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All these years later, every time I see a jumbo jet, I remember September 11th.   Every time I see a security check point at the airport, I remember.  Every time I get on a plane, I remember.

Every time I see a fire truck go racing by, I remember.  Every time I hear about a jet crashing, I remember.  Every time I hear about a firefighter rushing into a burning building, I remember.

The faces.

The facade of the towers.

The sounds.

The not-knowing.

The sadness.

The loss.

The grieving.

The attempts to move on.

Every time.

I remember.

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Before I continue, parts of what I share may cause some of you to think I’m not quite right in the head. That’s okay. I don’t mind. Honest. Other parts of what I share some of you will be able to relate to more readily. For that, if it happens, I am grateful and humbled…

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In the fall of 2001, my friend Cheryl invited me to attend a ceremony in which she was to become ordained as a minister. The event was to take place in mid-town Manhattan in the early evening of September 10th. I was happy for her achievement, and honored to be one of the few people invited to be present for the otherwise private and very personal service.

Since I was to meet her after work at her downtown office in the World Financial Center (adjacent to the World Trade Center), and then we were going to walk the several blocks uptown from there, I caught a train into the city from where I had been staying with a friend on Long Island. I then switched to a subway at the Flatbush station, then a quick ride to the WTC stop in lower Manhattan.

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I’ll never forget the moment I came up out of the subway, onto the sidewalk directly across from the entrance to the World Trade Center complex. It was about 4:45 in the afternoon – the sun was shining, people coming and going at what can only be described as a “Manhattan pace” all around me. And in that moment, I looked up – to the giant gleaming twin towers…

Though I had lived on and off in New York most of my life, before that moment, I had never actually gotten to the WTC complex, only seen it from a distance. That’s a crazy thing about living in a big city – you can spend decades there doing whatever it is you do, and not ever experience every aspect of that city.

So to me, it was a brand new experience, being so close and so dwarfed by those massive towers of chrome and glass. Sure, I’d spent countless hours of my life walking Manhattan streets, gotten to the top of the Empire State building a couple times, and been surrounded by all those skyscrapers a lot. Yet there has always been something about such an experience that catches me off guard initially – kind of like going to the beach, or the Grand Canyon, and being awed at it’s mass and the energy that is impossible to ignore, so palpable in the air around you, assaulting your every sense…

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Because it’s so jarring, especially when coming up, out of the below-ground closed-in and dark subway system, I stood there for a while and soaked it all in. Not too long, but enough to really memorize the moment at the cellular level – to really be present in that moment.

Then, from that point forward, until I hooked up with my friend, I swear, it was as though each micro-experience then became etched into my awareness. Maybe that happens all the time, but only really stays so vivid because of a trigger event of the magnitude of 9/11. Who knows…

From there, I crossed the Street and entered WTC #2, knowing that I had to traverse both towers, then cross over to the WFC complex. But because I wasn’t familiar with the walk inside, I stopped at the lobby security desk, to ask for directions, lest I end up wandering around aimlessly lost.

There were two security people there in that moment, a man and a woman, wearing their blue security blazers, standing tall and professional, yet greeting me with the warmest of smiles one can hope for when feeling just a bit helpless in a sea of humanity.

One of them explained that I’d have to go downstairs, into the basement shopping level, cross through WTC #2, then WTC #1, then come up and use the “north bridge” (an elevated enclosed walkway crossing over the expanse of West Street). This then, I was shown, would spit me out into the Winter Garden shopping area, which was sandwiched between World Financial Center buildings 2 and 3 (my friend Cheryl worked at the time, on an upper floor of WFC #2).

I thanked both security people for the help and for being there – it’s something I always try to do out in the world – just letting people who might otherwise not hear it often enough, know how appreciated they are. And from there, I proceeded down.

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Let me say this – walking through the lower level shopping corridors of the WTC, to me, was like being in another world. I’ve always had an issue with claustrophobia, to a minor degree (with one extremely dreadful panic attack while in an insanely small and tight basement elsewhere), but here I was, walking along a very wide corridor, lined with shops of all kinds, brightly lit and bustling with the throngs of workers and visitors and shoppers.

Except something that came to mind was the memory of the first WTC attacks, back in 1993 – and at that moment, an awareness-itch of creepiness began tugging on my neck, urging me to stay focused, and get through to the other side.

