Sept. 11, 2003, been done & gone. This morning as I walked my dog in the early light there were two candles on the steps of a low-rise apartment building here in Inwood. It reminded me very vividly of the many candles throughout the Cobble Hill neighborhood off Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, where I stayed after my own pied-a-terre in the financial district was rendered uninhabitable. That, and a the smell of a recent fire in this neighborhood -- a charred, chemical, electrical, God-knows-what smell -- are the strongest recent sense memories I have of 9/11. The rushing cloud of smoke, which is still played on TV because folks don't want to show fire or jumping and falling footage, is getting pretty played out. So I don't count the memories that engenders. At any rate, I prefer to center on the mixed fear and hope of the candles. Apparently, one of my neighbors did, too.