story858.xml
Title
story858.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-07-04
911DA Story: Story
A very strange postscript to what I thought were fully formed memories of 9/11:
I spent the day at the CUNY Graduate Center, discharging various responsibilities, sitting with Steve Brier, Frances Horowitz, et al.
Just the other day, 10 months later, I saw a good friend Angela Sales and, as is my habit, asked her where she was on 9/11.
"I spent the day with you Steve."
And it was true. I had completely wiped from my memory that Angela had been stranded at our midtown campus because the CUNY campus at which she worked was adjacent to ground zero. I had invited her to sit in my office on the couch and relax.
But 10 months later, in some sort of strange coping mechanism, I find I have totally wiped out big pieces of that day, who was with me, what I did, even how and when I got home.
I guess this kind of retrospective erasing is exactly why a project like the 911digitalarchive is so important. Memories of trauma, as opposed to recollections of other less cataclysmic historical events, may be especially vulnerable to "erasure.
So, yes, Angela was with me.
I spent the day at the CUNY Graduate Center, discharging various responsibilities, sitting with Steve Brier, Frances Horowitz, et al.
Just the other day, 10 months later, I saw a good friend Angela Sales and, as is my habit, asked her where she was on 9/11.
"I spent the day with you Steve."
And it was true. I had completely wiped from my memory that Angela had been stranded at our midtown campus because the CUNY campus at which she worked was adjacent to ground zero. I had invited her to sit in my office on the couch and relax.
But 10 months later, in some sort of strange coping mechanism, I find I have totally wiped out big pieces of that day, who was with me, what I did, even how and when I got home.
I guess this kind of retrospective erasing is exactly why a project like the 911digitalarchive is so important. Memories of trauma, as opposed to recollections of other less cataclysmic historical events, may be especially vulnerable to "erasure.
So, yes, Angela was with me.
Collection
Citation
“story858.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 21, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/14267.