conscience

ground zero has infiltrated our daily-life vocabulary: “yo man, it was like mayhem out there, i was buzzing in ground zero...” a carefree infusion of cataclysmic descriptors to absorb mundane moments of everyday gore: conflict at our grocery store check-out counter, angry navigation of road-raged traffic jams, domestic upheaval...

contrary to the widely held belief on main street, the term ground zero was not coined on or around the ninth of september 2001. it describes an event of far greater destructive magnitude and brutality. ground zero pinpointed that apocalyptic space of earth immediately beneath the exploding atomic bombs that destroyed hiroshima and nagasaki.

then, thermal and nuclear radiation killed several hundred thousand people in flash that changed our world forever. manhattan project, one. on 9/11, thousands of people died in multiple instances of apparent divinity inspired madness that changed our world forever. manhattan project, two.

tragedy can never be relative. in both occurrences, people were instantaneously vaporized and dissipated as if they just never existed. but, back in those days, several million people didn’t watch the manhattan project one live on prime time TV, and then relive it for an eternity on youtube.

clearly, if you own enough billboard space and bandwidth, you can swiftboat any memory for as long as you wish; contort good guys into bad ones; establish just cause for retribution, casus belli; and in extreme cases, even tweak established historical fact. the holocaust didn’t happen, for example. for many, manhattan project one has become an event recessed into history, depersonalized, and largely forgotten.

one warm, sunny, summer’s day in new york, circa 1982, i attended a huge demonstration protesting the deployment of cruise and pershing missiles in europe, ostensibly to shield us from the evil empire.

there, amongst the the sea of several hundred thousand sundry sloganeering revelers meandering past the UN towards a free concert in central park, was an aging japanese man quietly sitting on the curb quenching his thirst. he wore a simple yellow t-shirt emblazoned with the words: i survived hiroshima ~ never again!

from his textured face, pierced by radiation; his eyes, preserving that single instant of horror, shone a gentleness, compassion and gravitas i have neither seen before or since; nor ever found the words to capture.

it was a rare moment of pure conscience. i went home, troubled.