I’m not sure why the tenth anniversary of 9/11 seems so much more significant. Certainly the media has paid attention every year in between, and provided the coverage; the city of NY has dutifully lit the memorial lights aimed skyward from the foundations of the towers every year; and the gathering of dignitaries and ordinary peoples of the world has crested every September 11th, since the “9/11”. Perhaps ten years is the minimum unit by which we measure the “long term” in the sense that its half a generation, about the time it takes to build a city of a million people in China these days, and the unit that was used to challenge America to put a man on the moon - in other words enough time to have built, changed, improved on a scale that is discernible, tangible within both our mundane daily routines and our personal and collective understanding of what is possible for both good and bad.
This particular milestone of ten-years-on also has emotional weight that seems disproportionate to all the previous anniversaries. About September 8th I found it impossible not to find significance in every bit of music, every day that was overly cloudless, every act of human interaction that didn’t contain significance. It’s made me think of my friend Warner with whom I shared an office after knowing him through our years of business school, our subsequent work at different companies and then our working together at a hedge fund. Although he didn’t succumb to a collapsing building, fire, or choking on debris, I wonder if his depression wasn’t worsened in a profound enough way that eight months on, in May of 2002 he took his own life, jumping from his 22nd floor balcony. Leave it to Warner to do of his own accord what people felt was their only, futile attempt at taking control of a hopeless situation and leaping by the hundreds from the burning towers. I’ve also given great thought to my other close friend at the time Angelo, whose Hedge Fund was no doubt mortally wounded after the post attack market sell-off. In a moment of sheer stupidity, lapse of judgement, and no doubt already under pressure from the post-dot-com selloff of 2000-2001, he made a mistake that no man ever should: to abuse the trust of others. He’s been on the run from the law since 2004. 9/11 didn’t make Warner and Angelo do anything - but I sure wouldn’t mind having my friends back….in whatever small way those events changed the course of their lives in the wake of their actions and 9/11 itself I’ve come to know this:
1) There is no greater power than that of inspiration. Whether its the non-sense of Osama Bin Laden inspiring 20 kids to run the “panty raid” for the ages (to borrow the phrase from my friend), or that of my two now-gone friends that changed my life in so many positive ways before their demise. These days around this special anniversary the dual nature of inspiration (for our collective enrichment or impoverishment in our human endeavors) seems self-evident in the minutest of things around us. Our personal responsibility is almost too much to bear - I know I haven’t been sleeping…
2) I am desirous of a curse upon those that would seek to destroy their fellow man for an idea. May you and your multitudes suffer for your thoughts and deeds. Cynical proclamations and equivocations are your only fodder and you’d seek to destroy where you feel powerless to create. Try harder…seems that 10 years on, true courage might finally be working for the brothers and sisters you supposedly killed 3000 of my neighbors for.
3) My notion of what people call American Freedom has changed a great deal. I think most people from reading recent posts still equate this concept with doing whatever suits you whenever it suits you as long as it doesn’t detract from the Freedom of others. And while this is a worthy, simple and conceptually pure ideological notion, my recent experience and the experiences of my childhood inform me otherwise. I think the greatest gift of American Freedom is that of being free of the cultural baggage non Americans carry. Consider a supposedly “free” Western European citizen: their minds are a jumble of real-life-impacting prejudices, practices and cultural norms which weigh down their every action, nevermind what goes on in Asia, Africa, South America, etc. How productive would we be economically, technologically, culturally if we constantly had to mind the “protection” of our ancient sensibilities. America does exactly what should be done with all that…hit the ignore button and waive the bird to anyone that mouths off (one of my favorite New York City behaviors). The proof is in the pudding folks, as they say: for a country only 200 years old (a child in global civilization terms) we’re the source of the greatest output of you-name-it…oh and somehow (my politics notwithstanding) we’ve managed to elect a black man to lead us, where those that supposedly use more “mature politics” on a global scale can’t seem to find anyone that doesn’t resemble a relatively pink, dark haired for the job. America’s crisis today is that of a confusion of a downtick in our sense of self with that of an overall loss of our stature.
And now for my 9/11 story:
“…the top of the world trade center just blew up”, was what my wife said to me on the phone, and the real-time down-bar in the market charts certainly verified that something had happened, but then again cause and effect are not easily connected in the markets, so a walk downstairs to look down 6th avenue seemed reasonable to see the damage first hand. There was no TV coverage of the events about to unfold yet. Standing in front of my office building looking downtown the smoke coming from the north tower was certainly evident in contrast to the clearest sky I’d ever experienced living in New York City. Ever the optimist, I started back to my desk concluding some engineering calamity had occured. However, by the time I was riding the elevator up, a co-worker was saying “the second tower was hit”. Clearly, his use of the word “hit” made an impression since the haze which descended over me had obscured the identity of the co-worker in my memory and I was singly focused on being back at my desk. By now, CNBC had gathered footage of the hole left in the side of the first World Trade Center tower being hit. At this point I was still hopeful, and misguided by the lack of perspective that the focused TV image of the burning hole broadcast, that it was an errant Cessna, not unlike the B-25 that managed to crash into the Empire State Building in 1945. The co-worker was simply thinking of the first plane “hit(ting)” and was wrong about a second “hit”, I had hoped. But by now, looking at the charts on my screens the markets were indicating a “lock-limit-down” situation, meaning trading would not begin on time at 9:30. Clearly the markets knew what I was hoping to be false, that in fact, something beyond an accident was going on, and my co-worker was probably right. Walking down the halls of my office I asked out loud “what the hell is going on” to which one of my older more steady-handed coworkers replied “the pentagon just got hit by a plane”. I didn’t need to verify, I grabbed my partner Warner and told him, “we’re out”. Whatever consequences we’d be dealing with were unlikely in my mind at that point to be markets and trading related and we began walking to my apartment in Columbus Circle. I tried calling my wife back but by now circuits were overwhelmed for both land and mobile lines. Her offices were on Vesey Street, on the far side of the block that stood between her offices and the World Trade Center. The starkest visual memory of that walk was of men and women in their work suits huddled with the homeless who at that moment had the only functioning mode of electronic communication: the handheld radio; a relic, that suddenly was the only means of update and had the power to pull together people that otherwise strictly observed the NYC street code of avoiding one-another’s personal space and eye contact. Moreover, they were speaking to one-another and they understood. At my apartment, we turned on the television and I asked Warner before going downstairs to look for my wife, “what should we do”. Without missing a beat he said “have a drink” - that drink was one for the ages: cleared my head and steadied me long enough to go down, find my wife who’d been walking home for the last two hours, we’d spend the next half day weaving our way out of Manhattan to Angelo’s house where we’d spend the next three days in fear of returning. It was the last drink I ever had with Warner, it was the last time I was at Angelo’s house.
