It was harder watching the memorial ceremony at the World Trade Center on TV than it has been being there. I’m not sure why: Perhaps it’s the separation, perhaps the closer view one gets through a TV lens.
I watched the beginning of the ceremony and then had to go to church. I returned and it was still going on. It took so much longer to read the names of the dead than it took to murder them.
I looked at my watch all day and retraced not my steps but my hours: when I arrived at the World Trade Center… when I witnessed the worst of it… when the fireball of the second jet roared… when the first tower fell… when I found my refuge… when I left that refuge… when the second tower fell… when I came to this landmark and that landmark on my walk uptown… when I arrived at Times Square and wrote my story….
And still, they were not finished reading the names.
