08/03/03: A Photograph of Ground Zero

09/10/02: Building Downtown.

04/10/02: Remembrance and Renewal.

01/12/02: Visiting Zero.

09/24/01: The gloom that is NYC.

09/14/01: Three days later.

I spent Wednesday in bed, with my head between two pillows. I was struggling to find peaceful moments of unconciousness where the events of the previous day could be forgotten, and where I could believe that they hadn't actually happened. It was difficult, and when I failed, I just wept.

I don't know how I functioned on Tuesday. I had been doing sit-ups in my living room and could hear someone's radio outside reporting of a plane crash. I wondered why anyone would want to replay flight 800 from a few years back when Desiree called and told me she was OK. Huh? She told me what had happened and explained that she had taken PATH to the WTC that morning and was at INS about 5 blocks away from the Trade Center when the attack occured. She had caught an uptown train and was now at work in Times Square. Turning on the TV I saw a replay of the second plane crash into the WTC.

Grabbing all my photo equipment I rushed out the door, fully dressed for work, under the erroneous assumption that I would actually be going into Manhattan. I stood with a crowd of people on the end of Pier A in Hoboken and watched and photographed the collapse of the World Trade Center.

It wasn't like a movie for me, like I've heard others say. I sat dumbfounded as I witnessed something that just wasn't supposed to happen, but was completely real. It was incomprehensible, but there it was, right before my eyes, just across the river.

I spent the day watching the smoke, hoping it would blow away and reveal the towers again. People sat in silence as it slowly wafted in the wind, rising from downtown and disappearing in the sky.