At the subway station there were the two or three policemen we would all get accustomed to seeing at and around subway stations for the next few weeks. When I boarded the train there were only 2 or three others in the car with me. I was about to change trains from the "D" line to the "N" which would take me to Court Street, but then the announcer said the next stop was Court Street. I figured the trains were probably running on different tracks(not terribly unusual...this happens quite a bit when there is construction going on) so I stayed on, and the next thing I know, we are on the bridge and heading toward Manhattan. Now, mind you, we had all heard the bridges were closed down. Suddenly every single person in the car with me went to a door or window and watched in complete silence as we passed by what we had all no doubt passed by a zillion times before. But this time, where the towers once stood, a huge cloud of billowing smoke was all you could see.

The next thing we knew, the train stopped at Canal Street and we all got off. As we went out, the person in the booth said the station was closed and we were not allowed here. I told her the train just let us off there and asked if I could get to the other side to go back. She just repeated that the station was closed and no trains were stopping there. I kind of stared at her in disbelief...I mean I did just get off a train there, so at least one train was indeed stopping there, but I just left the station. When I got outside you could barely see, and the air was thick with this acrid smoke that burned my throat so bad I had a sore throat for weeks afterward. One of the policemen outside looked at me, smiled and said, "No, the train was not supposed to stop here." Though I'd been at this stop so many times, I actually had to ask for directions to the nearest station to go back to Brooklyn - the place looked so alien I didn't even seem to know where I was. Before I turned to go, I asked him and the other policemen how they were doing. They kind of smiled that sad smile I would see so many times again, said they were "hanging in there" and thanked me for my concern.

(That look in their eyes was something I would see again and again. In the faces of the firemen and policemen I knew personally who for weeks and weeks worked 12 hour shifts day after day after day to help with rescue efforts. These have to be the most amazing human beings on the planet. Selflessly putting their own lives on the line day after day with little or no thanks from the general public. Well, that was no longer the case in New York. Everywhere I went, people would stop and thank every policeman or fireman they came across. Huge memorials were set up in front of every firehouse and police station in the city overflowing with flowers and candles and notes of sympathy and thanks.)

There were huge bulldozers coming in, and I was obviously in the way, so I said my goodbye's and started up Broadway. It was the most bizarre sight. Not a single car on the road. Complete silence except for an occasional convoy of relief workers or heavy equipment. There was a blank yet pained look in their eyes as they drove by, and I wondered what horrors they had already seen. Much later I would ask a fireman friend how bad it was. He looked at me with that look and said, "you can't even imagine."

I finally made my way back to another subway station, actually finding an ATM machine that worked on the way (very wierd - none of the atm machines worked in Brooklyn, yet here's one so close to Ground Zero that's working!) I never even tried to find the place to donate blood. I was so completely drained, I went back home and cried and cried.

Later, everyone that came to the area to see it firsthand would always say, as bad as it looked on tv, you really had to be there. I'll have pictures I managed to take on that Saturday, September 15th, on the next page. It will give you some idea of what it was like, but truly, you had to be there. The smell alone is something I could never describe, something like burning metal and plastic-it's like nothing I ever smelled before or hope to ever smell again. Everyone talks about the smell. And I didn't see or smell what many who were there that day did, or what the thousands of rescue workers did day after day. The day after sights and smells were bad enough. "This is what it must be like to live through war", I thought. How do people in Israel and Northern Ireland live through this all the time? My God. What kind of person could do this to innocent people?

That wasn't the first time I'd ask myself that question. From the civil rights struggle to wars, to poverty and starvation, to the Oklahoma bombing, to the daily inhumanity to man on the nightly news, and on and on....I ask myself that question. And the answer I come up with is a human being in pain, a soul that has forgotten the sanctity of their own being and so fails to see it in those around them. And the only hope I see of ever preventing more of the same is to reach out to those in pain with love and light, hopefully before they erupt with such anger and violence.

Since 9/11, I've seen tv programs showing very young boys in Afghanistan being trained to hate. It is their day to day experience for hours on end. Those will be the terrorists of tomorrow unless the world as a whole can come together in peace and understanding, unless we can show, somehow, that what they have been taught is a lie; that all people everywhere deserve love and respect; that all people everywhere are family.

I pray that the leaders of this world can steer us in that direction, but we all must do the same thing within our own hearts. Only then will things change. Only then will the killing and destruction end. I don't want anyone else to smell what I've smelled, or see what I've seen. Not ever again.