Steven “EVERYMAN” Goldman on today:

I’ve been reading blog posts and news articles all day urging people to remember the people who lived through and who died in the events of 9/11/01. All day, off and on. And I feel like I’m going to be fairly ill.

Maybe my perspective’s a little different. I wasn’t one of those people worrying at home about loved ones downtown; I was one of those people others were fearing for. I watched the whole thing happen from a rooftop five blocks away, not on TV.

I hustled down to street-level with a buildingful of people and reached Broadway as the police were urging us to MOVE.

I watched the second tower collapse from Church Street, dumbfounded, stunned, but wanting nothing more than to push my way past the police and SEE IT UP CLOSE, to help people get away from the falling wreckage, to do something other than run. Everyone wanted to get away. In my foolishness, I wanted to know that moment like I don’t think I’ve known any other.

I suspect my lungs appreciate the police not letting me do it.