In some ways the feelings improve, in other ways they get worse. The ocean of ink and commentary and instant experts is overwhelming. So many stories from people involved, people who knew people involved, such a heartsick sadness to see the smoke and fires still rising from lower Manhattan whenever I go outside. I don't know what has changed, and maybe I will never understand. Waking up each morning is a dismal ritual of looking forward to a new day, only to be weighed down by the new reality.

I find myself listening to music which has been meaningful to me at different times of my life. Old songs now feel a little dustier, a little bit more like old friends, and like old friendships they are a little more profound today than they were last week.

I am listening to the songs I listened to in high school on the 8-track player in my Dodge Dart while driving in endless spirals through the suburbs of Tampa with friends. The dull scent of the humid Florida air filled our lungs and our lives, we talked and talked, the songs played and played and played. What were we looking for? Where were we going? What was our plan? Today, as then, I have no answer to those questions. Previously suppressed feelings about the aimlessness and meaninglessness of my life suddenly leap to the surface.

I left Florida for New York 11 years ago, and on Tuesday I thought I might die here. Today I contemplate writing a will. Why didn't I die on Tuesday? Why didn't you? The substance of life has been incinerated. It feels that nothing matters any more, that nothing has ever mattered, and it feels like it will be generations before lives can be lived the way they were last week.

I am listening to the Horowitz recordings that I listened to hundreds of times while living at the Parc Lincoln Hotel in 1990 and 1991; listening to the Steve Reich Philip Glass pieces I listened to hundreds upon hundreds of time at Oberlin in 1988; listening to the Bach organ music and the Liszt piano music that I played while driving to school in 1985 and 1986; listening to the gospel and shape note music that infused life into my heart in 1992; listening to songs about New York that have different meaning today than they did 11 years ago, or 11 days ago.

But best of all my mind goes back to those days of happiness and comfort among friends, driving around Tampa and playing songs and adventuring and laughing.

There was friendship between the towers and those in its shadows. They bore a personality powerful in a way irreproducible, indescribable. You acknowledged them from wherever you saw them, however far away. Tremendous in size, even overpowering, but never oppressive or controlling, they were giant friends, giant self-assured smiles that were synonymous with New York City. Their final gestures, their final crippled stroke of power was to sustain the hits long enough to let untold thousands run to safety. For that, at least, there should be thanks.