It's another sleepless morning for me. I have trouble sleeping these days - perhaps I need to write my own version of "Breathe (2AM)" like Anna Nalick did. (She's only a 10-minute drive from me anyway, and I've been enjoying her album, Wreck of the Day, lately.)
I'm thinking of today back in 1991, when I was in the midst of my very first visit to one of my favorite places - New York City. Specifically, I visited the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center. Of course, given that the crown of the Statue of Liberty is closed off now, and that the World Trade Center is no more, my visit fourteen years ago feels more special. As a child, I always dreamt of going to New York City and climbing the Statue of Liberty, and it was so nice to have that dream come true, even though it meant hours and hours of waiting in line. And topping it all off with peaceful evening breeze on the roof of Two World Trade Center watching the sun set over New Jersey was another reward of that day. I finished the day off by going to South Street Seaport, even though it wasn't too much fun after dark...
I ended up going back to the Statue of Liberty twice, but I never went back to the roof of Two World Trade Center again. The view from there, the highest point in New York City, was very special - far more special than the view from the Empire State Building, because I could see cityscape AND water together. I eventually only went back to the shopping mall at the basement of the WTC complex. Of course, nobody could ever possibly imagine back then that those minimalist yet massive skyscrapers would be brought down by a pair of Boeing 767s - one of which had carried me between New York and Los Angeles repeatedly, between that beautiful day and the horrible day of destruction. Just the thought of me having been in Two World Trade Center, AND the plane that ended up as United 175 on September 11th, still gives me the chills.
Of course, it gives me even more chills to even think of the strong possibility that someone in the federal government had advance knowledge of the attacks, and let it happen anyway, in order to expand government power beyond anything America had ever known...
