[gary]

I often say that you can never really say that you have been to some place.
Instead, you can only ever really say you have been to some place at a particular point in time.

I remember looking across from Brooklyn and excitedly seeing the Manhattan skyline
and the World Trade Center for the first time whilst visiting a friend in 1987.
I made a beeline across the Brooklyn Bridge heading for the towers.
These I just had to see. When I reached the other side of the bridge, I saw a small
crowd was gathered in a park listening to a man giving a speech. The man was Ed
Koch, the Mayor of New York and after he finished his speech he came down from
the podium to meet the people. He shook my hand and gave me an American flag.

I made my way to the World Trade Center and I remember standing beneath these
enormous towers and looking up. I remember the elevator ride to the top. I pushed
my face hard against the glass of the 107th floor of the South Tower and looked
straight down. It was amazing. One could get vertigo. I made my way to the roof-top
observation deck and snapped away pictures of Manhattan on 35mm Fujichrome
100 transparencies.

In 2003 I returned and looked down at the hole in the ground of where they had stood.
It was the same place I had been before but it was now a different point in time.
Compared to the hustle and bustle of this part of town in 1987, there was now
a quiet reverence. People spoke softly and the only substantial sounds were coming
from the machines constructing the building that will replace the twin towers. I snapped
some shots with a pocket digital camera which I have included below.