I cancelled my piano lessons for the day. Another miserable cold and fever problems forced me to stay in bed. The morning was pressing on and I thought of getting out of bed but the sun was so nice coming into my bedroom window and directly onto my bed that I just lay there, enjoying the warmth and the silence which was so comforting.

Suddenly, my windows rattled and I heard a rumbling which seemed quite a distance away. The last time I had heard a sound like this which rattled my windows was the 1973 bombing of the WTC. In the pit of my stomach I knew something really bad had happened. I got up. Put on the television and learned, or so I thought, what had happened. A second window rattling explosion made me nauseus as, on the television at the same instant another huge explosion could be seen in the other tower. Continued replays of it made me sicker, that I had to turn it off and go outside. Then, a new, horrific realization: my city, New York City, the city I was born and raised in, the city I still lived in, of old black and white movies with Fred Astaire, or William Powell, the elegant tuxedo'd New York, glittering, sparkling, yet gritty and filthy, a place to come to forget your problems, and live in a fantasy of lights and entertainment, of Broadway and museums, the place I had always felt safe in--would never be the same.