Shhh.

This is a picture I took from one of my back windows at 10:00am, on September 11, 2001.

Those aren't clouds. They're clouds of smoke.

Being afraid I'd accidentally erase the picture, I made several copies. I watched it happen live on tv, and I smelled the smoke for weeks and weeks.

I remember looking through the New York Times over the next few days and combing through all the little pictures and names of the hundreds of firefighters and cops who died. Then I remembered that a few years earlier, a martial arts teacher I had, named Peter Kritzamelios, was a volunteer firefighter in Manhattan.

Thankfully, I couldn't find him on that list.

A year later, I ran into him in the street and shook his hand with both of my hands, and all of my might. He was alive. He had a four year old daughter. I brought him back a chocolate bar for her from Spain once that had the brand name "Spar" on it.

It was funny at the time.

He was in the towers that horrific morning. He got out. We talked about it for a few minutes. Well, actually, he talked about it and I listened. It wasn't easy to hold back tears, but I managed.

He was the kind of person who was really interested in hearing how a student got out of a fight, instead of how a student got into one. You don't expect to hear that from a black belt. And it took me years to appreciate this.

My high school girlfriend called me a few weeks later and told me that Chris Colasanti, someone we went to high school with, and who I played soccer with, died in the North Tower. He worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, on the 105th floor. I'm not sure anyone that high up made it out. The disturbing part was that when I looked through my yearbook after 15 years, I remembered him.

She also told me she knew someone who managed to make it out in time. They described an entire conference room as "moving around like a carnival ride" when one of the planes hit. I'll never understand what that was like, but the image I have in my head will never leave me either.

What can you possibly say to pay your respects to 3,000 people who didn't deserve to die?

Nothing.

Moment of silence.