A Japanese magazine called the other day to ask me how well the city was coping six
 months after the attack on the World Trade Center.

I told the reporter that we were getting back to normal. She seemed pleased.
 Clearly, something was lost in translation; "normal" is the last thing I want to
 get back to.

I explained to her that like most New Yorkers, I was caught in the torrent of
 emotion after the Sept. 11th attack, convinced -- like we all were -- that New York
 would not only be rebuilt physically, but reimagined spiritually. Somehow, we would
 overcome more than three centuries of preoccupation with business and vanity to
 actually build a better community.

For a while, New York was actually being reinvented. Thousands of everyday heroes --
 from the brave souls who rushed to Ground Zero to the less-heralded people who gave
 blood, loaded supply trucks or raised money -- asked not what their city could do
 for them, but what they could do for their city.

This abnormal behavior continued for weeks. New Yorkers -- who learn to cauterize
 their emotions if they are to have any hope of just getting through the day -- were
 finally willing to bleed.

Our newfound sensitivity was noticeable on the suddenly less-mean streets, where
 drivers voluntarily yielded the right of way to pedestrians. Crosswalks stopped
 being a hostile game of "chicken."

It was noticeable in the easy manner in which New Yorkers actually struck up
 conversations with strangers, as during big snowfalls, when barriers miraculously
 vanish. For a brief time, New Yorkers even accepted the embrace of our fellow
 Americans and put aside the prevailing sentiment, expressed best on a popular
 t-shirt, "Welcome to New York: Now Go Home."

But these changes proved illusory.

Perhaps it has to be that way. This has always been a city obsessed with the
 business of the living, not the remembrance of the dead. Natural disasters have
 always been seen as simply an efficient way of clearing land for further
 development. New York has always paved over emotions under fresh cement. 

So now, the process of getting back to "normal" is well under way. We are, once
 again, coarse and hostile to complete strangers. We will yell hateful things at
 someone else for committing the transgression of merely brushing against you on the
 subway. And the amount of time that elapses between the instant that a traffic
 light turns green and the moment when the driver behind you starts honking his horn
 is back to its original split-second.

By comparison, I prefer the abnormal New York.

--30--

gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net