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what to do or which way to move. There was something both compelling and repellent
about the incredible event taking place in front of our eyes. I mean that literally; it drew
you toward it, it pushed you away. You wanted to race downtown at top speed to bear
witness; you wanted to turn your back, to flee.
“Many people were simply held in their tracks, the understanding kicking in that just
going to work as usual, just going to the store for the breakfast milk, would be deeply
inappropriate.”
The essay went on to talk about what it was like to be close enough to a tragedy to
witness it but not close enough to be a primary sufferer. Reading it now, I see how nar-
cissistic it is—Yeah, it's awful, but what about me?—but I also think it's perfectly in
character. On 9/11 all New Yorkers found themselves contemplating the meaning of our
existences, and we all faced the conundrum of whether we stand alone as extraordinary
individuals or together as ordinary mortals.
I've been saying New Yorkers as though other Americans didn't go through this, as
though the Pentagon hadn't also been attacked and United Airlines flight 93 from Ne-
wark to San Francisco hadn't plummeted into a Pennsylvania field. That's another sign
of narcissism, isn't it? But it's true that for me—and I think for most if not all of my
neighbors—New York City seemed more like the center of the universe that day than it
usually does. It's why we live there, of course, because the tug of its importance, its cul-
tural gravity, is immense; it's also why, among other reasons, I'd felt the need to escape
this summer on my bike. Anyway, here is the rest of what I wrote ten years ago, slightly
edited:
Since Tuesday I've thought a lot about my fellow gawkers on Mercer Street and
wondered for how many of them the grotesqueries of the week got closer, more personal,
and how many have merely shared my experience of bystanderhood. I heard one network
newscaster say that “just about everyone I know has some connection to someone who
was involved in this attack,” but the reality is that most of us don't. We have been
moved to suffer in sympathy. Which, as it turns out, holds a distinct agony of its own.
Just about everyone I know felt worse as the week went on.
One of the obvious lessons of terrorism is that it renders people helpless. Americans
have understood this, even though up to now we have largely been spared the emotional
erosion of living in constant insecurity. On that score our immunity is up.
But the persistent and deepening throb of pain, I think, is caused by something beyond
helplessness. I'll speak solely for myself here, but I've never felt smaller or more insig-
nificant than I have this week and partly this is a terrible irony because I'm among the
lucky. As far as I know, I've lost no one close to me. I've lost no property. Whatever im-
ages there are to haunt me from the tragedy are the ones that haunt millions who watch