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Before I knew it, I was at the entrance to the “north” pedestrian bridge that traversed West Street, and grateful for it. But as I entered that enclosed crossway, and started my walk across and over the street, I was again struck by a sense of unease. This time, though I was standing and walking above ground, and there were large windows lining both sides of the structure, every single window was covered over by these massive promotional banners, with imagery announcing something or other (I THINK I recall it being some joint Canadian-American event, but because the unease was growing more with every step I took, I can’t recall those specific images too well).

I don’t know why I felt the way I did in that moment, but I felt sadness for the people who had to work there every day.  Stuck indoors, trapped in that darkness during a perfectly bright and sunny day…

And my claustrophobic feeling was that I didn’t want to remain trapped between the WTC complex and the WFC complex.  So I hastily got myself through the doors at the other end.

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image from Google Pages 911 Guide (click to visit)

I came out onto the upper level of what I can only describe as the largest marble staircase I have ever seen in my life. It was insanely big.  Half way down, was this massive circular landing area.

Standing there on that landing, I looked out  at the Winter Garden shopping area. This vast place is essentially a palm tree lined glass enclosed courtyard surrounded on the left and right by retail stores and eateries on multiple levels. Directly ahead of me and through the glass wall was the North Cove yacht harbor and the Hudson River.

From there, I looked up, to the half-round glass roof at the sky above, just amazed at the scale of it all…

Because I was a bit early, I began walking around the outer perimeter, window shopping, and just soaking in the experience. After a few minutes, I heard a commotion, and looked back over to the marble staircase. About 1/3 of the way up, a woman was sitting down, holding her ankle, and there was already someone from the security staff by her side. It became quickly apparent that she had somehow injured her ankle. In short order, other members of the security staff came swarming over, communicating back and forth with whoever on their walkie-talkies…

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All during this time, people were just going about their daily lives around me – and some began swarming out of the WFC #1 security check point. Yes – at the bank of elevators going up to into the World Financial Center building, there were actually turnstyles, and security people, and you had to pass through that area (with, I assume, a precious ID badge) in order to get up to those offices.

Since it was about quitting time for some, people were leaving more than arriving. Lots of people. And it was in that moment that memories of my life a decade before as a member of the Military Police in the Army (in charge of crime prevention), started taking over my thought process.

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Now, here’s where the sharing of my experience might cause some of you to think I’m wacked in the head. For others who already know that I am, this will just be another insight into my mind and how I live…

In that moment, as I watched the swarms of workers leaving for the night, I thought – wow – tight security – rather odd for just another office building in a city filled with them. (in the late 90′s and up until September 11th of that year, you could pretty much walk into most Manhattan skyscrapers, look like you knew what you were doing, maybe have to sign in at a desk, but not actually have to show ID). So of course, I realized, this was the World Financial Center – all really important stuff, sensitive information out the wazoo – Stock Exchange kind of data and such…

Except right about that time, I looked up, don’t ask me why, I can’t tell you – again – at that rounded over glass ceiling above the courtyard – into the sky. And simultaneous to that, I thought – “these people have no idea how vulnerable they are… going about their lives…” And with that crazy throw-back to my having routinely assessed security risks in the Army, I also thought – no, I felt, a real heaviness to the atmosphere. Not from a lack of air. No this was more like a dense, heaviness, kind of like I felt in the pedestrian bridge-way, or down in the basement of WTC 2.

Except I was standing in one of the largest indoor open areas I’d ever been in.

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The next thing I knew, I walked my way back over and up to the center of the top landing area of the marble staircase. And observed. Just observed. Became really present in the moment. And looked up into the sky again…

Well at that point, I called upstairs to my friend Cheryl, to let her know what I had just felt and thought. It turned out that she was just about ready to head down to meet me when I called. And was not, apparently, surprised, at what I had to say. Cheryl, you see, is also someone who is well aware of the general “energy” that flows around and through us as we all go about our lives. It’s what we happen to believe allows us to have true empathy for someone in pain, or in need…

Anyhow, she said she’d be down in a few minutes, and we hung up. I need to say here and now that what I ultimately felt (and shared with her on the phone that night, and wrote in my journals that night when I got back home), was that I had been standing in what I refer to as an energy vortex. I mean – there’s just so much energy we give off – if you don’t believe me, walk up to a stranger’s house and discover six mean, hungry and underfed dobermans – then tell me that in that moment you hadn’t given off any energy (fear anyone?)

Okay – so that’s what I felt. That I was standing at the epi-center of a point in lower Manhattan that was filled to overflowing with good and bad energy. Just so much of both, that it was like I visualized a vortex – in my mind’s eye – that reached up way into the sky…

I’ve never felt anything like that before that day, ever.  EVER.  It was just too bizarre to not pay attention to.

