Book of Souls
Page 6
But one thought might bear repeating.
We're no longer a city of cynics.
New York has always prided itself in being the most sophisticated town in a pretty sophisticated nation. We Manhattanites are generally not fools and we certainly don't suffer fools gladly. We didn't come here from all the way across the river or across the country or across the Big Pond to be hornswoggled or fucked with.
In fact we can usually spot who's attempting to fuck with us before they even get their pants down. It's a good thing, a virtue peculiar to us and well worth cultivating in the nation as a whole I think. Some will say we're so adept at this, at spotting the con and shuck because we're so good at the con and shuck ourselves and I won't argue that. We are, after all, the birthplace of Madison Avenue. Be that as it may, we New Yorkers have learned to use this to our defensive advantage. It's a rare Manhattan writer, for instance, who gets screwed by a Hollywood contract. And no New York native, to my knowledge, has ever once bought the Brooklyn Bridge.
But sophistication and a don't-even-think-of-messing-with-me attitude should not be confused with cynicism and as I pointed out at the party, we've been confusing them here in the City since the end of the last war in which a great many Americans lost their lives. Vietnam.
If you think on it, there are some pretty strange-bedfellow similarities between the Vietnam Era and the one we've just embarked upon. And a major one, for me anyway, is that the fires of cynicism, such as they are, are being pissed on from some very high places.
My Websters' defines cynical as scornful of the virtues or motives of others and contemptuously and bitterly mocking.
It seems interesting to me that we're actually giving our leaders a chance these days. Even those who, before September 11th, wouldn't have had a prayer in New York City public opinion. Think Bush, Guiliani. Not that Bush doesn't still have to prove himself but we've reserved judgment on him for now—unusual in this city. We are not immediately scornful of his virtues or motives at the moment and there's been precious little contemptuous and bitter mocking that has made its way to me. It's almost as though—dare I say it?—we want to trust him and his cabinet and coalition to somehow make sense of this mess and do the right thing.
Trust politicians? To have the right motives and do the right thing? We haven't seen that attitude since the days of George McGovern, Clean Gene McCarthy—and among the hawks if not the doves—Lyndon Baines Johnson.
If you're old enough to remember at all you'll recall that the sixties and early seventies were years packed with fervent idealism. Whether you were a hippie or an SDS type—that's Students for a Democratic Society for you youngsters out there—a member of the NAACP, a Black or White Panther or a card-carrying member of the VFW or NRA you cared. You cared pretty damn passionately about where the country was going and what it was doing. And to whom. It didn't matter which side you were on, if you were sliding a daisy into the barrel of a National Guard rifle or if you were the poor kid carrying that rifle in the midst of a scary crowd, you knew something important was going on. Either you were directly involved yourself or somebody else near and dear to you was, some son or daughter slogging through the paddies in 'Nam or getting shot at Kent State.
Caring. What a concept.
And we care again, finally.
It's been a long time between drinks.
~ * ~
I think the reason then as now is that we only seem to give a damn when we feel at risk—whether morally, physically or financially. Disco may be long dead but its what the hell, who cares what time it is? what's your name again? gimme some of that coke spirit has lived on in its high-stepping vapid way straight through into the millennium. That spirit, if you can call it spirit at all, was laid to rest on
September 11th and I don't think I'll miss it one bit.
Because the other great similarity between then and now is that not only do we care but we actually seem to care about one another. We've at last been reminded that we're not alone in this Big City nor even on the planet. To me, the eighties and nineties were terribly lonely. Not that I felt alone in any active way but I was. We all were. We walked and rode around town, played and worked within a very small extended family in this enormous place and that family was composed of individuals very much like us—in financial and social status, in ethnicity and goals and expectations for the future. We felt secure and protected by these myriad small human surrounds. Safe, each within each. But we now know what writers—horror writers in particular—have been warning us of all along. You aren't safe and protected. Not from anything. Ever. All these surrounds are illusion. And you really don't want or need them either. All they do is dull the spirit and dull the heart.
If you need for some reason to drive this point home for yourself, try reading the biographies in the New York Times of all the World Trade dead.
They came from everywhere.
They died in one place only.
And we, all of us, seem to care very much about that. About strangers.
It's about time.
~ * ~
There's an old saying—there's always a little bit of heaven in a disaster area.
You need to recognize it of course, to see it clearly for what it is or else it'll elude you. But maybe that's the other thing the World Trade Center should remind us of—a refresher course if you will and bought at an awful human price—the renewed knowledge that that little bit of heaven is, in all probability, walking right straight toward you right now, right out here on the street. It's embodied in someone you've never met or even seen before but with whom you share just about everything that matters.
Recognize that. Smile and say hi.
—November, 2001
"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage."
—Bertrand Russell, 1927
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Since writing this Bush and Guiliani have of course reverted to type.
We trust them accordingly.
I was on an island in Greece when the Trade Center went down and the woman I'd been living with for over thirty years was working for Morgan Stanley in the South Tower. I was alerted to the first hit and watched the second one live on CNN. For four hours I was completely sure that she was dead. That I'd seen it happen. I'd seen her die in, flames.
I was wrong. She'd gone down the stairs with the rest of her co-workers almost immediately after the North Tower was hit. She'd survived.
But I didn't know that at the time.
Standing there in front of me at this small Greek cafe watching it live on CNN was a young woman of whatever nationality and indeterminate age who must have heard me sobbing behind her and who turned and smirked at me as though to say, you fucking Americans. Seated to my right was an older German woman, probably in her fifties, who asked me what was wrong and when I told her, took my hand and said, she'll be all right. She got out. You'll see.
I still feel grateful for that woman. And still feel sorry for the girl.
JK, December, 2007
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BOOK OF SOULS