DAY NINETEEN:Sept. 29:
Suddenly it is Autumn. With breathtaking speed nature has taken a turn, leaves have fallen and the air has a crisp bite to it.
This being an election Fall, more than leaves are falling in this town. The shenanigans over the Mayor's bid to extend his reign continue to unfold, and it's impossible to say at this moment how this mess will eventually shake out. So New York's future remains in the hands of an unknowable cast of characters.
Despite anxiety about more possible terrorism to come, New Yorkers are doing their level best to get back to "normal" life, but it's not really possible. It's not the big things that stand in your way, but the enormous number of little ones. This morning, for example, I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, catching a subway at City Hall up to my office. That basic exercise is something I have down thousands of times before. But the differences now are numerous. The once thick throngs of tourists strolling the pedestrian walkway are absent, and I hardly encountered another soul on the bridge. No automobiles were streaming into Brooklyn from Manhattan, as it has become so difficult to get downtown by auto that drivers now seek other routes. In contrast, cars driving into Manhattan were backed up far into Brooklyn, and they are only allowed to use two lanes, the third having been designated for emergency and excavation personnel only. When they finally make their crossing, the cars are not allowed to enter surface streets downtown. Rather, they must get on the FDR highway and drive up to 14th Street. With all autos and trucks routed through a common funnel -- and likely to remain so routed for months to come -- traffic moves so slowly that the drivers were eyeing my far faster stroll with envy.
Of course the view as I walk across the bridge never ceases being jarring. It's hard to recognize. Downtown Manhattan simply doesn't look like Manhattan without the Twin Towers.
On a more subliminal level the norms of the past have also disappeared. Sirens that I once, like most jaded New Yorkers, ignored now give me pause. I notice that for some the sound of multiple sirens is utterly frightening. They stop in their tracks, look about and have an expression that says, "Please, no." A consultant who lives on Long Island and does work for Newsday came into the office yesterday just as a horde of siren-wailing vehicles descended upon the Empire State Building, located a couple of blocks away. She was visibly shaken by the experience, not just because of her own fears but due to the reaction of a woman she happened to bump into on the sidewalk. The young woman was evacuated from the Empire State Building, and stood on the sidewalk crying and repeating, "My children. I have to get to my children."
One could say workers in the Empire State Building should be used to it by now, as they have been the targets of innumerable hoax bomb threats since September 11. But apparently this one was taken more seriously, given the building was evacuated. Or maybe that poor mother had simply hit her limit, tilted out and lost it.
I used to sleep so soundly that I actually snoozed right through a fire that involved my building -- one so massive that more than 500 firefighters responded. Now I awaken each time the wind changes direction, blowing a whiff of the World Trade Center's still-smoldering debris through my window. I used to be suspicious of the police, particularly given the NYPD's sorry history of attacks and murders of nonwhite residents of this city. But now I find myself reflexively greeting cops I pass; "Hello, Officer. How's it going, Officer? Stay safe, Boys." Each time I shake my head in wonder at the words pouring out of my mouth.
There has also been a subliminal change in New York conversation. It's not so much what people are talking about, but what they are NOT discussing. It occured to me this morning that I've not heard a single conversation in nearly three weeks that dealt with celebrity gossip, personal phobias, sex, fashion, or any topic that might fall under the rubric of "self-absorbtion". The notoriously neurotic New Yorkers chronicled in Woody Allen movies seem to have hit a challenge so great that knowing which hip hop star is sleeping with which movie star just isn't interesting.
I suddenly recalled this morning something a psychiatrist in Tblisi, Georgia told me in 1997. I had just toured his mental hospital and was stunned to discover only one patient -- a nervous breakdown case -- on his wards. This made no sense, I thought. After all, Georgians had just been through two years of extremely bloody civil war, every building in the capitol was pock-marked with bullet holes, the economy was in such poor shape that many people were slowly starving and all manner of diseases were rampant. I told the earnest young psychiatrist of my confusion.
"You don't understand," he said. "Neuroses are luxury diseases. Here, we are so desperate that even the schizophrenics are out of the institutions, helping their families. Nobody has time to sit and think about how miserable they are."
When I think about this I see a ray of hope. Perhaps New Yorkers will, both collectively and individually, be better people for all the suffering and horror they are going through. Perhaps the vanities and inanities that so preoccupied this city during the 1990s will recede to a proper low priority place in the consciousness and conversation of Gotham. Perhaps we are growing up.
Be well. Be safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