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Now, if you’re still with me here, great – if you’re about to bail because you’ve just locked me into some wack-job nut-case label, oh well… But before you bail, let me ask you this – have you EVER felt, just before something positive was about to happen, that something positive was going to happen? Or just before something really craptastic that something craptastic was about to happen? Well lots of us have. Perfectly healthy, intelligent, productive members of society not on drugs or drunk, not diagnosed with any bizarre mental disorder.

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So anyhow, I felt what I had felt, and thought what I had thought okay? Well it gets stranger still…

Fast forward a bit – friend Cheryl comes down and meets me, we hook up with her friend / co-worker Jody, and Cheryl’s boyfriend, and we all walk joyfully uptown. Outside, and UNDER that pedestrian bridge, which I looked up at and back to after a bit…

And in the process I essentially let go of all that energy awareness stuff, happy to be with one of my best friends on earth and on the way with these great people to be present for her ordination.

During the ceremony, there was one point where the minister conducting it invited us to become quiet and take a few moments to meditate on this occasion’s importance. Now, I’ve actually been meditating for many years, going back to 1986.

No, I don’t do the lotus thing or the ommmmmm thing.  I just go into that quiet state of nothingness, and let whatever comes into my awareness just show up…

And since I’d been doing it so long, it wasn’t just about closing my eyes, thinking a couple happy thoughts, and worrying about the next bills waiting to be paid.   No – instead, I went quickly into a pure state of silence.  And excuse me for being honest – what I saw in my awareness was thousands of points of light – kind of like what George HW Bush talked about back in the day…

But what I also felt was a sense that Cheryl’s ordination was somehow “right on time…”  and that we were going to be challenged in a crazy big way…

Except I didn’t fully understand it, other than that closed-in feeling hit me hard at the same time…

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Look- this kind of thing doesn’t just happen to me every day, okay?  I mean, sure, I can pick up on other people’s feelings pretty good some of the time.  And I believe in the intuitive as a guiding thing.  But having a picture like that?  After feeling what I had felt back at the Winter Garden? Never happened to be like THAT before, or since…

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When I opened my eyes, Cheryl and I immediately looked at each other. And I swear to God – it was like – in my mind, I was like asking her – did you get what I just got?, and she was clearly doing the same.

We shared with each other what we had just picked up on – I with the thousands of gleaming shining points of light all over the place, and Cheryl saying – no, that what she got was it was shards of glass – so many that they filled her vision – and in that moment, I got that what I had seen was the reflection of the sun on all those shards of glass… And it was really obvious to me and her that what she had just gone through to become ordained was “right on time”… Yet not knowing what the next day would bring!

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So okay – that was all the night before – and that’s about all I’ve got in terms of odd experiences go as far as September 11th.  The rest of this blog entry is about snippets of my personal experience on September 11th and in the days after. Nothing quite bizarre actually, just another human beings quite normal and still quite vivid memories needing to be shared aloud…

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THE MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 11TH

Like I said earlier, at that point I had been staying at a friends on Long Island – so on the morning of the 11th, I slept in. And was awoken when a friend upstate called me to say – are you watching the television?… Well, I put on the T.V. after the first plane had hit and before the 2nd plane. It was surreal to say the least, given the magnitude and pure confusion of the still unfolding events.

And also because of my personal experiences the night before…

I immediately tried calling Cheryl, but already by that point, all the cell lines into the city were jammed. And then the 2nd plane hit. Then one building just came down, and then the other – and it was like the most gut-wrenching experience I’d ever known – just thinking about all those people…

More than once I tried to think – was Cheryl already at work? Was she just on her way in from Brooklyn? What about Jody, her co-worker/friend that I’d met a couple times and the night before? What about my former co-workers from Computer Associates who worked in the complex? I had no idea if they were there or not!

What about my brother Hal, the firefighter who SPECIALIZED in “Close-In Rescue” (confined spaces), and is an EMT-D? Was he there?

