on the world" has been smashed and shattered by bad boys throwing stones. Do we return to a pre-world-war status of removing our selves from world affairs and close our boarders to the immigrants and immigrations that make both our country and this greater city a foundation of international trusts? Or do we take on the role both handed us and forced on us, (by these and other such heinous acts of violence and violation), and further actions to police the matter and clean up the mess created by such deviant and devious minds?
        Were it up to me I would deal with them much the same as I dealt with one Mr. Jones some time before. Perhaps not as much a threat but no less a monster it was simply a matter of stripping the lost and confused individual of their individuality. Though clearly not the same individual nor characteristic there are fundamental shames that may be dealt with. The person or persons here have removed themselves in much the same way from humanity if not the concurrent stream of human consciousness. Unfortunately for us but much more for them is the consistent fact that though they have removed themselves from the greater body of humanity, in thought or in some form, yet in truth they are still connected to the body. Much like a cancer, to heal it or remove it or even treat it we must address its role and relation to the greater body. Whereas a cancer is a growth that senses it is somehow removed or reticent of the biology from which it grows the cause and cure all grow from the same biology. A simple reminder of that biology can and will do more than any radical removal or threat of treatment or cure. As with Mr. Jones the resultant humanity may be just as tragic. The common thread here is the humanity and mortality attuned and attenuated to the human condition and its higher and held consciousness.
        As you see and feel from my words here that an individual consciousness does not stand alone. My words are your words, my sentiments are the same as yours. Yet, you still may have sentiments and concerns much more drastic or contrary to mine. Even your contrition is a value of my method or manner of thought leading to conclusion. The conclusions are the values that extend to the further wealth that is the individual, the ego, the person. In other words then we might say or assume that the best way to deal with these so called fundamentalist separatists is a unique and rather very powerful force, truth. If indeed they see themselves as we see them then all we need do is stop the process of extrapolation and determination, (the grosser aspects of definition and to the prospect of a purge of destiny). Thus calling off reason, as we might introspect this is well above and beyond the call of reason. Reason, indeed, may well be the reason behind such thought that leads to such course of conclusion resultant in personal and property destruction. To turn this all around you only need reverse the process.
        Stripped thereby thereof its admonition of cause then precludes any formation of justification and leaves the individuals involved with little more else than their fundamental humanity faced with their self imposed separatism. They find themselves alone in both course and content invariably an empty shell that without content nor containment is crushed or crumbles under the strength or strain of that which is at best defined as the human spirit.  Something that has clearly been both denied and defied by the acts of these obviously misguided selves. To those who see themselves as being alone there comes no greater crush or upheaval other than the realization that no one is ever alone, ever has been, or ever will be. In all the universe as it may be called there very well might be only one entity that knows the true meaning of or the true nature of being uniquely alone. An entity which none of us may even or ever relate to for that relation or relationship would violate the deeper consequence of true solitude and true loneliness. An individual who might draw strength from their version of individuality or further separatism is immediately stripped of all power or purpose when exposed to the greater truth that their belief is much more than moot but in actuality meaningless and at most without form or function.