A small boat floating carefree in a tranquil backwater known as Petty’s Bayou.  A late summer’s sky with the sun still high above the horizon, a sky painted light-blue with occasional streaks of white closer to space than to earth, a sky dotted only with a passing bird now and then, a sky eerily devoid of any man-made flying machines.

I was the guy in this boat.  I was the guy in the midst of this serene canvas as the day was nearing its end—a day of monstrous devastation and terror unfolding not all that far from my personal sanctuary.  This is where I was on 9/11.  This is where I always return first in my mind’s eye when 9/11 comes crashing back into my consciousness.  This is my point of departure toward the profusion of searing, effusive memories of that day, a day of so much pain and so much squandering of precious human life.

In so many ways, we have all moved on from that horrific day.  Yet thoughts of 9/11 always evoke in me emotions as strong and compelling as they were on that day of fate: emotions that run the gamut from fear to anger, from grief to resolve, from personal pain to empathy with those who lost so much that day.  9/11 will always remain fixed in our minds, always compelling, always wounding; 9/11 will always remain fixed in our hearts, like a arrow that has met its mark with precision and has inflicted the full measure of its destructiveness.