Oddly, it hadn't occurred to me how much 9/11 has seeped into my very pores until I woke up yesterday morning after three days in Provincetown and realized what that odd, "I forgot something" feeling tugging at the bottom of my stomach was.
A complete lack of 9/11!
That is not to say that this fun, lazy, artsy, gay seaside summer community feels no remorse for September 11th ... quite the contrary. This is, after all, a town largely fed by city folks from New York and Boston. ... It's just that the gritty, in-your-face 9/11 reminders of downtown Manhattan are nowhere to be found.
I guess it really hadn't occurred to me how much these little daily reminders have flavored my life. The memorials of candles and dying flowers in front of the fire-stations, the mural of the towers and the remnants of Jesus candles on Avenue A and 13th Street, the corner I swing by on my way to the gym.
There are all the local businesses displaying "Remember Our Heroes"-type posters and the hawkers on 14th Street with their "ground zero" baseball hats.
My whole neighborhood is seasoned in September.
But not here.
No Provincetown is the last stop. The last piece of land before the ocean, the tip of the cape, the end of the road.
This is where you come to escape your life or to find a new one.
Everyone here is trying to forget something or find something.
There are people falling in love, even if it's just for one night.
There are people starting over, even if tomorrow they will start over again in another bar with a different beer on tap.
I've been coming here on and off for 10 years.
I've fallen in love and in lust here, buried loved ones here (well, in spirit, anyway), walked the beach along the harbor, watched the sunset over the breaking waves.
This is a town for new pains and the healing of old ones.
What better place to come with the spirits of 3,000 souls haunting you?
Perhaps I will bury them just before high tide.
There are no memorials here, no World Trade Center murals, no ground zero T-shirts, no Jesus candles filled with old rain water and flower petals.
But there are the distant sounds of gulls and whale boats sounding their horns and waves and heartbeats and many, many, broken hearts ... mending.
Slowly, slowly mending.
