9/11 A YEAR OF WORK, SORROW, PAIN, LOSS, HOPE: 9/11, A year of work

Anthony Graviano lived on the corner of Howard and Crosby Streets, roughly twelve blocks from the World Trade Center. What happened there, what was there, and what remains we can all see in the quiet of our minds.

That is not enough. The memory we have of that day is not enough. We need each others’ memories. We need to tell our stories of those days. We need to hear them outloud and in front of us.

We need to see them, too. We need to see through others’ eyes the scenes of and among the months following September 11, 2001.

One recurring image in Anthony’s paintings is of gears among the ruins, tossed carelessly there the way a child abandons a toy. Why would a building, now crushed, contain such gears? The elevator, maybe? Some secret machine of commerce and finance? Or the airplane, one of them? Yes, it must be a gear from the engine of one of the airplanes.

He lived among the scenes and the smoke we all saw on television.

It was impossible. It seems impossible even now, twenty years later. Still a nightmare.