But the best reference point for this charged, attentive atmosphere is the period immediately following 9/11, when the reeling, traumatized city seemed to grow temporarily gentle in its shared shock.
"I kill you, I kill you Daddy!" he rattled, unfazed by our shared shock.
I am sharing shock and sadness and a sense of something like dizziness with many of the best people I know as we figure out how to react to this hole torn in the world.
I still find it shocking that democracy was so openly subverted, and even more shocking that so few others seem to share my shock.
Two boys weeping on Copacabana beach seem to share this shock at blundering out of innocence into a scale of tragedy they simply can't deal with.
Anne Uchoa, 43, a Frenchwoman who is married to a Brazilian, felt she needed to come to share her shock and pain.
These are not Luddites or fogeys, they are not enemies of business or of the new, but they share simple shock at the thoughtlessness with which change on this scale is happening.
"We share the shock and profound sadness which has been expressed by so many people around the world and as Parisians we stand in solidarity with the people of Paris and of France in uniting against these acts of terror.
AFTER Sept. 11, R. J. Julia Booksellers, which takes up 6,000 square feet in two buildings in Madison, a town of 16,000, became a kind of town square where people could share their shock.
"I share the shock of almost everybody at the depths to which the media have sunk" was the universal refrain as blame was piled onto Rupert Murdoch and his leading acolytes.
