There are still mysteries of 9/11: where a Rodin sculpture found in the rubble went, if a possibly lost camera will show what it was like above the impact. Last week a documentary revealed 32 unpublished photos and their likely photographer.

I think I’ve clung to these physical artifacts and unresolved side stories to root connections I did not have, to an event that felt pivotal yet distant. 9/11/01 was physical event now mostly remembered symbolically, chaotic fluid dynamics now distilled into timelines, at a site I now live 2 miles from, which happened when I was old enough to form memory but hadn’t agency.

It was a homeschool day for me and Mom in Halifax, Pennsylvania. I remember trying to turn on PBS Kids on channel 33 for my usual morning break, but my shows weren’t working. My mom said she remembers it differently. It turns out we all do, each time.

It never felt like a profound memory, but this year I realized I’ll be among the last microgeneration to have one at all.

Old New Yorkers today mention they still have dust, or paper. Both were easy to find, dissolved among the city. Collected but not cataloged.

I recently heard a notion that we leave the memorialization to the first responders because we don’t want to confront that more of the victims were us: opening Outlook and Excel. Easier to leave the grief and memory to the professionals.

Grief, in my experience, wants crass artifacts. It wants a root in zero ground.

¶. Now: Disintegration Loop 1.1

Spectacle Theater, Williamsburg, NYC, $5

You may have heard of William Basinski and his Disintegration Loop project, where he looped old musak samples until the recording literally fell of the tape. It was a popular Radiolab episode back in the day.

What I didn’t know is that he made the final recording of that project early the morning September 11, 2001. He was unemployed, and had a job interview scheduled later that day at the World Trade Center.

That evening, he recorded the sun setting to his new recordings, over a flattened skyline. Right now, it’s playing to the same sun setting, exactly 25 orbits later.

There are more screenings later this month. All of Spectacle’s Always Remember programming looks uncouthly excellent, as is the writing.

¶. Tonight 10pm–12am: Tribute in Light

Battery Park Garage, Lower Manhattan, NYC & apparently on Disney+, free

I will be volunteering at the beams again, counting birds. My shift begins after Cyndi Lauper’s.

¶. December 10, 2012: Arranging Names

My first college research paper was about how the names are organized at the then-one-year-old 9/11 National Memorial.