“Diary of a Tragedy” is a daily column written by New York City residents with Maine ties who will share in coming days their experiences of the World Trade Center tragedy. Matthew J. Pechinski, an investment banker and general counsel with Westwood Capital, LLC. in Manhattan, is the son of Joseph and Sheila Pechinski of Bangor.

It’s Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City and although I’ve traveled abroad, I’ve never been this far from Mount Katahdin or my carefree days at Garland Street Junior High. Anyone who has climbed that great mountain to our north knows the peace and serenity that one can occasionally obtain, on the peak or a pond, when everything seems just right.

Watching the grotesque horror at the World Trade Center unfold from my office window made me wonder how things could be more wrong.

My office, on Fifth Avenue near 42nd Street, wasn’t the closest to the theater of terror. But I was certainly near enough to remain riveted to my window and sick to my stomach. My feelings were very chaotic and piqued with despair. I can only imagine the experience of my friends, family and colleagues to my south during these certainly most infamous of moments.

The streets were filled with frenetic faces and tears of extreme sadness, fear and despondence. Anger and general confusion were added to this tempest of misery.

Confusion in fact persisted throughout Tuesday in New York. At one point, almost everyone in Bryant Park and its general vicinity began running hysterically toward the east in what turned out to be a mistaken belief that a bomb near the United Nations was about to explode or perhaps had already detonated.

President Bush inspected the carnage at the Pentagon on Wednesday and reported that he was overwhelmed by the devastation. We all are.

An eerie emptiness in the city streets adds an element of the surreal to the ongoing aftermath of these brutal events.

Anyone who might think for a moment that the choreographed Hollywood-style acts of cowardly terror were but a nightmare cannot help but realize the harsh reality upon us when they look at the faces of their neighbors or any passers-by.

As of this evening, the winds have shifted. The cloud of smoke and debris that so far has engulfed only the very southern portion of Manhattan is now at least in part being pushed north, presenting us here at my home on 62nd Street with a smell of things burning that I can tell you with certainty is not from a friendly wood stove.

This dark and ominous cloud represents for us tonight the black mark that Sept. 11, 2001, will forever represent in American history. And yet this cloud has a silver lining. Throughout the chaos of the past 36 hours, we have seen efficient evacuations, heroic rescue missions and an orderly citizenry. Phones remain jammed with concerned friends and family reaching out for one another, strengthening us all when the calls get through. Supportive e-mail traffic is also intense.

During my 11-plus years in New York, I have learned of the strength of New Yorkers. New York and our nation are strong. Normalcy will return to this city in swift fashion and we will resist altering our way of life in ways that unduly compromise the democratic principles of liberty we all cherish.

From Presque Isle to New York and throughout this nation, we are all patriots now.