It's hard to capture the overwhelming sense of dread, confusion, and grief that permeated every moment that followed the shared national trauma of Sept. 11, 2001. So much of what we take for granted now was born that day: the 24-hour news cycle, the endless chyron doomscroll, the perpetual state of paranoid hyper-focus sprinkled with a healthy dose of exhausted resignation to forces bigger than ourselves.
Much like the past two years of pandemic living, there was the unspoken question: When do we get back to normal? It was a question that transformed into something broader, more existential: What does "normal" look like now?
