I remember sitting on the balcony of my brother's new high-rise flat, sipping a beer, and cooking a barbecue (what else do "Aussies" do with their time!). It was a rather pleasant and balmy early spring night, and at that point in time, as I looked over the Swan River towards the concrete sentinels of Perth's CBD, I remember thinking to myself that "…life was pretty f**kin' good!"

I am not the most optimistic person, not by a long shot, and so when I have these "moments of clarity" I celebrate them as they are few and far between.

I walked inside to get another beer, the smell of prime beef sizzling on the barbecue still lingered in the upper reaches of my nasal cavity, when I glanced over towards my brother's large screen TV and saw that there was some kind of action "flick" on the TV. I thought to myself, well I don't mind the old action movie, I am quite partial to a bit of gratuitous violence and wanton destruction. I grabbed a beer and "plunked" down on the couch to take in this action movie, which as of yet, I couldn't ever remember seeing.

It obviously wasn't an "A-grade", "big budget" "Hollywood" movie, as the cinematography work was atrocious. That wasn't all, if I had to be critical, and I somewhat was, the dialogue was sketchy and fragmented and the sound was like something you would hear on an old silent movie from the twenties. This was all negated by the stunts…I mean these were realistic like I had never seen before.

There could be no comparison in the realistic nature of this movie; no "Arnie", no "Sly", nor even "Mr. Willis", could have ever matched this particular "B-grade" action flick for its depiction of reality, and its capacity to propel the viewer into the very heart of the drama that unfolded before their eyes, as if they were there themselves.

I know I had, or felt, this nagging feeling of actually being there. It was like I had astral traveled to Lower Manhattan, and had been down on that street, with those police officers, those fated firefighters…but as it turns out, and to the immutable and final shame and disgrace of the human race, in reality, I would soon find out that I would feel somewhat glad that I was not there!

There have been some major low points in human history, chapters of our past where we ourselves, and of our own sole doing, dragged our own dignity and self-respect as a species and as a society, so far down; plummeted our sense of worth as a purportedly "civilized race" to a subterranean level that in this author's view, we will never fully recover.

I sipped my beer, and I watched, but I don't think that I believed what I viewed from the flickering images unfolding before my very eyes on the TV screen…

Over and over again, the vision of that passenger airliner, a rather vast mechanical entity in its own right, paled in comparison to those two bastions of democracy and financial success, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center…and like a computer generated stunt from some big budget Hollywood movie, it plowed into the side of one of the twin towers, and then that is when all similarities between it and a stunt went "flying out the window".

I stopped everything, for a cursory moment in time, upon the realization of what I was witnessing, had dawned on me, and started to become plain and clear to my thoughts and feelings, my body ceased functioning…for that moment in time, even though I was tens of thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, I died as a human being along with those brave passengers onboard that first hi-jacked plane that slammed into the Trade Center, and the many more to follow.

I know there will be people thinking, he can't possibly know what it was like, he was too far away, this doesn't concern him directly like it does to the Americans, to the New York City residents…well I hate to say this, but I will.

"I didn't momentarily die in empathy of the lives lost on that hi-jacked plane, or for those ill-fated occupants of the World Trade Center, or the Pentagon, or those courageous people who perished by sacrificing their own lives in a noble and brave effort to foil the hi-jackers' plan for destruction and carnage by deliberately crashing that plane-cum-airborne vehicle of death and destruction…no. That wasn't why I died on the inside. 

Although these acts took from me my innocence, they didn't bring about this perfunctory death...I empathized with these innocently martyred people, I truly did... 

But empathy is a powerfully compelling word, probably no other word in the English language, that relates to emotions, could sum-up in one utterance what the word empathy could and does…but empathy, which has its origins in Old German, their word was "ein furlung" or "in-feeling"…and it is because of this origin of the word empathy, that I say that when I first realized what had happened, I can't say that I empathized with the victims of these heinous initial attacks on New York City; on the United States of America; on the global village that is earth as a whole. 

