Wednesday - Friday, October 24 - 26, 2001

The following serves to render a collective anthology of the memories I have accumulated over the course of three days spent at "Ground Zero" - good, bad, and indifferent.

I stood in the lobby of my midtown Manhattan hotel waiting anxiously to check in. The clock on the wall read five - day was quickly yielding to night. I felt, as many visitors to New York City do these days, an urgency to jump a subway train downtown to witness for my own eyes the true horror of September 11. I would indulge that urgency and repeat that trip many times over the course of my short visit, because taken out of the context of countless magazine pages, the gritty images of somebody else's reality suddenly became a part of my own.

That reality is hard to put into words, on to paper…how can one adequately describe a scene that overwhelms all senses, defies all meaning…there is no justice for it. I can do little more than speak from my own heart of personal observations and private emotions brought on by the aftermath strewn before me in the form of destruction, heartache, and public outpouring from across the globe.

Standing before that emblematic shard of metal that was once Tower One, I weep - though only silently. I weep for those two stately buildings that once stood together so proudly - now reduced to vacant, broken shells. I weep for all those seemingly defiant relief workers whose faces tell a different truth. And I weep for the nearly four thousand souls still buried beneath the dingy rubble of their steal and concrete tomb.

Forty-five days after the disaster, fires still burn beneath the rubble and papers scattered during the collapse still surf currents of wind across the length of the city. The air surrounding the site is still volatile - still clogged with dirt and debris. The site itself is still littered with wreckage piled twenty stories tall and all around stand devastated buildings - wounded sentinels standing guard - each waiting for its own destiny with the wrecking balls and the bulldozers. After only an hour at ground zero, my eyes sting, my face and nasal passages are speckled black, and my camera equipment is covered in a fine layer of gray dust, a surly concoction made up of pulverized glass, concrete, steal - souls…

The most poignant memory for me came in the form of something so simple it almost became concealed in everyday obscurity. Had it not been for a final late night stroll around the sight, it would have been lost to me, just as it has to so many others who are too caught up in the rhythmic shuffles of big city life to take pause. Most hardly notice the lonely bicycle left chained to one of the countless anonymous lampposts that line the street's edge. In the vaporous green glow of night it waits patiently, the loyal companion of an individual lost. Covered in that same familiar gray dust, it seems not to realize that its owner is not going to return - that they are not going to go home.

Someone noticed though. On its seat lay a bundle of flowers left by some nameless stranger. Now well past their prime, the petals have turned brittle and dry. They continue to linger on anyway, irregardless of time, for time will not heal all wounds and time will not bring back the owner of the bicycle they comfort, but time will also not erase the many voices silenced on that awful day.