Where Can I Turn for Peace?

Abstract

Since 9/11, a blast of grief swallowed like debris from the heap of rubble and human remains on the streets of Manhattan, of the New York until then mesmerizing for its plays and Times Square billboarding of sports or perfume or long-ago Camel cigarettes with smoke blowing casually from a woman's mouth five stories high. Here, Thayne comments that this time was supposed to be a celebration place for the end of war in streets jammed with servicemen kissing jubilant girls, not the start of something called war but indefinable as the knot of despair in a psyche used to buoyancy, now amorphously ending plans to travel or invest or save for retirement. In the baffling conundrums of politics and power, he stresses that only by working on the weather of peace can people expect to nibble away at any anger in the world.