Should I Stay Or Should I Go?


by Dean Olsher

Here's the photograph I wish I had taken on September eleventh.
Returning from the supermarket with 90 dollars worth of food and bottled water, batteries and candles, I saw the smoke from downtown forming a black rainbow over my apartment building, directly over the heads of people sitting at the sidewalk café below my window - eating, drinking, laughing. As if it were just another sunny Tuesday in September.

This was just incomprehensible. I was tempted to head back into the store to buy a disposable camera, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Now, I wish I had, but at the time, I just couldn't.
At the time, I just kept wondering if I should head to Grand Central and get out before it was too late.

This was the first of many times I found myself asking: what IS rational thing to do, anyway? Stick it out here, or flee the city for the illusion of safety somewhere else?

After all, I remember thinking: if I were a terrorist, the next thing I'd do is hit someplace rural, to send the message to Americans that they can run but they can't hide.

My parents have always felt that the decision to live in New York is in itself irrational. They still think it's dangerous and dirty, and so sure enough, my mother took the opportunity send an e-mail saying: "Maybe it's time to leave? Think about it seriously, please."
She sent the e-mail October 19, six miles away from the mail distribution center in south Jersey where anthrax turned up.
If I were to move just a little farther out, to southeastern Pennsylvania, I could be REAL close if someone decides to fly a plane into Three Mile Island.

People keep saying the city is irrevocably changed. I keep HOPING it is, and yet I look around and wonder, what's different? I suppose there are the people who have left in fear. That's a tangible change. But to be honest, New York is getting back to normal, and while that seems in some ways like the rational thing to do, there's another way in which it seems absolutely crazy.

People talk about taking the opportunity to take stock of our lives. For the longest time, I couldn't bring myself to use the word "opportunity" in this context. It's just too close to, well, "opportunism," and there's been enough of that already.
I think of it more as an "imperative" ... to decide what really matters. I would love to see tangible evidence of change for the better.

Instead, the reality shows on TV are more sadistic than ever and it's still too expensive for average people to afford an apartment and people still can't sock away money for the future.

Although I suppose, given the way things turned out, saving for a future this uncertain now seems pretty irrational in itself.
There is one thing I never thought I'd see: posters at bus stations urging people to go to therapy. That's something.

I moved to New York because I wanted to feel more alive than you do elsewhere in the country. But it had been getting harder and harder to do that. The making and the spending of money seemed to elbow out all of the things that made it so life-affirming in the first place.

Now, with the threat of death so close, here's our big chance to feel alive.

I'm sad for the people who left. They're missing out on this incredible - all right, I'll say it - opportunity. I mean, it's just avoidance, right? That's not rational at all.

And the people who stayed and drank and ate and laughed. More and more I'm beginning to think that they had it right.
So I'm sticking it out here. Staring danger in the face and feeling alive again. And falling more deeply in love with New York every day.

Dean Olsher 2/28/02