Ground Zero - Suzanne Berne

It is incredibly late at night, 3:30 AM to be exact, and I just finished reading the essay Ground Zero by Suzanne Berne. It was interesting enough to keep me awake, so I decided to write about it. First of all, I found it interesting to read about because it was something that happened during my time. September 11th was a HUGE event in America's history, and although I was really young when it happened, I still felt the impact of it. I remember I got home from elementary school that day and my family was glued to the t.v. I really wanted my mom to read The BFG (Big Friendly Giant) to me, but she wouldn't because she was watching the news. Of course, at the time I didn't really understand the gravity of the situation, so in my mind reading about a giant was way more exciting than whatever was happening on the news. I also remember we had burritos for dinner. I really like burritos. But ANYWAY, I really liked the was Berne talked about absence in the article. One line I liked was "But once your eyes adjust to what you are looking at, 'nothing' becomes something much more potent, which is absence." I like that because it is really deep. I normally think of nothing and absence being the same thing, but in this situation I can defintely see the difference between them. Before September 11th, there were buildings standing on Ground Zero which for years had been landmarks of America. But after the tragedy, all that remains is the memory of these extraordinary buildings and the people who inhabited them. THAT is absence.