I miss the lights that replaced the towers, the two beams of light, you know. For a while there, I became utterly impractical and I said, "Why can't we keep them forever, those lights?" And unfortunately we couldn't. But yeah, yeah. You miss them. But then, the great beauty of living is newness, infinite newness. Every minute brings a new opportunity. And every minute brings new growth, new experiences. And there'll be sadness and nostalgia, etc. But there'll be much more new excitement, new thrills, new levels of civility.

See, I'm one who believes that the world goes from the slime to the sublime. And you can take Darwin and all your philosophers and all your ontologists, and that's the direction. It starts in a big explosion, and there's fluid and there's gases that became fluid, and then liquids and then fish and then vegetation, then us, and then things that stand up and are supposed to be thinking but still behave like animals (9/11). Gradually develop more and more civility, in fits and starts, until you're perfect, and you're all civility, and you really do love one another and you learn to live together -- and the place is perfect. And we're working toward that. The Pleroma, Teilhard calls it. That's what I believe. And is that made up? Of course it's made up. Can you get there intellectually? No, but you can't disprove it intellectually either. And I choose to believe it.

And New York City very much embodies that for me. It just keeps coming. You know, it has problems, a street blows up, 9/11 occurs, and you're going to rebuild, and after a while the memory will be there but there'll be something new there and different and functioning and electric. So -- Yeah, the image of the towers will be there, but there'll be a new reality as well, that won't be just the memory. There will be the moment that we'll be living in, and it'll be beautiful.