IN OUR FAIR CITY

Meanwhile, in our fair city, the planes crashed into the towers.

I saw them from a pipe that I was clinging to when I arrived at the spot on Avenue A where they were visible. The burning towers.

Maybe it was only one at that moment. Or was it already two?  A group of people were standing with their faces all pointed in the same direction, like seagulls facing into the wind—downtown, the West Side. Silent. In awe. As if they were watching a movie.

I thought I saw the top half of a tower break off and fall. Tarot card: The Falling Tower. 

I fell to my knees. I heard someone groaning. I think that voice was my own.

GIAMBATTISTA VICO

Still, in the dense and dark night which envelops remotest antiquity, there shines an eternal and inextinguishable light. It is a truth which cannot be doubted. The civil world is certainly the creation of mankind. And consequently, the principles of the civil world can and must be discovered within the modifications of the human mind.

From Scienza Nuova by Giambattista Vico (1668 – 1744) the Neapolitan Enlightenment philosopher who set out to apply scientific principles to human history in his masterwork, (Principles of a New Science Concerning the Nature of Nations, through Which Are Recovered the Principles of Another System of the Natural Law of the People).