NEW YORK -- Corinne Kerr wanted to do something.
Ever since she watched the World Trade Center collapse from her office window on Tuesday, she was determined to help. "Every attempt I made to donate something was foiled, which made me feel horrible," she said. "I tried to give blood. I tried to volunteer. I went to the store and bought Band-Aids, gauze and antibiotic ointments, but nobody wanted it."
So Kerr, 39, found herself standing in Union Square Park this week, holding a green tea-scented candle and listening to Buddhist monks chant prayers. "At least you can help in spirit and give your energy," she said ruefully. "Everything is so peaceful here. I've never seen the city so connected, and that feels incredible."
On Tuesday afternoon, Jordan Schuster, a 19-year-old New York University sophomore, also wanted to help. So he brought two pieces of butcher paper and a Magic Marker to Union Square and taped them to the pavement. "Within 10 minutes, 50 people were there," he said. "People needed a medium to express how they were feeling. This is a forum for people to get it out, for healing on a lot of levels."
Within hours, drawn by word of mouth and then by news reports, hundreds of people came to Union Square and left flowers, drawings, postcards and candles. More people donated paper and poster board, and wrote down their feelings: "Only your faith can help you through this." "I'll never forgive terrorist – lost souls will never come back." "Billy Kelly you will be missed."
Similar memorials showed up all over New York City this week: At Washington Square, in East Harlem, on the Upper West Side, in Brooklyn and at virtually every fire station in the city.
But the largest by far was at Union Square, where on Thursday evening haunting bagpipe melodies filled the air. Julianne Brown, 33, a Brooklyn designer who competes in bagpipe competitions as a hobby, said she didn't know what else to do. "They have enough volunteers. They have enough blood. So this is all I could do, offer some music."
She stood alone in a corner of the park and played for four hours, until her arms were so numb she couldn't hold her instrument anymore. "The bagpipes are meant to stir people, to lift them in times of crisis. I played a lot of Irish songs in honor of the fire department," she said, her swollen eyes reddening. "One guy gave me a note. He was all teared up and he couldn't speak so he wrote me a note. It said, 'Thank you for giving my heart a moment's peace.' That's gonna go in my trophy cabinet."
These displays are meant to memorialize the dead, but they also serve to console the rest of us. Erin Conner, 25, works as a therapist at Bellevue Hospital and has seen "the worst of it" in recent days as she's counseled survivors. "I come home at night and I turn on the TV. It's funny – somehow, watching it on TV gives me a little more distance," she said.
Scrawling her own message at Union Square brought her some relief. "Telling our stories really helps. I feel more at peace."
At the southern end of the square, someone erected a 12-foot candle-shaped sculpture, dedicated "To the Victims of Terrorist Attacks." Now it is surrounded by flowers, messages and so many candles: Jewish memorial Yahrzeit candles, prosperity candles from local bodegas, and pricey scented pillars whose perfume could not mask the acrid smell of smoldering buildings.
Before the rain came Thursday night, groups of people debated foreign policy as Schuster and friends hurriedly rolled up the fragile paper memorial for safekeeping indoors. Schuster says he wants the United Nations to publish a book on the Union Square memorial, and he'd like the Smithsonian to preserve the paper and cardboard as a national artifact.
As the night wore on, Union Square started to feel like a be-in, as smiling girls handed out pastries and marijuana to strangers, a drum circle formed and a group of people stood in a circle holding hands and singing "Kumbaya."
Uptown, a different kind of memorial was taking place. At New York Fire Department Battalion No. 9 on Eighth Avenue at 48th Street, no one sang campfire songs. Instead, silent mourners placed flowers, candles and American flags in front of the station's display of 15 photographs of its fallen firefighters.
A cluster of five men walked from an Irish pub across the street and contemplated the photographs. One of the men began to cry. Awkwardly, his friends rubbed his shoulders, patted his stomach. They gently punched him under his jaw as if to say, keep your chin up. But then another man began to shake, and within a few minutes, all five briefly lost their battle against despair. They clung to one another, wracked with sobs.
Moments later, Lyn Haynes, 31, shivered in the cool night breeze and watched the men return to the pub. "Regardless of what goes on, we look for hope in each other," she said. "In a spiritual way this helps. Through the candles and the vigilance, we remember not only what happened Tuesday but what it is that sustains us." A gentle wind blew east from the Hudson River, and as the candles flickered out, people rushed forward to light them again.
