I was living in New York the week before it happened, and was supposed to be there that day.
I was sitting in class when someone ran in and screamed what happened. A lot of people lived in NY, and bolted as soon as they heard.
Needless to say it was the longest week of my life. I had family and friends that worked there, as did my fiancee.
Two weeks later, when they re-opened the Lincoln tunnel (the Holland tunnel stayed closed for a number of months after), both my fiancee and I went to NY, to ground zero, to see what happened to our city. There was no real way to get to lower Manhattan, because along with the towers went the 1,9, and the E trains.
I cannot explain how deeply hurt the city was. And to a smaller degree still is. Times Square, probably the most vibrant area in the city and possibly the world, was quite literally a ghost town. If you took a drive through those 2 blocks, it'd take 20 minutes on a saturday night. It took less than 30 seconds that night. Standing in the center, not one person passed us for 10 minutes. This is the same place where just three weeks prior you couldn't stand in one place for more than a few seconds. The smoke was still drifting above the site.
42nd street station was so quiet, so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Everywhere were posters of the missing... So many passerbys would just stop, stare and start crying (myself included).
Six months later, the city still wasn't the same (and who could expect it?). We went to the site, and what was the strangest of all was how everything was still covered in dust. Everything. Buildings, sidewalks, everything. It was a grey sheet everywhere you looked.
I don't know what struck me the most - the actual mood of the city, or the armed to the teeth soldiers that (still!) patrol every major subway line (Times Square, Lincoln Center, some places in the Village).
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I lived in DC over the summer and for a number of job related reasons visited the Pentagon. One cannot begin to appreciate how big the place truly is. It is absolutely massive. That being said, the damage done to that structure was also horrific. The effect on the actual building itself has been downplayed because of it's strategic military value, but there were a number of civilians who were unfortunate to be on that side of the building.
What's the most unnerving is the amount of security there. Humvees w/ anti aircraft missles are constantly patroling Jefferson Davis Highway. The soldiers themselves have this burnt in cynicism, no matter how many times you say hello, they never quite (and probably won't) trust you.
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I imagine this is what it was like for people to go through Pearl Harbor, or the JFK Assassination. Or maybe it isn't - since this hit so close to home and was the burning symbol of American pride.
Today, and tonight, my hearts and prayers go out to those people who had their lives visciously taken from them.
