Inspired by the rather brave Salon article about "forbidden thoughts" people had on and around 9/11, I will recount some of my ungenerous and unheroic moments that I was too shy to tell you, diary, a year ago.

I also remember, in the days following the attacks, feeling an echo of what I used to feel when, as a kid, my other sister would have a psychotic break, or my dad would fly into one of his patented rages: the thrill of violence and the clattering sound of monotony being shattered. Fear, certainly, but also the heart-pounding, metallic-tasting pleasure that comes with fear. And then the gauzy decrescendo, when everybody is all helping hands and open hearts and snugglin� on the couch. Genuine, heart-crushing sadness, but a touch of pleasure and pride in the sadness, too. I don't know how fucked up that is, but I don't think I am the only one who felt strangely aglow during those days.

I remember visiting my in-laws in Chicago in early October, and feeling quietly (and then, when I was alone with AMA, not so quietly) outraged that none of them really seemed to care what had happened in NYC, or that real people actually died. I felt angry and morally superior to anyone who didn�t �get it.� Not my finest hour.

I felt annoyed when the Post and Daily News would list information about firefighters� funerals, urging us to attend. I�d think, �What about the civilians who died? Firemen are expected to face danger in their work, but accounting temps and pastry chefs are not.�

I remember sitting in a restaurant surrounded by yuppies one night, thinking, �I can�t stand these people�and yet these are the kind of people who I�ve been reading about everyday in Portraits of Grief." And I wasn�t sure where to file that thought, except to try to summon compassion for the smug cell-phone slingers all around me, and to continue reading the portraits anyway.