Oh My God – I thought – all these people I really cared about – and had no way of knowing whether they were alive or dead…

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And that’s when the memory of the night before came back with a vengeance- the security people I had met, and who were so kind and helpful – OMG – I had looked into their eyes like 16 hours before that moment… And rapidly one after another, I had images of all those people I had walked past, and observed, like the woman who hurt her ankle, and the security staff who had helped her – and all those people in the WTC complex that night… People who I had never met or walked past before September tenth. And how many of them would it never be possible to walk past, greet, meet, talk with, or get to know even in the tiniest of otherwise take-it-for-granted experiences, ever again…

Because I couldn’t get through to any of my friends or my brother, I felt compelled to head into the city – to see if there was anything I could do to volunteer to help. While I wasn’t a firefighter, I HAD been in the Army, in the Military Police. I did have formal professional training in crisis and emergency response and first aid… But not knowing exactly how to proceed or where exactly to go TO, given the massive destruction, I didn’t just jump on a train expecting to get “there”, wherever “there” was.

Instead, I tried calling my brother, Hal again. At that point in time he was a volunteer firefighter out on Long Island. He answered the phone, Thank God…

It turned out that he wasn’t in the city – he was standing by – with his brother firefighters – themselves waiting for any instructions or formal emergency rescue directives.   And he assured me that at that moment there was absolutely no point in me trying to go into Manhattan, that it was crucial for everyone’s sake that only authorized emergency services personnel, if called upon, go INTO that area…

Eventually I got through to Cheryl. It turned out that she had, in fact, just come up out of the subway, seen masses of people running AWAY from where she was walking TO, looked up, saw the debris falling, and instinctively turned around and began running away from the WTC complex… She and thousands of others just ended up walking, debris dust covered, back over the Brooklyn bridge.

Jody? Amazingly enough, she had been on the way in on the subway when someone in one of the other subway cars had pulled the emergency brake cord at the station BEFORE Cortlandt Street, which caused the train to be delayed by several minutes, and as a result, the subway had zoomed PAST the Cortlandt stop and she got out at the next stop, only to learn upon exiting what had just moments before, happened.

My former co-worker Michael it turned out, was ill – a nasty flu-bug, and for the first time in ages, had stayed HOME that morning…

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Now I’d like to be able to say that’s how it went in regard to anybody I knew even remotely. But as we all know, 3,000 people lost their lives that day. One of those people was Peter A Nelson,  a member of Huntington Manor Fire Department where my brother volunteered (and where my brother was also a dispatcher).

Chief Nelson was so dedicated to serving his fellow human beings that he was both a volunteer at HMFD and also worked for a living as a member of Rescue 4 in Manhattan.  Chief Nelson lost his life that day, helping to save the lives of others. Strangers he had never met…

Now, like I said, I wasn’t a firefighter. But for several years, while living back in New York, I had offered my services in the web industry to fire departments.  I had created web sites for a number of Long Island volunteer fire departments, provided web hosting space to a couple other departments, and to an emergency services ambulance corp… So I knew several people in the fire and EMS brotherhood and sisterhood in New York.

More than a few times I had been down at the station house, gone to department picnics, spent time visiting my brother.

And I was told that while I myself am not a firefighter, I’m family nonetheless… Part of the extended family of husbands and wives, brothers, sisters, parents and children of firefighters… And just being told that meant (and still to this day, means) the world to me. Because for all the times I personally have been the one person in a large group to react instantly and rationally and with clear vision of purpose during a crisis, I’ve never once raced into a burning building…

I got to go on one training exercise with the HMFD crew, where they purposely burned down an abandoned house, and used that as an opportunity to put trainees into a real fire situation to do battle in a controlled environment. At least as controlled as you can make those.

Just being there taking photos for the web site, it blew my mind what must go on for these amazingly gifted angels with hoses and ladders and axes…

So anyhow – all of those experiences and through my relationship with my brother, it really hammered home to me, when Chief Nelson and so many other firefighters lost their lives that day. And while all of MY friends who happened to work in that complex were spared that day, because I give so much meaning of importance to quality friendships, the overall impact of September 11th just rocked me to the core.

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Winter Garden Entrance (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

AFTERMATH OF A DISASTER
My brother and his fellow crew-members were actually not called on right away. Some of them were called on to provide back-up in the outlying areas. Other firefighters from all around the metropolitan area had been called in, and swarmed into and around ground zero.

With the round-the-clock need, eventually my brother was called to serve. First at the place where they were bringing the debris. Then eventually to ground zero itself.

I know that not actually having been down there, and not directly losing someone close to me, I can’t comprehend the pain or the process as much as those with more direct experience, or those who worked tirelessly to help find victims.

And my heart goes out to them…

I mean, after my brother came back from ground zero, just looking in his eyes, I could see and feel that he had been forever changed on the inside…

Personally, I spent countless hours in front of the television, like millions of others around the world.  And talking with friends and family about what it all meant, how it had touched us all.

