Diana Taylor does a truly amazing job weaving the different views of 911 together. But more importantly than that, she also manages to weave her own view, and it’s accompanying emotions, into the narrative as well. It the beginning of the essay, she talks about the event, but also conveys to us that she couldn’t really process the “now” of the event, that she had to put off thinking about exactly what was happening until later so that she could just take in the experience. She also mentions that during times like this, we take pictures to document what is happening as a way of “pausing” the moment in time.
But one of the most interesting things that Taylor brings up in this essay is the fact that people form relationships and bonds with things that aren’t really there. this is demonstrated by the mourning families at the walls of pictures, and the people visiting ground zero. She points out that the more people think about and try to relate with something that is no longer here, something that they lost or has been lost, the object’s existence is replaced by it’s absence, which is now just as strong as when it existed. Taylor say it better: “the more people recognized the lack, the more they felt the presence of the absence”. Think of it like the after-image when you close your eyes after looking at an uncovered light bulb for too long.
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