THIS IS IT - 9 September 2011

9th September, 2011  Part I 

A few birthdays ago Joel gave me a beautiful rock inscribed:  

"This is it"

because over dinner one night he had said just that, "This is it, who we are, what we share, the life we are making together, this is it."  I put the rock in the rockery - where else! - at the foot of the dune in our seaside garden and watched over the next few seasons, the various sedums and ground cover grow around it, always making sure they didn't obliterate the words.

It's an interesting trio of words. Only one of them - is - being specific, unless you're Bill Clinton. This and it both pronouns, can refer to anything. The phrase seems to me both amorphous - unless you know what the this is, and ultimate, as in, "This is it, I've had enough" or "Believe me, I've seen a lot of great places but this is it."

It's the is that makes it really interesting though, because it can fool you into thinking someone or something or some place really IS it. But in fact, it is constantly on the move because the present tense is just that, present - not then or soon or later.

So maybe that's why I woke up with such urgency the day before we left for Provence and Tuscany at the end of June. I saw the rock in my mind's eye and saw that it was in the wrong place. I had the overwhelming feeling that as long as it stayed there the house would not be free to move on.  So I asked our dear friend, Tom, if he would please retrieve it, cleanse it in the sea and send it to NY. We knew he was the right person for this ritual, knew that he would cradle it, bathe it and send it safely on its way.

When we returned to New York last week the box was waiting for us. We sat together on the couch and slowly unwrapped it, feeling the tenderness with which Tom had treated it.

It sits now in a corner by the fireplace, a solid thing bearing a transient message.

As I look at it now, I can't fathom what the "this" "is" that "it" is referring to. It makes me want to turn its face to the wall.

Joel is fulfilling another 9/11 commitment. Tomorrow his Ground Zero Memorial Exhibition opens at the Houk Gallery. Sunday evening he will give a Ground Zero talk and power point show. The same in Iowa on Monday and at St. Johns University next Saturday. This is it for him. Ten years of carrying these stories, the months of being there, on the pile and in the pit while they cleared it. The years of archiving and making the book "Aftermath", the State Department Exhibitions of the work appearing in almost every country on the globe, our attendance at several of those openings, the recent visits to the site to photograph the "this is it" now.

I look at the rock again. It's annoyingly adamant. If I had the right tools I'd be tempted to obliterate the "it" and add "a rock."  And suddenly I understand exactly what Joel was saying all those years ago, "This is it, baby, you and me. We are each other's rock."