Oklahoma City

Wow, as I write this (5:00pm Sunday Dec 9), I have just come back from a run; down through the Presidio to the Golden Gate Bridge and back, the sun was setting and it was a clear day, the bridge was glowing in the light. I stopped to stretch down by the water, to my left the bridge, to my right Alcatraz, behind me downtown. It was amazing. I am often asked what I am going to do when the trip is over, or when I run out of money. Till now I have treated both questions as the same, but I now see them differently. In some fashion or another, I don't think the adventure will ever end; as for when I run out of money (warning! foreshadowing!) I think I will probably come back to San Francisco and get some kind of work (enough to pay the bills and live a little) until Burning Man 2002 and then come up with the next idea. At least that's the current plan. This city has just about everything you could ask for and I feel like my life would not be complete if I didn't live here for at least a little while...

...but back to the story, I woke up in my Oklahoma city Wal-Mart and mad my way downtown to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial, built on the former site of the Federal Building destroyed there in the mid-90's. My timing was almost spooky, visiting on October 10th, just one day short of one month since the bombings on September 11th. It's hard to describe the sensation of being there, they have done the most amazing job of honoring the victims, this sounds trite, but it is the kind of place I think every American should visit (I know I said the same thing about Graceland, but if you have to choose come here instead). Each end of the site is marked with these large gateways, and on the inside one is marked with the time 9:01, the other 9:03; the bomb went off at 9:02. It is very powerful. Along the sidewalk leading in, there is a stretch of fencing that people have placed items honoring the victims. I was there for about 45 minutes, and my eyes leaked tears the entire time.

To honor the victims of the attack, they have field with a chair for each person who died, large ones for adults, smaller for children. They are arranged by floor of the building. It makes it possible to get a sense of the scope of the tragedy. It seemed too hard to get a grasp on September 11, it is hard to comprehend 5000 people gone and the World Trade Center reduced to rubble. Stopping here gave me a chance to remember the victims of Oklahoma City and feel sorrow, not just for them, but for the events of September 11, which until then had only been shock and disbelief.