I had no "ein furlung", no "in-feeling" of sorrow or despair, and that is not because I am an indifferent, or uncaringly callous man, it is simply because I had withered and died on the inside…there was nothing left of me emotionally save my physical being at that point in time, just a hollow shell of the man that was, prior to the that first barbaric act of the 9/11 attacks.

I wept silently for the death of my inner self, with an inherent "ein furlung" that died simultaneously with all of the victims, innocent by-standers and terrorists alike, as I felt, what all the world felt, at that moment in time…that this here moment in history, this installment of the "soap opera" that is human existence, this was the beginning of the end for all humanity and the end of the beginning…

Innocence and virtue died that fateful September day, the human spirit perished never to be returned, and our redemption and salvation was for evermore, wiped from the face of this green earth we call home, and what will be the home of those who follow us…our children, and our children's children. 

To all of those Americans that I have met via the "Errorworld", that I have grown to hold special to my heart in such a short space of time, my heartfelt condolences go out to you in this, your moment of mournful and forlorn reflection… 

And although you may not know it or feel it as readily as those of us who have been indirectly affected by this ruinous failing in the civilized augmentation of humanity as a whole, brought on by 9/11, and have had the opportunity to see beyond the hurt, and to surmount the enduring torment…you will come to appreciate the hope, and the faith that we outsiders now sense in the wake of 9/11. 

Eventually, if ever, the pain and torment subside, you will come to see that as abhorrent and as suffused in iniquity, these attacks were that took place one year to the day, on 9/11, they have highlighted to the world the part your great country plays in the world order.

Through your loss and the sacrifices of your citizens, the rest of the world finds the hope and the faith of their own human spirit, their own capacity to go on and to look forward, and we find it through your suffering, and we learn as a society through your pain, and we will rise again, just like the United States of America has risen from the ashes of 9/11 like the legendary phoenix of mythology…but unlike this mythical phoenix, there is nothing fictional or invented about the resolve of the citizens of the United States of America, about that "Land of Liberty", and just like the torch that adorns that celebrated and revered concrete effigy, "the Statue of Liberty", you continue to shine on through the storm of an uneasy and volatile future, and your beloved country will light the liberty torch of hope for the emancipation from the tyranny of evil…

…and we, the rest of the world's citizens, we will light a candle to honor your resolve to burden this torch of liberty, as you have always done, and as represented by your ability to recover from the global tragedy of this very day, one year ago…you shall triumph, and you shall prevail.

I am not a patriotic person, and the only thing about me that is in anyway remotely related or linked to the United States of America, is that shared hope, a hope that you Americans exhibit so readily. 

That resilience, that will that is inherent to you as a people, to bounce back and to move forward, and to not hang on to the horrors of the past…that is what I share with you, on this, the one year anniversary of your darkest hour…

When I saw the courage and determination shown in the perpetual search of the devastation and rubble of the Trade Center, and when I saw these brave and courageous firefighters, who had worked around the clock with nothing but hope and faith driving them on and through, the barriers of pain and uncertainty and possible misery and sorrow…I cried and I openly wept with them…

... and even now, when I see that photo of the firefighters, overwhelmed with the grief over the loss of so many brave colleagues, but still patriotically raising the "Stars and Stripes" atop the shattered remains of the World Trade Center, and the remains of their fellow brothers and sisters, I too shed a silent tear…

...not out of pity, but out of respect and reverence, you are a resilient and determined nation, your citizens' deeds and achievements have always been benchmarks and yardsticks by which the rest of us have measured our own status as a member of a global order. Your nation, your United States of America; it has never turned in the face of uncertainty and intimidation, it has always stood firm and resolute in defiance of those, whose motivation is to corrupt and to destroy that which is good…and for this reason, I say this to you from the bottom of my weeping heart:

"…if anything good, anything good at all can come of this heinous and gutless act of a year ago on 9/11; then it is that the United States of America learns from this act of premeditated terrorism, and as a result, grows in defiance and determination, to be resolute in your quest, if not your charge, to continue to make this world a free and democratic world to live in…for Christians, for Jews, for Hindus, and for Muslims alike, as you have always done, and for what is left of humanity's hope, the United States of America will always continue to do.

"God bless America"