There was a dark hole above the Atrium at the World Financial Center. Even though the lights from Manhattan usually rendered them invisible, two stars glowed in the night sky high above the site.

I've been having a difficult time coming to terms with the reality of what's gone and wandered downtown to retrace my steps from September 7, an afternoon I had lunch at the fountain between the Twin Towers. They've opened a viewing platform at Ground Zero and so many tourists visit the site that they're sold out for the day by 7AM on weekends. I didn't need to stand in line to view the void.

The world fell into blackness at the end of Church Street. The familiar, banal sight of Borders books was gone. Barriers kept traffic off of this previously busy thouroghfare, but they were unneccessary. A block down the street from the road-blocks it fell into nothingness. To quote Shel Silverstein, this was "where the sidewalk ends".

I walked around the circumference of the site to see familiar spots that had been rendered mute by the event. Century 21 lay dormant. Cross streets have become parking lots for police cruisers and construction vehicles. Liberty Plaza has been turned into a small city for the clean-up crew. Across the black I saw the familiar Atrium of the World Financial Center, a view that would have been incomprehensible before.

I made the trek to the Atrium and looked up from this familiar spot on the Hudson river, far away from the bustle of Broadway. The void was just as black, but the absence of people made it far more real. The usually crowded bar at the dock was boarded up and empty. The NJ Waterway ferry dock that used to take me back to Hoboken was all but abandoned. It floated in the river, brightly lit from within by fluorescent tubes, creaking as waved lapped upon the side.

The esplanade of Battery Park City would usually be teeming with people; joggers, bikers, children. It's now one of the quietest places in Manhattan. I didn't see a soul as I walked along the Hudson, viewing the lights of New Jersey and watching the river flow.

The northern tip of the park has been closed off and it is here that the Twin Towers are removed from Manhattan. A ferry boat pushed a barge slowly out from the pier, as a crane slowly and methodically filled another. Numerous dump trucks waited in line to rid themselves of their load and go off for another. The crane would lower it's massive shovel and a truck would back on, it's payload tipping back and steel and cement tumbling out with a loud crash. The crane would then lift and turn in a graceful arch, carrying the rubble over and into the barge. Everytime it lowered the shovel would bump against the side of the barge and send a deep, reverberating BOOM into the night air. Every five minutes a truck would dump it's load, and a few moments later there'd be that dark BOOM... BOOM... BOOM...