Thursday, September 11, 2003
By Paul Ford
Looking at it two years out.
The blackout ended up being a good thing. We, or at least I, figured out that we could take another breakdown, another falling
apart if we had to, that the world could end a little and things would keep moving.
It's still as if some massive hand came at downtown with an ice cream scoop. They've got the lights up now, and I find myself
thinking, of course, of that week after, flying home. Walking past the smoking wreckage, and later, circumnavigating the entire
scene, thousands of feet of fencing, arc welders cutting down the last few remaining stories. So many familiar things gone.
2 years later I guess I understand a little more about the frailties of architecture and a little less about human beings.
The world seems to be bound on a path towards more of the same, slipping steadily into miscommunication and escalation. I
am sensing what it will be like to feel that giant hand again. How are we so like a gross and spoiled child that believes
it can have whatever it wants without consequences? And how much we lash out blindly when hurt, throwing rocks across the
oceans, attacking what we can when we can't reach our attacker.
PEEK
Ftrain.com is the website of Paul Ford and his pseudonyms. It is showing its age. I'm rewriting the code but it's taking some
time.
FACEBOOK
There is a Facebook group.
TWITTER
You will regret following me on Twitter here.
EMAIL
About the author: I've been running this website from 1997. For a living I write stories and essays, program computers, edit
things, and help people launch online publications. (LinkedIn). I wrote a novel. I was an editor at Harper's Magazine for five years; then I was a Contributing Editor; now I am a free agent. I was also on NPR's All Things Considered for a while. I still write for The Morning News, and some other places.
If you have any questions for me, I am very accessible by email. You can email me at ford@ftrain.com and ask me things and I will try to answer. Especially if you want to clarify something or write something critical. I am
glad to clarify things so that you can disagree more effectively.
POKE
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Contact
© 1974-2011 Paul Ford
Recent
@20, by Paul Ford.
Not any kind of eulogy, thanks. And no header image, either.
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0h30m w/Photoshop, by Paul Ford.
It's immediately clear to me now that I'm writing again that I need to come up with some new forms in order to have fun here—so
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(1) When robots write history we can get in trouble with our past selves. (2) Search-generated, "false" chrestomathies and
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(May 9)
Bantha Tracks.
(May 5)
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