A Wake

I like to think that most people who got caught up in that bellicose hysteria experienced the attacks as a spectatorial event, as unreal, and so their reaction was also unreal--like the "payback-time" montage in an action film or the impotent revenge scenarios we play out in our heads. It wasn't until I actually went to New York City a week after the attacks that I understood how empty and inappropriate an emotion anger was to bring to the circumstances; it was like picking fights at a wake.
--Tim Kreider