09/15/2026
There are some corners you never want to turn, though you pass them by constantly a willful ignorance is remarkable in ignoring what you don't want to think about. This for me is that corner, off of Rt. 3 and on to Meadowlands Parkway, standing inviolate in the distance, the Harmon Cove Towers.
I'm taking this turn because of the news I had heard this weekend. I was so wrapped up in all the images and videos of the burning World Trade Towers and foul din of the Jake Lang hate rally that I covered, still ringing in my ears that I was a day late on it hearing this news.
*On the evening of 9/11 the Secaucus location of the data center Equinix, reportedly due to a computer error, spilled roughly 5,500 gallons of diesel into a tributary that fed directly into the Hackensack River.* It's an important story. Diesel as of this morning is more expensive than it has ever been at $6.23/gallon due to the war in Iran, and the CEOs and creators of AI systems have incredibly asked for MORE regulation due to the existential threat that AI may mean for humanity... largely fueled by data centers such as this. I came to photograph what I could.
Details available this morning were sketchy. Initial reports were that the spill had fed through Anderson Creek. After some initial investigation along a mostly inaccessible waterfront I discovered the tributary in question was actually that stretch of water that flowed right by the Harmon Cove Towers... right where I used to walk my childhood dog. Begrudgingly I would have to return to the towers.
See I spent probably the worst year of my life in that place. This would have been, what? 1985? My father and I had moved there from the home I grew up in after my mother died. My sister as well, but she was blessedly going to college, so it was mostly my father and I. I don't think he or I shared much more than a half dozen sentences in the year that we lived in that apartment. We had both just experienced four years of watching her slowly die of cancer. I guess both of our throats were choked on too many memories.
I tried not to think of this as I walked the tributary that ran through the parking garage, directly along the same path I would walk the dog I picked out with mom. I tried not to think of how my father, a surgeon and oncologist could not save her, or indeed himself. He would succumb to a much faster but by no means less harrowing bout of cancer in 2006. I would try not to think how my sister, vigilant as is her nature would catch her cancer in time, and thankfully is a survivor of this wretched disease. And I would not think about that lipoma in my back, assured by doctors that it was not a ticking time bomb I carried around with me.
So I followed this oil slick down the tributary, one paltry barrier at a time trying to record the attempts to remediate the inextricable effluent of human industry. The oil seemed to leach and spill and leak through the barriers, each one doing what it could to hold back the spill. What one couldn't catch the next would surely capture, but the smell still permiated everything.
And as I walked along and past and through all of those memories finally getting to the mouth of the tributary that spilled into the Hackensack River I was reminded of that familiar, irrefutable notion that my families deep well of cancer must surely be tied to this place that we live... that somehow this land has been killing us. It's been poisoning us because we have been poisoning it.
As I got to the end of the tributary the sun was low in the sky. A duck, spooked by the sound of my boot on the rocks of the shore took flight across the diamonds of sunlight scattered over the water. This must have been such a beautiful place. In many ways it still is, though rusty pylons continue to crumble into and stain the waters. All the time the towers loom behind me like some farcical Monty Python joke about towers built in swamps. I left these towers long ago, but I don't know if they ever truly left me.
They have always been here, right at the edge of my vision. Seen but un-noted as a drive by the highway, concerned more with my destination. I guess I don't even know what I am trying to say here. This is a one shot, no edit kinda thing. Anyway I spent some time today looking at those towers. Maybe it's just that it's easy to not see what we don't want to. It is hard to confront the things we know we must. But as it is so often with this pack of fools that is the human race, we are never really prompted to look.
Until it is too late.
