But what I found was that New Yorkers�vibrant, welcoming, wounded but healing New Yorkers�still need to talk about it.

Everyone I talked to for any length of time brought it up to me�from cab drivers to professional acquaintances to a friendly man I met at Lincoln Center. They would ask how was I enjoying the city and then say, but a couple things are missing, aren't they? They would point out a window or at the southern sky and say, that's where they were. They would tell me where they had been when it happened.

And I've been thinking about it ever since. I last visited New York when I was a little girl, a pre-teen I think, and the closest we got to the World Trade Center towers was probably Canal Street, where I was much more fascinated by the trinkets in the junk shops than the skyscrapers. Tourists gawked at skyscrapers, and I didn't want to look like one.

I've tried to place the buildings in my imagination with my memory of walking around the site.

From the Metro station at Park Place to Church Street, down to where it becomes Trinity Place, then west through a covered walkway down Liberty Street where the firehouse is now a memorial of patches and sealed doors labeled with hand-written cardboard signs warning passers by to stay out.

And that walkway emptied into the hallways of the World Financial Center where I turned right, back north and proceeded to 2WFC, walking through nearly deserted hallways at 9:00 a.m. on a Thursday morning, following signs to the promise of a Starbucks. All of the windows facing the former site of the World Trade Center are covered with barely translucent material that allows light to enter but prevents the curious from looking out into the foundation hole. I found myself in the lobby, the location, I later realized, of a frequently seen Steve McCurry photo (click to last image in 0911 gallery, labeled 2 World Financial Center - 9/11) taken during the immediate aftermath. It's all clean now. But it is still deserted.

I find a little shop that sells bagels and juice, water and coffee. I never saw Starbucks. I get a poppyseed bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon. It's huge, and I know it will be the best bagel I've had in a long time. I add coffee and orange juice, and they put it in a sturdy bag with handles. Practically a gift bag.

Just to the left of the breakfast shop is a door leading outside to a little green park, so I head out there, passing by little caf� tables where a few business people sit and talk, and I end up by the river. I'm sitting on a monument in the plaza by North Cove Harbor, gazing out to New Jersey past a fence emblazoned with a Walt Whitman quote, defining New York as passionate, mettlesome, mad, extravagant. All of the sailing vessels in the harbor have U.S. flags at half mast.

CITY of ships!

(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the beautiful, sharp-bow�d steam-ships and sail-ships!)
City of the world! (for all races are here;

All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)
City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out, with eddies and foam!
City of wharves and stores! city of tall fa�ades of marble and iron!
Proud and passionate city! mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
Spring up, O city! not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike!
Fear not! submit to no models but your own, O city!
Behold me! incarnate me, as I have incarnated you!
I have rejected nothing you offer�d me�whom you adopted, I have adopted;
Good or bad, I never question you�I love all�I do not condemn anything;
I chant and celebrate all that is yours�yet peace no more;
In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine;
War, red war, is my song through your streets, O city!

There I ate my breakfast, wishing for someone homeless who would want the loaded half bagel I couldn't finish. But I saw only a couple people who looked homeless during my visit. Far fewer than I see every day here in Atlanta. So I tossed it into a trash can and walked on.

I admired the Winter Garden and the bright blue reviewing-stands type seating set up in front of it for a purpose unknown to me. Then I skirted around 4WFT to North End Avenue, turn east on Vesey Street, and I get my clearest idea of the magnitude of what's missing.

Even after its distruction, the World Trade Center was said to be monumental in proportion. Massive in scope. But I don't have a personal memory of the towers standing to see in my mind's eye. Now there's nothing left. No rubble. No dust. No artifacts of daily life within the towers. Now it's a big hole in the ground cluttered with construction site equipment, looking like every other development site I've ever seen. Though the Banker's Trust Building now seems to serve as a sort of mammoth grave marker with the Stars and Stripes strewn across protective mesh and a banner proclaiming that we will not forget.

I take a photo at Vesey and West Street, cross West and head north to Murray Street. From there I wander back to Church and up to White Street to an unassuming door in an unmarked building for my appointment with Lois Greenfield, an amazing dance photographer.

And that's one morning I spent in New York City.