Found this on the Flickr of a new follower, Fitzroy. My irreverence of everything that became of downstate New York in the wake of September 11th has made me generally silent on the subject, including the nine anniversaries that have come and gone. I hated so much of what Long Islanders - indeed, many New Yorkers - became after the disaster, and to this day, find it hard to speak eloquently or sensitively about the tragedy without becoming offensive to someone. (Post-September 11th has been preserved as kind of like a perpetual Al-Qaeda Mosque! fit of hysteria in my memory, with little room for eloquent, sober patriotism to express itself.) Anyway. The towers of light went up in the winter of that year, and I remember walking west down Bryant Avenue in my hometown after midnight on New Year’s Eve. It was a frigid, clear night, and I could see the towers of light from my walk home. I’ll never forget that, and every year when they illuminate the night sky of lower Manhattan, my mind is cleared; they are a sober and meaningful reminder of what happened that day, representing (in my mind, at least) the best of what we learned from September 11th and of what New York stands for today.