I spent last night getting my shoes wet, walking in the pounding rain that would not let up. It was apparently the same sort of night that preceeded Sept. 11, which was something I didn't remember at all, although now that I think about it, must be true. There was a reason I decided to stay underground that night, browsing the Borders bookstore at the World Trade Center. I recall lugging around a wet umbrella, worrying about getting the books wet. I didn't bother buying anything that night, for it would have been a great hassle to lug it home in the rain, and I knew where my desired purchases lay, they'd still be there the next day.

Minor words trigger my buried memories, and getting together with a foursome of trade center survivors is a running dialogue of forgotten remembered moments. An hour passes in an instant, as memories merge to sort out the inconsistencies, and resolve those nagging doubts about what really happened when. I felt out of place as they discussed who was first or last or first again in the stairwell coming down, or how long the fire raged, the doors stayed jammed shut, and who was where when the other tower fell.

What was interesting was how everything came back to those few terrifying moments, how everything led back to that morning. Time, life, emotion seems permenantly fixed in those few short hours, whenever they meet. The reunions get smaller and smaller, maybe the others can't bear the burden of these continued reawakening of memory. I can't say for certain if there was talk of the present of the future, I joined at the very end of a 4 hour night. The past, however, remained very much alive, made up of small moments, walking in wet shoes.