a year ago:
My first alarm clock was set for 7:00 (radio), my second alarm clock was set for 7:30 (chime). When the first alarm goes off, it has to be set to a radio channel, I have mine set for NPR, which I find so stupid in the morning that I immediately switch it to a TV channel, which my alarm clock also receives.

In the usual daze I'm in after the first alarm goes off, the words "plane has crashed into the World Trade Center" seeped into my brain. I imagined something like the B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building earlier last century in a fog. I imaged the World Trade Center, very familiar, taken for granted having grown up just across the river in New Jersey. I imaged something small, a Cessna maybe crashing into the World Trade Center by accident.

At 7:30 the annoying chime alarm sounded, and I shut it off and switched it back to the TV channel. At 7:35, the words "the North Tower of the World Trade Center has collapsed" seeped into my brain. Two seconds later, I darted up in my bed. What?!

I had just heard the unthinkable, the inconceivable. The World Trade Center does not "collapse". I imagined it falling over like a tree and . . . no. I jumped down out of my loft bed, taking all the blankets with me and ran into the living room and turned on the TV.

20 minutes later, housemate Jen, who had a cook's schedule and had been asleep for only a few hours, stumbles out of her room and says, "What the fuck are those jackasses upstairs doing?", the running around in the flat upstairs woke her up (they were in a panic trying to contact their friends in New York). "Jen, come here!" "Holy shit!"