Every breath you take

Every time DC-sniper John Allan Muhammad is found guilty of first degree murder it brings back memories of the fall of 2002.

The latest conviction was particularly evocative, as it was for the crimes Muhammad committed in Montgomery County MD, where I residing at the time.

I had just moved there from New York and was between jobs. Suddenly, instead of watching the same sports highlights one half hour after the other, I was transfixed by this exciting developing story, first on the local and then on the national news. Going to the front yard to get the paper now required turning on all of your senses. Getting to and from the grocery store on foot unscathed was positively exhilarating (yet, statistically, as risk free as its always been.)

Beyond making the mundane life affirming, the ordeal gave me something to talk about with the people around me. Everyone became an expert on forensics, criminal psychology, gun calibers, box vans, and Tarot Cards. Awkward silences were a thing of the past, and, for those three weeks, nobody in the DC area was reduced to talking about the weather.

It would be impossible not to draw a parallel between that experience and something that happened to me a year earlier.

For me, 9/11 was scary for about 2 minutes. In the wake of those 2 minutes I spent a week and a half as a nomad, telling the same story over and over again. When I was able to return home, terrible things had happened to my refrigerator, there would be no taxi or subway service for weeks and FEMA decided, for whatever reason, to ignore my building when they handed out millions of dollars in relief funds to residents of Lower Manhattan, often door to door.

Of course, it would be ghoulish to concentrate on those things, with that twisted metal graveyard up the road. So, I didn't. Not necessarily because I am person of compassion, but because there was so much else going on.

For the rest of September and into October, NYC was flat out partying. There was something going on every night. I know there's always something going on every night in New York, but this was different. Nobody cared about work the next day (some people were still displaced from work,) nobody had animosity towards anyone else, people hugged who didn't hug, danced who didn't dance and sang who didn't sing. Any excess could be explained away with the phrase "if you don't do so and so the terrorists will win." At the time, it really felt like that was true.

What I ended up taking from both 9/11 and the Beltway Sniper was that life is, in fact the greatest excess of all. It's always there to turn on full speed, but you rarely do. And you still spend most your time sleepwalking, even after you've been shown the way.

We will be at the five year anniversary of 9/11 in about three months. It will be a time of remembrance. I'll also be remembering how great it feels to be alive. I recommend anyone else lucky enough to be in that boat do the same.