world events

realized I wrote the day of the London bombings and didn't mention a thing about them. It was intense to be in NY - there was talk everywhere. The paranoia was palpable. Signs on the highway -- every mile or so -- urged motorists to report suspicious activity. People were skittish about public transit.

At the site of the twin towers, a Japanese man (president? visiting diplomat?) was having a much-ducumented visit to the hole in the ground. It's full of water, surrounded by gray concrete agape with unused water ducts and a high wire fence. The Japanese contingent were on the other side of the fence.

There isn't a whole lot to see. Catwalks. People. There are a few old postcards that showed the pre-9/11 skyline, a few notes form people who had something to say about the bombing, its aftermath, or the state of teh world today. That touched me. This collective grief about events outside our controls. Perhaps that's what fuels American do-goodism: the desire for restitution for being so rich and successful. So unbelievably pampered and spoiled. And yet so listless and lost.

Read Nick Hornby's How to be Good on the plane yesterday. It's good. Disheartening and damning but accurate. Life is long. Strange, but I don't think it's going to get much better. Or, maybe, life really is what you make it.

Alex and I had a hard time traveling together. I don't like to move around so much when I travel. Long drives. New hotels. Bad food. We had all of that, and got on one another's nerves.

I met his parents. They liked me. Why is it so much easier to like other people's parents than our own? Odd, really.
OK, back to work.