Shang High Life, #6

Shang High Life, #6 September 23, 2001 The Grateful Dead On Monday, September 10, I got engaged to be married to Geri Hunt. On Tuesday, September 11, the World Trade Center disappeared under the weight of jet fuel and bodies. On Wednesday, September 12, I found out Fiona Davreux---wife of the most important man in my history (save my father), and mother of their three boys---had died suddenly a few days earlier. I normally write in a light, slightly caddish way about whatever amusing ditty of experience happens by. I will be able to do that again. Maybe even soon. But not yet. I have already heard too many people---taxi drivers, TV pundits---proclaim the world will never be the same. This is so obviously true that I’m frustrated at being in the path of their facile twaddle. It seems too easy to bat back at them the equal truism that the world can never be the same, day to day. They would accuse me of being a coffee-shop philosopher. So, they’re right on both counts, and I begrudge them both. I have spent much of the time since the 11th thinking about *the* world. But I keep circling back to my own small place in it. It’s just feels too distant, too CNN, to say *the* world will never be the same. Forget *the* world for a minute; it’s too damn big to fathom. What’s got me pissed off is that *my* world will never be the same. Perhaps that’s the point that news coverage, in its attempt to nail the overwhelming geopolitical scope of WTC implications, glosses over: individually we are changed by it, each of us, one by one. We look at our previous assumptions about our lives, individually, and see them in pieces on the ground. I have the great solace that joy is one of the reasons my life was changed, forever, that week. I have the great sadness that, simultaneously, someone so important to me is in such pain. I have, like everyone else, my own confusing set of reactions to the terrorist attacks: fury, fear, indignation, humility. I sit here, writing, wanting to make some searing synthesis of where we now stand and what we might learn from that. But I’m neither that good nor that arrogant. Each of us finds him or herself in a different place than we did two weeks ago. For some, it was another distant event on the world stage. For some, it introduced panic that now guides their lives. But whether you perceive that you stood still and the world shook around you, or you feel like the world reached out and smacked you, it’s different now, isn’t it? It is because of the terrorists that you are not reading the cute, circuitous story of how I got engaged. As insipid as that story might have been, it matters that you aren’t reading it. It matters that we are short one more small joy because we’re focused on….them, whoever they are, and how each of our lives will have to be different, now. As we switch our attention to investigations and retaliations, we will leave countless more thimble-fulls of shared intimacy behind. And we won’t notice that they’re gone. They just won’t be there, and life will seem normal. If I don’t tell you the story of how Geri sat on my lap when I proposed, we are all a little less focused on what binds us. And the most important connection between us is just a little thinner. We are reduced to sharing a common fear, rather than sharing each other’s hope and wonder and giddiness. In the aftermath of the 11th, every one I know wanted to be close to those they loved. Why? Because, in watching so many die, we felt how fragile are the connections between us and the people we love. (To sever, insert hijacker’s box-cutter.) In other words, we were shown we shouldn’t take them for granted. If the terrorists reminded you that you might die tomorrow, they did you a favor. I have wondered how many arrived at the World Trade Center that morning silently bitching about their jobs. I’ve wondered how many had unfinished fights with their lovers. How many were consumed with self-loathing about their waists or thighs. How many had the shits with the wanker in the next subway seat. Those who know me well know I live driven by fear. The terrorists woke me the hell up. Some of the people in the World Trade Center died grateful for every day they had. They were the minority. I aspire to be like them. If we live life in fear, the terrorists have won yadda yadda yadda. If we respond with hate and vengeance, we’re playing into their hands blah blah blah. When I pull myself together, I won’t respond with fear or hate or vengeance. I’ll respond with the most profound gratitude I can muster for every one I love and every day I’m given. When I forget, shake me. Hard. In the mean time, I’ll try to sort out which of my tears are for one life, and which are for 6,000.