New York is Again Ground Zero. And Again, Americans are all New Yorkers. [View all]

[TygrBright]

(With the obvious exception of that Orange Florida Man, of course.)

I'm remembering some of my 9/11 thoughts about "Why New York?"

To a lot of people, New York is quintessentially America. Big and diverse, full of life and creativity, commerce and innovation, wheeling and dealing, entertainment and fashion.

Tourists go there. People looking for excitement and variety go there. People looking for opportunity go there. People looking for a stage to perform on, people looking for a stage to watch.

New York is to the vast narrative of America as "Hamlet" is to English literature... it's "full of quotes". Stuff everyone knows. The punchlines of the jokes, the accents, the Five Boroughs, the pols, the parks, the glitter and the grit.

Yeah, some of us want no part of the hustle and the bustle, but we love to look on from afar, we love to tune in on New Year's Eve and enjoy Times Square, or watch the late night shows with their quintessential New York datelines. We're proud of it, proud that the world comes to New York for business, for diplomacy, for entertainment, for inspiration.

Some of us grumble that America isn't like that, not at all, really... the "heartland" is bigger, yanno, has more people... just because those New Yorkers get all the attention, doesn't mean they speak for all of us. Some of us paint New York as the Great Babylon, the seat of All That is Wrong with Godless America... but there's probably more than a little protesting too much in that trope, too.

New York isn't the heartland, for sure.

But as I felt after 9/11, it is America's big, beating, lively, perhaps a bit hypertensive, but vital and all-embracing heart.

I remember that feeling, after 9/11... a sort of awed and proud and sorrowful discovery, as if the blow had landed in a place I'd never realized the importance of, to me, personally.

New York, New York... again the epicenter of an American disaster, again brought on not so much by its own big, brash Obvious Target status as by the incompetence and uncaring folly of greedy fools in Washington.

Just want you to know, Manhattan. Just want you to know, Queens, Staten Island. Just want the Bronx to know, and Brooklyn...

I love you. You matter to me. I gotcher back. You're my peeps.

The lights of Broadway and Times Square may be dimmed for now, the streets no longer a-bustle as you fight for survival.

But you are still that big, bright splotch on my mental map of America.

My heart is with you.

Keep fighting.

Your fight is our fight.

Live, dammit.

determinedly,
Bright