I (heart) NY

9/11 anniversaries are always strange days for me, as they should be, I suppose. Last year, it seemed like just another day, maybe with a little more to think about. This year, complex emotions started bubbling up a few days ago and manifesting as a big, sore lump in the back of my throat. In an interview with the BBC from two years ago, my old photojournalism teacher, David Handschuh, one of the first photographers on the scene who ended up crushed by falling debris and fortunately quickly rescued by firefighters, summed up those feelings pretty well:

"I think anybody who is in New York, or who lost somebody or who paid witness that day, has a bunch of little gremlins under their bed, and every once in a while those gremlins leap out and they taunt you and they bite you and they want to play with you.

"So you play with them and then you put them back under your bed and maybe it's five minutes, maybe it's five days, maybe it's five months till they come back out and play, but you've got to confront your gremlins and then say 'You know what, folks, it's time to move on, I'll see you in six months'."

For some reason, that description really works for me, as it was an experience and a psychological, emotional response that I really can’t define in realistic terms. So today, as I struggle to remember every second of that day for no real good reason (such as, What did the people look like that I talked to at the river’s edge as we watched lower Manhattan go up in smoke? Why do I remember walking there, but not walking home?), I’m going to drive those gremlins away with positive thoughts about the city that was, and always will be, my first love. After 9/11, I thought I would never leave. Seven years later, sitting in Los Angeles where I’ve lived for the past five years, I wonder if I will ever return. Here are just a few memories that will forever have my heart:

• The first day of warm weather in the spring or late winter when it seems like the entire city is out to enjoy it.
• The thrill that riding in a car used to bring when it only happened every so often.
• Bagels the size of your face with appropriate servings of cream cheese.
• Roller skating in central park.
• Walking over the Brooklyn Bridge just for pizza.
• The summer of 2002.
• 3 a.m. and still dancing hard with the locals at Black Betty or Stinger Club on a Saturday night.
• The energy of the city. Whether you like it or not, you feel it buzzing around you all. the. time.
• The deli at Greenpoint & Manhattan Ave. in Brooklyn.
• Coffee from carts: light & sweet.
• Running through open fire hydrants.
• Yankee baseball.
• Decibel/Reservoir/Mugg’s/Yabby’s/etc./etc.
• The way I crane my neck and lean upon strangers inappropriately for the first glorious glimpse of the sparkling, still proud, skyline every time I fly home.