And after a couple days, I went into Manhattan, and went back in every day for a while.

By then, there were thousands of hand-made or quickly put-together printed out posters from families of missing people. Entire city blocks of walls and telephone poles and subway station tile walls were covered with them.  I, and countless thousands of others did a lot more random acts of kindness after that.  Just wanting to help.

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FOREVER CHANGED

For a couple years after, I would go on the anniversary, to join in the candle-light memorials.   I’ll never forget those.  We’re talking about thousands of people coming by, all through the night, and leaving and lighting a candle…  Two years in a row I stayed all night, helping the handful of other volunteers keep candles lit, relight them when the wind would blow them out…

One anniversary, I was walking through Brooklyn and came across a church where there was like, a mini-memorial of candles, lining the steps to the church, and just one young woman trying to keep them all lit.  So I silently joined her.  And eventually she had to go, and I took over…

New York was never the same after that, of course.  Entering the subway station by my apartment in Brooklyn, after 9/11 meant having to walk past National Guard troops in full battle uniforms, with gas masks on their sides, who stood right next to NYPD uniformed officers who also had gas masks at the ready…  I’m not just talking about for a few months – I’m talking all the way until I moved back to California in November of 2004…

Walking down along Wall Street it was pretty difficult to miss the side-streets being blocked by big blacked-out windowed SUV’s where once people used to come and go freely, minding their own business…

And there were more than a few times where entire buildings were evacuated because of the FEAR of an attack…  or the fear of a bomb.  Or a wacko nutjob actually making a bomb threat…

I did my best to get along with life.  To adjust to this new dynamic.  Yet no matter how I tried, it all just became too much for me.

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THE NEED TO LEAVE

When I couldn’t take the experience of that any more, I moved back to California.  A few weeks after I was here, I was walking along 4th street in down town San Rafael.  At one point, I stopped, right in my tracks.  Something felt wrong.  Something felt like it was missing.  I looked around me, at the people going about their lives.

And then it struck me.  There were no soldiers with rifles and gas masks.  Anywhere.  There was no sense of unease, no sense of tension that had become a way of life for me back in New York city.

Part of me was ecstatic.  Part of me felt I’d moved somewhere that people couldn’t truly identify with what we as New Yorkers had gone through, and that I was out of my element.

And while it’s true that every American was traumatized that day, I found that there’s a part of me people here will never truly understand.  Just like there will never be a way for me to truly understand what it’s like for those who did lose someone close to them that day.

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A DESIRE FOR HEALING

I hope, I pray, that in some way, this article will have helped me, and just perhaps, in some little way, someone else as well.  I know that I feel relieved after eight years, to have finally typed this out.

For the record, there are a couple things that I am intentionally leaving out.  They’re just too personal, too deep-meaning for me to share in such a public way.  Maybe some day I’ll blog about those.  Maybe not.

What I do know is that regardless of what does or doesn’t change for me, I’ll never forget.

Ever.

And you know what?  For all the people who lost their lives at ground zero, and at the Pentagon and in that field in Pennsylvania, and all the soldiers and Marines and fliers, and sailors who have lost their lives since then.

We need to remember.

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Google pages 911 Guide

Aerial photo of WTC after the attacks – note in the upper right corner the two tall buildings- the one on the left is WFC #2 and the one on the right is WFC #3. Sandwiched in between is the glassed-in Winter Garden Shopping area.
Half-way down on the right side of the photo and to the left of the red steel is what remained of the pedestrian bridge I had walked through to get to the WFC complex from the WTC complex the night before…

Photo of the completely gone entry to the Winter Garden Shops (and essentially where the West Street Bridge HAD been prior to 9/11)

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Please feel free to leave your thoughts or comments.  All I ask is that you be respectful of the tragedy of this day and all who died and all who lost someone close to them…

Yet for all the great benefits of working from home, there are times when I just need to be connected in a more tangible way.  That’s one of the reasons I so appreciate that my single biggest client is a company in Sausalito called WebSight Design.  I manage the SEO team in a part-time outside consultant basis, and provide SEO consulting to their development and design teams as well.  As a  result, I get to oversee the SEO initiatives for a pelthora of clients all through one path.  And though I do some of this work from home, I do drive down to Sausalito a couple times a week.

Not because I have to – given all the remote productivity tools we use.  Instead, I have the ability to be face to face with some of the best people in the web solutions business.  And then there’s the fact that I have my own office with such a killer view…