Albert Fox Cahn

Friends,

We have gathered here today to remember that long lost city of New York. The one of safety and promise. The one where we understood the line between reality and nightmare. I remember walking through the towers as a child and seeing their shadow stretched out before me; this terrifying realization that if one of them were to tip over, I could never run away. And my father laughed, thought it was ludicrous to talk about the towers falling. We knew that was the sort of nightmare that children have, the sort of anxiety that permeates our minds at times. But, we could also tell the difference between a nightmare and being wide awake. And on that day, 20 years ago, when I saw the dust clouds billow out and couldn't begin to understand the images that were coming in from across the water, standing on the Brooklyn promenade I felt a sense of surreal detachment from what was real. Was this the reality of my city now? And there have been so many struggles, so many setbacks, so many horrors in the years since where time and again, I look out and wonder if this is real because it's hard to know anymore. What is the fear that's completely irrational? What are the things of childhood nightmares? And what are the threats that are real? Watching the city close down again, more than it ever had, in the aftermath of the attacks, watching the devastation that COVID brought, it once again felt like the impossible demons were wide awake in walking the streets with us that we couldn't know anymore where safety was, what the limits of the horrors could be. And as I walk the city now and I see the rebirth of this energy that permeates once again, the stores and the concerts and all the different venues that make New York feel like itself, I look at it again with that uncertainty of childhood, unsure which of these shadows will next turn real, unable to tell where the safety ends, and the nightmares begin. And of all the things that we've lost over these last 20 years, of all the things that I'm desperate to win back, it's that sense of certainty: the knowledge of what life might bring us and what things will never change. What Earth is shaky and what things simply can't move, and to once again be able to walk the streets and see the shadows that come out and know that there's truly nothing to be scared of.