“…everyone thought the same thing. Terrorists.”

I had planned on writ­ing some­thing about this this morn­ing, but th New York Times beat me to it. How do they get in my head so quickly. The quote that is the title of this entry comes from an arti­cle in this morning’s paper, as did the pho­tos. For all my far off pals I want you to know that my life was wholly unaf­fected by yesterday’s blast, which was in fact caused by a faulty steam pipe. I found out about it late at night when I did my evening check in with the Times on my iPhone.

We’ve come a long way as a soci­ety in the past 6 years since the attacks. We’re much more on edge than we were before that, and I don’t really think that’s such a bad thing. New York is dif­fer­ent though. People seem to for­get that, while America was atacked on 9/11, New Yorkers were hit harder than any oth­ers. Of course I was liv­ing in Richboro at the time, and I haven’t even been here a year, but there is a very dif­fer­ent vibe in this town on the sub­ject of ter­ror­ism. In most of the coun­try ter­ror­ism is a wholly aca­d­e­mic con­cept, to be dis­cussed and con­sid­ered and feared, but gen­er­ally in the way that com­mu­nism was feared in the old days. I know I’m gen­er­alzi­ing, but hey, it’s my blog.

I remem­ber dis­cussing the attacks on 9/11 with friends who lived in Seattle. Our per­spec­tives were so diver­gent because our expe­ri­ences tht day were more dif­fer­ent than I had imag­ined. I grew up in a ton 15 min­utes from Ternton, New Jersey, where one could hop a train and be in Midtown an hour and 20 min­utes later. And if you’re mak­ing New York money, the half mil­lion dol­lar man­sions nearby were a steal com­pared to Long Island real estate, so many of us had fam­ily work­ing in New York. My father worked in Long Island at the time and I remem­ber think­ing “what if he had a busi­ness lunch down­town”. Meanwhile, my friends on the west coast had a much more detached view of what was hap­pen­ing, rec­og­niz­ing the hor­ror but not real­iz­ing it.

This city has seen a lot in th last 6 years, and each and every time some­thing hap­pens, we are forced to believe it is ter­ror­ism until some­one tells us oth­er­wise. We’re alert, but we haven’t stopped liv­ing. And that can’t be bad. I was sur­prised when I moved here to notice the Israeli con­cept of “Chofetz Chashud”, or sus­pi­cious object, trans­planted to daily life. On trips to Israel, guides will usu­ally tell you if you see a bag or a box or pack­age sit­ting by itself that you should walk to a per­son and say “Excuse me, is that your bag?” If the answer is no, and no owner can be located, imme­di­ately tell an offi­cer and the bomb quad comes in. With the area cleared a lit­tle robot det­o­nates the pack­age. I have few friends who’ve lost bags and cam­eras to that lit­tle robot for stu­pidly leav­ing their shit behind. Back to NYC, on the sub­way there is now an announce­ment that runs on loop every now and again, say­ing if you see a sus­pi­cious pack­age to tell a police offi­cer. I don’t know if they have a det­o­na­tor bot yet though. And of course, there’s the NYPD’s anti-terrorism slo­gan: “If you see some­thing, say something”

I want to be clear that there’s noth­ing wrong with hear­ing an explo­sion and think­ing “Oh shit, we’re under attack and I’m going to die.” as many did yes­ter­day. Look at the pic­tures and you’ll see, the fear was legit­i­mate. I’m sim­ply fas­ci­nated by the world we live in and felt like throw­ing my two cents. And for those of you on the left coast who may not read my favorite ragsheet, the NYTimes and this is the first you’re hear­ing about it, it is a big deal. Apparently shit was pretty nuts. At least one per­son died and many were injured. Just read the arti­cles. the use the words “crater”, “spew­ing” and “hail”. Scary shit in the big apple folks.

I’ll talk about movies another time kids.