Another perfect day, clear, cool and dry. Yesterday was also cool, but clouds came and went. I spent the morning with a friend at the ceremony at the WTC site. Very simple: opening drumbeats and then music, a very brief invocation from the mayor, then the list of names of the dead read aloud, interrupted by four long moments of silence to mark the times each plane struck and each tower fell. A few poems, a little more music. The families of the dead were invited to enter the site and leave flowers, photos, whatever. Thousands of people stood around the fence at the exterior, just to hear and be there. Many tourists, also, people taking photos, more than last year; though that may partly be a function of where my friend and I were standing. But last year, a huge sense of common grief; less so this year, more a feeling of standing with others in private grief.

I don't know why I feel compelled to go every year and hear those names read. I knew very few of the people who died, and the ones I knew -- none of them well -- I remember without help. I don't visit my relatives' graves or light candles; I'm not big on death rituals. And I think, the hundreds who died last week in Beslan, will anyone read their names out loud? The thousands of Palestinians and Israelis who've died in that madness, who reads their names? Or the names of the Sudanese? Or the people of Bhopal? I could go on, but you know what I'm saying.

I don't understand why I do it, and I've come to is this: It has something to do with bearing witness, which itself has something to do with commitment, something to do with gathering strength. It's beyond my understanding, but some things you do because you do them, and wait for understanding, and hope it comes.