s the burning towers first came into view on the train outside of Newark, my first instinct was to reach for the camera I carry in my backpack. I got as far as unzipping the pocket when I realized I had brought the camera to the Shore that weekend and had probably left it in the car. I re-zipped without looking inside. Twenty minutes later I was walking down Sixth Avenue, fixated on the smoke pouring from both buildings. I looked down for ten seconds to watch where I was going when the first building collapsed. Hearing the news from a car radio, I looked up, but there was nothing more to see. I went to my office in Midtown to make sure everybody there was okay. The second tower collapsed while I was inside.

Friends ask if I have gone down to look at the wreckage. I surprise them when I say, "No." I nearly died one time in Oklahoma City getting a closer look at a tornado. I’m the kind of person who would have walked down to the World Trade Center that morning just to say I saw the towers fall. Instead, I watched the replay on CNN. I have yet to take one picture, much less go down to ground zero for a close-up.

On a downtown delivery last week, my friend Chris extended his trip a few blocks south to see the site. Police lines prevented anybody from getting very close, but the crowds still pressed in – watching, staring, snapping pictures with their disposable cameras. Despite the choking smell that still hangs over that section of the city, these people (tourists? locals?) were staying put – not to lend a hand or offer support, but to claim a piece of history for themselves.

This is where my reluctance lies. I work over a mile from where the World Trade Center once stood. I don’t know anybody who worked in the towers. I don’t know anybody who knew anybody! Part of me feels that this was not my tragedy, and I don’t want to be just another spectator. I don’t want to feel like I’m saying "Whoa," the same way I did when I watched the Chrysler Building crash to the ground in Armageddon.

Back home on September 11^th, I looked inside my backpack to discover my camera had in fact been there the entire day. There was a reason. The same reason I looked down just in time to miss the first collapse. The same reason I watched the second collapse on TV as though it was happening half-way around the world instead of just down the street. I’m certain I would have reacted like the 95% of American’s who didn’t know somebody in those towers – a reaction that none of us would admit to. Amidst our proclamations of "How horrible," there is still that moviegoer inside of us that exclaims, "Awesome!" It’s human instinct. We want to be the ones with a story to tell and pictures to back it up. Like Lot’s wife, the queen of all rubberneckers, we simply can’t not look. Instead of turning me into a pillar of salt, God simply turned – and continues to turn – my prying eyes away saying, "Now is not the time."