On the morning of September 11^th, I was on my home from the grocery store when I overheard someone on the street mention the World Trade Center. I heard nothing more than this, but my first thought was that they’d blown it up.

When I got home a few minutes later, Tiffany said that a plane had crashed into one of the towers. The DJs that normally play music spoke in excited voices trying to report on what had happened. They invited callers to describe what they had seen. We didn’t have a TV, so the radio provided the pictures. Then the second plane hit. How could the radio not say it was terrorism?

Tiffany was on her way out the door to go to work when the news started to come in. Not knowing what else to do, she left, already running late. I almost said it probably wasn’t a good idea, but it was only her second day at her new job, and we didn’t think she could take any liberties by not going.

I was left in the apartment alone with the radio. I put the groceries away. The pentagon was hit. The voices on the radio were in shock. Then the first tower fell. Tears filled my eyes. Those things were indestructible. I knew I couldn’t stay inside. These small walls couldn’t contain my emotion. If a war was starting, I needed to be outside. What should I take? How long would I be gone? Should I put my boots on? I grabbed a bottle of water and the video camera. I wanted to see the one standing tower. I took a map and found that if I were at 23^rd and 12^th, I could probably see it. I left a note for Tiff saying I loved her, and headed out.

Outside the street was calm. Someone was walking a dog. I was struck by how green the leaves on the trees were. It was so quiet. It was a different world than the war raging upstairs in my apartment.

On Central Park West the volume started coming back. I saw people streaming out of the subway stations. All the suits from Wallstreet somehow lost in the morning sun. A little girl asked her daddy what highjacking was. A group of people huddled around a van with its radio turned up, telling the latest.

Before I knew it I was at Columbus Circle at 59^th St. It was a mess of taxis and throngs of people. I thought of going back home to get my bike, but I didn’t want to stop my forward momentum. I was drawn south. I heard that all air traffic had been grounded. The scale of this morning expanded exponentially with each news report. I didn’t want to go down Broadway, too many tall buildings. I went west to 9^th and south again. A stream of people walked north away from downtown. They moved calmly and with purpose. Hundreds of people moving in unison uptown. I weaved between them, going in the opposite direction. A chorus of sirens filled the avenues with their fever pitch. A sports bar had all its TVs broadcasting static. We were flying blind. No one spoke. I walked on and on, adrenaline surging.

As I moved I felt my steps take me through the story of the morning, as if walking in a stream of news. The history of the morning unfolded beneath my feet at the exact pace of my steps. Each block brought different faces, new emotions, more reports from the city. My trek south through the streets of Manhattan became a journey through the time of the event.

At 42^nd St. the mood changed. It got quieter. People on the streets were weeping. New York is not used to being quiet. A bar had TV reception, and I saw what looked like a black and white image of people trudging through a gray snow. People crowded into the bar. I continued walking.

Cops were out now, blocking off streets. I had caught glimpses of the smoke when the buildings thinned out in the mid-20s, but in the Village I had my first clear view. A huge plume of brown towered over downtown. It looked like a volcano had erupted. Ambulances rushed north covered in ash. I kept going.

Still, people headed north as I was closing in on the scene. Another radio on a street corner reported that the second tower had fallen. People gasped with hands over mouths. My camera captured pieces, but I knew there was no way to convey all the swirling emotions streaming past me. A church bell began chiming. I walked down the middle of the street because there were no cars now.

I heard a plane over head. I knew air traffic had been grounded, and the subways stopped, so the sound of this one plane made people stop and take notice. Nervous faces turned skyward. I could see nothing in the clear sky above as the sound echoed off the buildings all around me.

Ten blocks from the ground zero the cops had the street blocked off and I could go no closer. I was suddenly helpless. I could walk no further. My constant motion south for the past 90 blocks was halted by yellow police tape.

I could see at the far end of the block cars covered in ash and the lights from ambulances illuminating a gray landscape. Huge clouds of smoke billowed over the buildings, and I had a hard time grasping the scale.

