Travel Reference
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television and read the newspaper. Even my personal experience of the calamity is one I
shared with a crowd of neighbors.
I have, in other words, no private terror or individuated anguish, the emotional cur-
rency of the moment. And though this will sound selfish or chilly or less than magnan-
imous, I resent having no purchase on sympathy. But I understand. There's only so much
sympathy to go around; we're all doing triage with our available feelings.
At the same time, unless you are in certain professions, it turns out there is almost
nothing to be done to lend a hand, aside from donating blood (not so easy to do in the
chaotic aftermath or, stunningly, so necessary) or money. The business of reassuring out-
of-town friends and loved ones of one's own safety doesn't take much time or energy.
Compulsively watching television does.
The inability to do much more than keep oneself informed is a terrible frustration.
And it is cruelly isolating, at least to me, because of the extraordinary urge I have to be
counted among my communities—of New Yorkers, of Americans, and of my fellow men
and women. But who knows how to do this right now? The way I'm generally satisfied
to announce my presence in the world is through what I do every day.
Whether this is healthy or admirable is another argument, but I won't deny that my
profession commands an enormous role in my idea of myself, and as a theater critic I
didn't feel any more necessary after curtains went up in New York on Thursday than
I did while theaters were dark. How could I find meaning in such frivolousness? I'm
thankful to the firefighters, police officers, rescue workers, doctors and others, including
my fellow journalists, for responding with such ardor to this catastrophe, but I'm envi-
ous of them as well.
I know I'm not alone in this. The fruitlessness of pursuing one's daily life was shared
by a spectrum of people who renounced their chosen practices. Professional athletes were
among those who publicly expressed disdain for doing what they do, and the shopkeepers
in my neighborhood expressed the same thing by closing their shops. Indeed, commerce
has rarely seemed so crass; the young man who took advantage of the occasion to peddle
American flag bandannas on lower Fifth Avenue on Thursday drew far more glares of
disdain than customers, at least while I was watching.
I commend Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's declaration that New Yorkers should return
to their normal lives, go to restaurants and stores, resume their jobs, in order to keep the
economy and the spirit of the city afloat and to send a message of our enduring hardiness
to those who would destroy us.
But part of me wants to respond, respectfully: That's easy for you to say. You have a
pertinent life to lead.
What about those of us who feel as if we've been robbed of ourselves, who've had
no choice but to wait until this all subsides and the world returns to a semblance of
