Soon after moving to New York I was walking with a friend through rainy weather, and I complained that weather like this made bad times seem worse. A woman overhearing my comment chuckled at me in a way I never have been able to interpret.

The change of seasons is usually my favorite time of year in New York, but this year is different. All seasons changed on September 11. I look at that date, and those before and after, like it was my own birthday or some kind of "Friday the 13th" type of superstitious date. The date itself casts shadows on the days before and after it, spilling stories and new meaning over everything.

Last night I looked through e-mail I'd received and sent on September 10, to see what previously critical matters commanded my attention but which were vanquished into irrelevance the next morning. Such nonsense. So many strands of frivolous activity broken off and never resumed. Just saying the words "September 10th" makes me chuckle uncomfortably, as if seeing a postcard written by someone before they boarded the Titanic.

Almost 3 weeks later I find that I am just beginning to comprehend the reality of it all. We can not find the enemy, and even when we can the enemy is oblivious to our lives, to our government's threats and to our communist-era tough talk.

I am unable to quiet the screams in my head of the thousands of our fellow New Yorkers suddenly burned or crushed when the Towers went down. I repress details of the stories friends have told me of their friends -- some who died, others who escaped. I know millions of other people were physically closer to the events than I, but the voices I hear on the streets of people talking about the incident sound like mine would sound if I dared to hear myself say what is inside.

Talking to others about it makes it worse. The pain and horror chase deep into the minds of everyone I've talked to about it. Trying to let the thoughts unravel and get loose only makes them uglier and more poisonous as they mingle with the grim fears and realities of friends and acquaintances.

I overheard a man on the subway asking "Why?" and asking who would choose to do this, why would they choose to incinerate so many innocents. His voice struggled to remain plaintive and serene, his words skipped like stones across a deep lake of sadness and confusion.

Another man I overheard sounded like a child about to cry and scream and stamp his feet after not getting a requested toy for Christmas. He carried on and on with his complaints like it would bring the Towers back.

And I find myself sitting on the subway trying to disguise the fact that I am crying. Crying for precisely what I have forgotten.

I don't know if it is among the intentions of the attackers, or if I succumbed to psychological propaganda, but I find myself questioning the very substance of my life and the very idea of America.

I am not one of the chat-room drunks who blame the enemy within, or who blame the U.S. government. Blame is a child's game.

Absent any spontaneous expertise on matters of obscure foreign policy, I am not equipped to assemble tabloid anecdotes and pundits' observations into coherent analysis of these matters.

The only thing I think I know is that we can hate and cry and stamp our feet until the skies rain fire but the enemy simply does not care.

Questioning the idea of America reminds me of late 1990 when I first moved to New York. While living at the Parc Lincoln Hotel at 166 West 75th Street I heard a daytime radio program in which the host interviewed a man describing how St. Peter had been visiting a woman in Kansas and predicting that Bob Dole would be the next President. St. Peter further said that Bob Dole would be the last President of the United States, and the people on the radio show interpreted that to mean that the world would be transformed into some kind of world government based in Europe.

A few years later, during the Ross-Perot-for-president days, I remember feeling that Ross Perot's popularity and seemingly instant credibility were the manifestation of America's boredom with itself. I further felt that that boredom was among the worst of human conditions. In those days Vermont and Staten Island and other localities threatened to secede from the United States. At the time I felt that at first blush a lot of Americans wanted to see that happen just to see who followed suit and to see their own state or neighborhood secede. I always imagined Staten Island literally floating away into the Atlantic.

I am just skimming off the top of the flabby, solitary tirades going on in my mind the last 3 weeks. Most of my thoughts seem crazy, and I'm sure they are. But as of September 11 it is no longer crazy to think the unthinkable. I will buy a gasmask without embarrassment. I will write a will -- All it will say is "I leave everything to you." I will make a real effort to find happiness in my lifetime, if not for me than for some other person. I want to feel happiness from someplace besides the observer's hideout.

Yesterday I looked at the pages from a notebook I wrote in on the morning of September 11. The incoherent scrawl reminds me how terrifying September 11 truly felt. Writing thoughts onto paper seems like flimsy record-keeping when the sky is falling, but looking at my own attempt to record those moments makes me wonder why people do it. Why, when the Kursk submarine sank to the bottom of the sea, did one sailor feel compelled to write on paper his account of what happened, apologetically introducing his testimony with the words "I am writing blind"? Whence comes the primal need to document your story, to record for future generations the realities of your time on earth, and how capable is language itself of expressing these frantic expulsions of fear and desolation?