A group asked a cop where they could volunteer to help. I fell in step with them. We found a side street that took us another block closer. Another officer pointed us up the block. By now, the group had grown to ten or twelve. We found a third officer who told us to wait along side a fence, and they would call us in groups of five. I waited with the rest. We were all in our 20s or 30s. We shared what news we had heard, and stories of first hand accounts and narrow escapes. Someone had ash in their hair. Was there a third explosion that had brought the towers down? Bin Laden’s name was mentioned. More people joined us, but there was nothing for us to do. We were told it might be a while.

By now F-16 fighters were circling Manhattan. My first thought was, "I hope that’s one of ours." It was such a beautiful day. The sky was so blue overhead, but down amongst the buildings the feeling of war constricted my breathing.

In time, the group of volunteers swelled to over 300. Construction crews arrived with their hard hats. People had shovels and dust masks. One guy had a jackhammer over his shoulder. Suddenly I was feeling very ill equipped in my tennis shoes and shorts. We waited. The street became grid locked with rescue vehicles. The call went out for anyone who knew CPR. With no skills to offer, and surrounded by people more qualified than me, I was useless, a spectator. A woman from a local paper interviewed a few of us in the line. Why had I come here? What did I hope to do to help? When someone near the front of the group spoke with authority, we all surged forward. There was no semblance of order. Someone made a joke about concert tickets. All of our shared cultural experiences that had brought us to this point were completely inadequate for us to make sense of what was happening.

Paper and pens were handed out. We were to write down our names and numbers, and a contact person, in case anything were to happen to us. We were told to also write our names and put them in our pockets as ID. This was becoming too real. A triage center was set up on the opposite corner. A cop car limped by that looked like it had gotten chewed up and spit out by Godzilla. Larger trucks were now arriving, Jaws of Life, mobile command centers the size of busses. I wondered where all these massive vehicles came from. They must be kept in huge parking lots in the outer boroughs waiting for days like this. But had there ever been a day like this? I left the mob feeling increasingly useless. It was obvious no civilians would be allowed near the sight while buildings were still burning, and falling. I moved to get a better view.

I stood on a street corner getting slowly squeezed by the growing crowd. There were more video cameras now. Cell phones still didn’t work. I looked south as the World Trade Center #7 building burned. The front loaders arrived, and a line of backhoes. I counted a chain of ambulances like I was counting train cars at a railroad crossing. 23, 24, 25… The scale of this event was like nothing I had ever seen. The crowd on the corner kept spilling into the street, blocking the flow of emergency vehicles. A man directing traffic yelled again and again, "Get out of the street, get out of the street!" His anger channeled into his self appointed task. "This isn’t a carnival. Something happened here today!"

My adrenaline was spent. It was getting late and I still hadn’t reached Tiffany on the phone. I had left the apartment hours ago. There was literally nothing I could do here, so I tore myself away and began to walk home.

I wandered through deserted streets, trying to absorb all I had seen. The West Side Highway was closed to traffic and converted into a massive staging area for fire trucks and other emergency vehicles. The Chelsea Piers, was another staging area, this time for doctors, E.M.T.s, and more ambulances covered in ash. Refugees in suits lined up by the hundreds for the lone ferry that would take them home to Jersey. Joggers and cyclists moved slowly along a bike path watching the smoke billow above the downtown skyline in the setting sun.

I was finally able to leave a message for Tiffany, letting her know I was fine and heading home. I found out later that she had spent 45 minutes in a subway car between stations when the trains had been shut down. When she was finally able to get out, she had walked to the apartment to find me gone.

I still hadn’t seen any images on TV, so that night we sat in a bar and watched over and over again as those planes disappeared into the towers as if flying through a waterfall. I had set out to see New York with my own eyes on this day. Through all the anxiety and confusion, the myriad of expressions on countless faces, the actions of some and the inability to act by others, the stories and conversations, I witnessed a city in all its complex dynamics. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in anywhere else in the world.