PLEASE, NO . . .

The New York Times has won a court battle to have the Port Authority release transcripts of emergency calls made by people trapped inside the World Trade Center on 9/11. The transcripts will be released by the end of business today.

Ugh.

You know, in the frenzied days and weeks after 9/11, I put together a scrapbook -- almost completely full now -- of the event, driven by numbness and adrenaline and a crazed need to document, document, document. Horrific and morbid, yes, but I wanted to make sure that I would never forget it, or reduce in my mind's eye the enormity of that day. I try to look through it now and again, thinking I'm ready to process, to read, to envision again. I'm not.

When I found out AK was missing . . . well, God, what do you do when you find out a friend, bosom buddy or not, is missing in something unimaginable like that?! We waited breathlessly. We looked for answers. We checked in with each other to see if maybe he had been found, on a sidewalk? In a hospital room? Wandering the streets of New York suffering from amnesia? Walking home across the George Washington Bridge, like everyone else? Collapsed in exhaustion on some street in New Jersey? We went to his memorial service. We reminisced. I thought about the short time that I had known him and the gazillion ways in which he had been a loving brother and friend to me in that time. I regretted not staying in touch, but for a quick hello and catch-up game at Yang's wedding a mere three days earlier. I thought I wouldn't mourn him that much. I did. I do.

When CBS ran that 2-hour special about 9/11, I watched it because I wanted to know. Part of me was afraid that I was forgetting, that I was moving on without properly coming to grips with my feelings, that I was starting to drift too far away from the momentous gravity of that day, and I felt guilty. I thought that watching that special would remind me of those things, would make me more grateful to be alive, would help me to sort out myself. I thought I was ready for it. I wasn't.

When 9/11/02 rolled around, life carried on as usual. There were the expected memorials, services, tolling bells, moments of silence, flags lowered to half-staff. I wore black. Everyone wore black. I wore an American flag. Everyone wore an American flag. I was somber that day. Everyone was somber that day. I thought that after one year, I -- and we -- would have moved on. I didn't. We didn't.

So what will I do when these transcripts are released and the New York Times gets its First Amendment paws on them? Will I be drawn to it like a car-wreck, some morbidity inside me wanting to read it, to hear it again, to see it again, and to relive the moments that are becoming reluctantly fainter and fainter pictures in my memory? Will I shun it completely and regress into denial -- if I don't read it, it won't be true, and all those people making those wretched phone calls will not have perished? Will I cover myself in anger for those families whose barely-dry scabs will become itchy again and will have to be picked off piece by painful piece? I won't. I will.