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I guess I really couldn't let this day go by without writing something.

Yeah, so it's September 11th. Nine-eleven, nine-eleven, nine-fucking-eleven. It never goes away, does it? Every morning, I look out the window of the express bus and there it is. Tourists stop and take pictures, inexplicably smiling against the sixteen acre void. I see the planes hitting the towers. Every day. Even if I'm on the opposite side of the bus, it's there. Even if I have my eyes closed, you know its there because the sun shines brighter on the bus where there's no buildings to shadow it. Sometimes I look and envision it the way it was before. Either way, it's there. In the afternoons, on the ferry, I look out at the skyline, think about how great New York City is, but also think about the skyline shrouded in the huge cloud of smoke. I can't separate one from the other. The train of thought is forever tainted.

Rather than rehashing every detail of every minute of that morning (I was wearing a gray Structure tee with jean shorts, I ate a bite of a Honey Nut Cheerios milk and cereal bar, but couldn't keep it down, etc... After five years, it's almost redundant. I don't need to write it down, because it's not like I'm going to forget.

I will say this though.

On Sunday, September 9, 2001, I went to Six Flags with some of my friends from school. The semester had just started, I was living in a fantastic dorm, blessed with a great selection of classes and a pretty healthy bank account. I was actually looking forward to the upcoming semester. The Six Flags trip was a last minute thing, one of those random trips that can only happen when you're 20 years old, where life is measured in semesters before graduation. The day could not have been better. In fact, that day was a perfect example of the simple things in life that make me smile. My friends, beautiful weather, the wind on my face on that first steep drop on Nitro. On the dark ride home up the Jersey Turnpike we talked in ideological terms about life and what the future would hold. Nothing could hurt me. Nothing could stop me. Nothing could cloud my perception of the perfect world I lived in. Hell, I was going to rule the world.

September the Eleventh, if anything, was an extreme lesson in humility and vulnerability. What hurt me more than anything, was being forced upon the crashing conclusion that the world could not always be what I made it out to be or wished it to be.

And while five years later I'm still very affected by the events of that day, I haven't forgotten the person I was on September 9th. And trust me, I will still rule the world.