Unlike a lot of Americans, I never turn on the TV first thing in the morning. So I got a call from JH telling me a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers. I was reminded of the time (before my time) that a plane hit the Empire State Building. It must have been more than fifty years ago. I was reminded of the planes whose flight path out of LaGuardia are often over East End Avenue, and how sometimes they seem so low that I am concerned about possible accidents. I turned on the television, however, to see the second plane fly into the second tower, and everything horrendous and dreadful that followed right after.

It was a beautiful day in New York. Weather-wise. Sunny, warm but with a cool breeze; the best of early autumn. I went down to the Promenade by the East River at the end of the block right where the Brearley School stands, its classes full of little children. With my camera, to see if there was anything to see. The island of Manhattan curves to the east below 34th Street, and so from my vantage point in the East 80s, it is impossible to see the Wall Street area. However, as the photographs I took (as opposed to those JH took from his rooftop in the 20s) demonstrate, the black and gray and white plumes from the explosions filled the horizon, blowing east out onto Long Island.

It was a surreal experience. It was over there. Down there. Four or five miles away as the crow flies. Which in this great big city seems like a great distance. Except. It was here. The carnage. Only four or five miles away. I thought of Beirut. I thought of Bosnia. I thought of Macedonia. I wondered if the experience for those who were not in the actual center of it in those places felt as separated and horrified as it did for me now.

I found myself whimpering under my breath. Untouched physically, apparently safe. I tried to assimilate the ravages I'd seen just minutes before on the television with the huge and ominous clouds moving with the winds over the southern tip of the island. I tried to imagine what is unimaginable if not personally experienced. I was grateful for my safety, knowing it was only random and very likely only momentary.

I came back to the apartment to do what so many millions of us did for the better part of the rest of the day: watching the carnage unfold. I couldn't work because I couldn't tear myself away except to answer the phone — often from out-of-town friends inquiring as to my safety.

Who are these men who care nothing for their own lives — let alone the lives of hundreds, thousands of innocents — who would deliberately, knowingly fly themselves into violent oblivion? Who could they be? What could they care of life? What could they care of me? The answer, although unfathomable, was nevertheless quite clear.

As I said, it was a beautiful day in New York. And by mid-afternoon, when I again went down to the River with my camera to see what the sky looked like, many people were out on the street, almost as if it were a holiday. A non-school day. Many of the parents were now at the Brearley School, picking up their children, standing in front of the building, talking to friends. None of their faces (I couldn't hear the conversations) reflected what everyone knew was happening only a few miles to the south. Some were standing at the railing overlooking the river.

One little girl was kicking stones at pigeons, trying to hit them. And hurt them, of course. Enjoying herself. Her father watched, unfazed. Or so it seemed to my vivid imagination. It was nothing really, really nothing, compared to the carnage down the river and around the bend. I thought how she, looking to be no more than five or six or seven, probably had no idea what was happening in the world, her world, our world. And, in fact, neither did any of us. Only perhaps, was the pigeon — object of her little game of cruel self-amusement — aware of the danger we are now all confronted by.

As I said, it was a beautiful day in New York. Almost too beautiful for anything terrible to be happening. Too beautiful to believe that underneath those plumes of black and grey and orange smoke, underneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete, steel and glass, were hundreds, maybe thousands of victims, lifeless and disintegrated by something that most of us will never understand, or comprehend. I was whimpering again.

By late afternoon the streets of the city, north of the catastrophe, were fairly empty. Few cars, almost no cabs. Like a holiday weekend in summertime. People walking home or to the market. What they were thinking was impossible to determine from their expressions, for they seemed to wear no expressions at all. Just moving forward, one foot in front of the other.