A reflection on September 10th.

After a night of nightclubbing in Lower Manhattan, in love with the city and the quiet it can surprisingly produce at 4AM, unexpected and dense like a blanket that fell from your mother's arms, I stumbled upon this view. It was the early 1990s and I was unstoppable. But these towers stopped me dead in my tracks with a mighty awe, these quiet mountains of glass and steel standing guard over the end of the island and my false sense of impenetrability. As will do the moon, sometimes things just look enormous in the night sky. And that night, these buildings looked bigger than my imagination. I felt so safe in their presence in a dark city that was in those days still a bit dodgy and dangerous.

Nobody ever much liked Towers One and Two of the original World Trade Center. The most that many could say of them was that they looked like the boxes the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings arrived in. But that is unfair. They were a benign presence of simple elegance and they defined our skyline for thirty-three years. Tomorrow, I'll remember the people. But thirteen years ago today was the last day of these buildings. And while I'm rather a cheerleader for the new World Trade Center in a much larger field of critics, today, I'll miss this view, the view of my youth, and miss these mountains that took me by surprise one night as we yielded to the unbearable morning, the twins who made me realize my place in the world, tiny and vulnerable, important, sure, but cut down to right size.

The Grand Central of the 21st Century.

The World Financial Center is an absolute mess and I was angry and frustrated trying to get around what has to be the craziest construction project in the world when suddenly I found myself in the newly opened underground concourse of Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center Transportation Hub and I cursed myself for ever complaining. It is mind-blowing in its beauty and will eventually lead to his masterpiece of a building, what I previously thought was his whale bone, but is, in fact, based on a boy releasing a peace dove, a spectacle of a building, in flight if you will, with a retractable roof that will open every September 11th.

A salute.

You, who dominated the skyline of the world for forty-three years, you, who are often called the most recognizable building on Earth, you, who took a punch from a plane in 1945, you, you are my champion.

I think of you gracefully tossing your crown downtown as the first World Trade Center went up forty-four years ago. You had worn it well for decades. And it was your time to sit in the shade of another building or two while still holding onto our hearts like a beloved elder-statesman.

When we watched in horror as The Twin Towers came down, perhaps our only consolation was that you, dear friend, were still safely standing up on 34th Street, and ready to bear the weight of our grief and affection, your head lit up proudly and nightly in the festive colors of the seasons, as we crowned you once again with a smaller coronet, no longer King of the World, but King of NYC most certainly, our Kong, and there you stood guarding us like a kind father while we collected our shattered selves and found the courage to reach for the sky once more.

Then yesterday, you did the extraordinary. You tossed your crown back downtown again. Who does that? Who has the humility and wisdom and graciousness to sit back in the shade twice in their lifetime? You do, my hero.

Yesterday, One World Trade Center became the tallest building in NYC, on its way up to becoming the tallest building in the United States of America. It will have its day and many more in the sun. But this week, I think of you, my forever friend, the building that tells me I'm home as it is always you, the first friend I look for whenever I return.

Thank you for carrying us through the darkness with dignity. You are our older King, but beyond that, you are our Emperor. You are the Empire State Building. And no one will ever take that from you.

Etudes in water

As you approach the fountains, you first hear the water. It is soothing. Before you can take in the elegant walls, etched, all the way through I was surprised to see, with all the names of the victims, allowing natural light to come up through the letters giving them a life of their own, I was struck by the sheer scale, the size of the towers that I had somehow forgotten in a decade. Like a reunion with old friends, it was that moment that punched me in the heart. An acre each, these fountains, and it is awesome to behold the footprints once again, the negative space of the mountains I grew up with. The water sprays over the edge in small individual jets, giving it a specificity, a texture, and a mass. As it tumbles down the charcoal gray walls, the feeling of falling is as terrifying as it is inevitable. There is a comfort to that duality. The water then pools at the bottom, resting briefly like peace, placid, clear, forgiving, then falls to the center where a square of darkness swallows it up. That sensation of abyss, of loss still haunts me seven hours later. But I knew, as you will, that the water is pumped up to the precipice to start the journey over again. Nothing is wasted in the universe. I became very aware of the trees next. There are a lot of them, including The Survivor Tree, the one tree that lived beyond 2001 and was replanted in a grove that is airy and wide and as somber as it is peaceful. One can go any number of places and be alone, as I did, in this plaza of grace. Then, I took in the names. Having spoken in numbers for years, I found it a very different difficult experience to run my hands over the letters that were once a person. Wherever you stop, you can take in perhaps six names. And you can stop in hundreds of places. This is memorial art at its best: purposeful, durable, reflective, and forward-looking, dense and lithe as liquid. I suspect I won't ever forget my morning, my mourning, and the acres of the bluest sky I can remember over my head today.