“You Are Alive”

Some months after 9/11, I visited the mangled wreckage of the World Trade Center. My first (and last) visit to the WTC had been approximately a month and half before the attacks. I stared at the rubble and was deeply unnerved when I remembered how I had rode the elevator to the very top and looked down on the city. Even more disturbing was the image I had in my mind of what the collapse must have looked like from inside. Crews were still sifting through the wreckage, but most of the work had already been done. 

A little ways out from the blast site was a small photo shop. Most of the pictures displayed were reproductions of famous news photographs of the attacks, but there were plenty of more obscure photos. I fixated on one picture of a graffiti’d wall–the words “You Are Alive” were spray-painted in black. I bought it on impulse and took it with me back to California. Since then, I’ve thought a great deal about the picture. It is easily the most powerful of all of the 9/11 images, and I’ve never really understood why. The simplicity? The earnestness? The uplifting yet melancholy underlying message? Whatever it makes me feel, I’ve never been able to put it into words.