Peggy Noonan offers one of
Peggy Noonan offers one of the first of what will I'm sure be many other “six months” pieces. I've got one on tap myself.
This one is notable because it combines cloned Chinese Rabbit Men with stigmata and Tina Brown, sprinkled with some assumptions about smaller dark people and taller white ones. I'd like to find the subway Ms. Noonan rides, and give it a try—I certainly wouldn't call the N/R/W line “darling,” even on its best days. Perhaps if I rode it for 12 years and prayed the rosary the whole time, I would. I find very little of the “we're all in this together” feeling to slather around, particularly when folks are trying to cram their wide asses into spaces not big enough for them and the urine-stench of Grand Central is oozing through the open doors while the subway remains stuck motionless in the station. That's why I generally bike to work.
The life here in New York, to me, is insect life: the incessant rustling activity of other humans, close by, anonymously sharing intimate space. I'm tired of living in a box surrounded by other boxes; I'm tired of hearing other people's noise in my home; I'm tired of the loudness, the particulate pollution, the unnatural edges of concrete and asphalt. It's a certain kind of person that thrives in this environment, and I'm not that kind. I've met more people I like and keep in touch with while spending weekends in the Hudson Valley than I have while living here for four years.
And now, to top it off, my prescient imaginings have come to apocalyptic life. When I started working downtown, I would occasionally look up at the knife-edged towers and think, “What would I do if an airliner hit one of them?” I'd look around, trying to figure out where shelter would be found: under the overhang in front of the Brooks Brothers? In that doorway over there? Perhaps down in the subway station.
So, no thanks. I don't need to move to Kansas to feel safe. I just need to spend less time in this bull's-eye.
