September always seems to bring on an amalgamation of nostalgia and emotions. In the northern hemisphere, it’s the end of summer. The end of vacation. When the loosestrife is in full bloom it means shorter days and a long winter ahead. And ever since September 11, 2001, there is an added element of somber reflection to an already bittersweet month.

The photograph above was taken from the roof of a summer sublet that I had when I was twenty years old. The apartment was on the 6th floor of a walk-up tenement building. Since it was only one more flight up to the roof, I would often go there to cool off after dinner. When I sat in that chair I was surrounded by all the landmarks of the city skyline. If I looked north, I would see the Empire State Building. At night everything would sparkle.

A lot of people didn’t like the way the twin towers looked. It’s true that they had only been there for a few years in 1980 and they definitely altered the view. But since I arrived in New York in 1978, they were a familiar beacon that marked downtown - my home for the next forty years. Coming back from weekend road trips and seeing them from a distance - from a train or from a car on a hilltop in New Jersey - meant we were getting closer to the city. Closer to home.

On September 11, 2001, I had taken the day off from work to tend to the kinds of errands you can only do during a weekday - DMV, dentist, things like that. It was also an election day so voting was on the list too. As well as laundry. At the time I was living in another tenement walk-up that had no washing machines. Everyone in the building was on their own when it came to laundry. I used to go to a drop-off service on Lafayette Street, directly across the street from Ladder 20. When I went to the laundry that morning, around 8:30 am, the woman who worked there was standing outside looking south. The trucks from the firehouse across the street were also getting ready to head out. I asked what was going on and she pointed to the World Trade Center, one tower had smoke coming out of it. She said a plane crashed into it. I assumed, like many in those early moments, that it was a small plane flown by a novice. An accident.

As the day unfolded so did the horror. After the second tower was hit, I felt compelled to see for myself this real-time history. I’m not sure why this morbid curiosity. I grabbed a camera and headed south, towards the site which was only about a mile and a half away. By the time I was out on the street the first tower had already collapsed. People were running north. A literal stampede of dust and blood-covered people. I kept going like a spawning salmon but could get no further than City Hall. The dust had settled enough to show a clear view of the remaining tower. And then a rumbling came up from under the ground that was like nothing else. The ground shook but not like an earthquake. It was deeper. From where I was standing it wasn’t so much loud as to how it felt and the way it went through your teeth. And then I saw the second tower come crashing down right before my eyes.

I did not take a single picture that day. And not afterward either. The next time I would take a picture of that location would be in 2017, of the memorial and the stunning architecture of the Oculus.

Ladder 20, the firehouse in my neighborhood, the one across from the laundry, lost seven men that day. For the next twenty years, I could never walk by the station without thinking about that day. Or when I would see the firemen shopping at the one grimy Met Food supermarket in the neighborhood that everyone went to (including David Bowie who lived up the street). The trucks that went back and forth all day, caked in white mud. The patience of the exhausted firemen as curious people from the neighborhood asked a million questions. A few months after that day, another firehouse from upstate gave Ladder 20 a Dalmation puppy. I think this dog helped everyone in the neighborhood with their sorrow, not just the firemen.

New York’s skyline is barely recognizable to me now though I’m sure it still sparkles at night.