Motus Mentis

I headed home late from the kung-fu school this evening, and all the way along Eighth Avenue I could see the twin beams of light stabbing into the sky from across the river. They light them up every year: two colossal searchlights marking the place where all those people died, and the world changed, seven years ago today. Now that I’m home, I can see them from my back door, where I used to step out at night and see the towers themselves. The people in charge of these things left the lights on for months back in late 2001 and early 2002, but now they only fire them up on the anniversary itself.

The lights are so powerful that on a clear night they reach, effectively, to infinity. They point straight up, of course, but when you see them from a distance they seem to lean toward you as they rise to the zenith. It’s a strange effect, because in the ordinary course of our affairs we simply never see any vertical object of infinite height. But this is curiously fitting, I think; the event they mark had nothing to do with the ordinary course of affairs either — and has also reached, effectively, to infinity.