Sometimes a gift is best left unopened.  I was watching the first quarter of the NY Giants and Carolina Panthers football game today, when the telecast cut away to a live shot of the “Teardrop Memorial” — a 100-foot tall gift from Russia to the citizens of Bayonne, New Jersey — intended to memorialize the dead in the World Trade Center disaster.  The teardrop alone is 40 feet long!  However, to even an untrained eye, the monument looks more like a vagina dripping sperm, than a tear falling between torn twin towers.

NJ.com reports today that the Teardrop Memorial is going to be moved because its present location on the Bayonne peninsula is being sold:

Mayor Mark Smith also addressed the crowd, saying that while nothing could heal the pain of those that lost ones in the attacks, one should not become “twisted by revenge.”

Smith addressed head-on the uproar over the announcement last month that due to the sale of the Military Ocean Terminal to the Port Authority, the Teardrop Memorial would be moved to make way for a container port.

I humbly suggest the Teardrop Memorial be quietly dumped at the bottom of the Kill Van Kull tidal strait — and let it rest there as it sleeps with the fishes.

Monuments are delicate things, and a wide array of wishes and tastes must be served in such a public divination of fallow mourning and future loss juxtaposed against rising hope and fertile celebration.

For Bayonne to give such prominent promotion of such a ghastly sculpture neither honors the dead nor enlightens the citizenry who mourn the ideal the “teardrop” is meant to convey.

10 Comments

  1. David,

    I showed Elizabeth the image and said, do you see anything? She said she didn’t see anything in the image. If anything, she said, she saw a teardrop.

    I see what you see, on the other hand. Could have been done a lot classier!

    1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
      David W. Boles says:

      Hi Gordon —

      A Google search for “teardrop memorial vagina” has scads of returns.

      The joke is on Bayonne!

      Now have your wife take a look at some Georgia O’Keefe paintings — and if she doesn’t see vaginas in the flowers — there’s definitely some sexual repression happening!

    1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
      David W. Boles says:

      It is definitely a strange memorial, rick. Sometimes the most honorable response to a gift that is an abomination to heart and mind is: “No thank you.”

    1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
      David W. Boles says:

      It is definitely an anatomical wonder, Missy! SMILE!

  4. Everything is very simple. Monument was presented to the city FREE, it was paid for by the money stolen from Russian taxpayers by its author, who is very close friend of Moscow mayor appointed by Putin (since there are no more mayors election in Russia). Moscow is crowded by his ugly statues, but he wants more international “fame”. He has approached different countries in the past offering FREE gift of huge ugly monuments. American bureaucrats could not reject FREE monument, anything else would require spending money from the city budget.

    1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
      David W. Boles says:

      Thanks for your comment. If you have any links to the artist’s other “ugly statues” in Moscow, we’d love to visit. SMILE!

  5. I thought I was the only one. To me it’s perfectly obvious, and exactly what your would expect from a huylo like Putin. It ought to be torn down. I’m sure he’s laughing in the halls of the Kremlin. At the very least, we should have offered a gift in exchange, one that subtly portrays the Russian mob leader / president-for-life as the huylo he is.

    1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
      David Boles says:

      There must be a reason the memorial stays beyond the public reason. Who will reveal the truth?

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