You might expect this post to be about 9/11. It isn't really. I didn't go to Ground Zero like I did last year because I had a series of nightmares as a result. This isn't so much about that. It's about Wall Street.
I never thought that the world could feel like this unless lives had been lost. But all I know is that I am surrounded by, inhaling, and wading through a sludge of panic and despair. Yesterday there people crying on the subways. It's everywhere. I'm pulling it into my lungs and choking on the tension lodging in my throat. For some people it really is the end of the world. For most, especially outside the cities, they'll go on in relative oblivion. They'll have to deal with the consequences but mostly they'll just know that the world right now is bad.
My friend Jimmy works for Lehman Brothers. Or at least he has been and will continue to for the next month or so. He'll be one of the last to go because they still need all the tech guys to disassemble their empire. Diana and I took him out last night to try and get his mind off things. I felt the apprehension hovering in the room, but Jimmy said he wasn't worried. He's young, intelligent, has a nice resume, and very marketable skills.
Everyone else was worried though. Some of you remember the atmosphere in Zenica after 9/11. How the situation was so strained that it was exhausting just to be there. It's like that here now. I can't believe that it's possible. I'm not worried for my life, and I'm not going to be discriminated against, but because it affects the people in New York so directly, and because I see how it could affect my future, it's very similar. It's dismal and draining.
I'm mostly writing this because I hope the angst can transfer and release through the words. I don't feel better though. But I'm also writing so you know. Unless you're here or someone tells you, you can't know. So I'm telling you.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
7 years later
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1 comments:
Thank you for posting this. I always appreciate hearing what you are thinking about and how you are doing, but this post, as you expected, was very telling for me (as someone outside the city). I was a pic on the front page of CNN's site of a woman in front of her desk with her head down in her hands - obviously devastated. I wondered, "big corporations are failing, why is CNN showing a pic of a woman, and why is she, by definition not a big corporation, so personally upset?" I had to think it over. I suppose I understood, somewhat, as I gave it some though, but I still wondered, "are there lots of people out there like that? No one around here seems phased by this." Thanks you your post, I have a feeling that there are many such people, in the worlds financial centers.
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