And … No, just numb.

Today’s bombings in London took me completely off guard, because they were almost too expected. I found myself meeting a lot of new people recently – largely non-New Yorkers – and telling my 9/11 story, over and over. Sometimes I wonder if our lives are actually being written by some second-rate novelist with a penchant for foreshadowing and double-entendre.

As my friend fretted to me from Mexico, I remembered a conversation I had this week with one such friend. I said something along the lines of: I’ve been in the thick of this — I was a short walk from the towers when they fell; my mother worked in 2 World Trade; a friend of mine lost his father, a chef at Windows on the World; I was relocated for three weeks when my school was turned into a triage — and this is still not my war, this is still not my cause.

I think of one friend, a lovely and talented singer-songwriter who recently returned to England and another friend who just got back from Cambridge. I’d be willing to bet that this is not their war, either. And so maybe my numbness is just the opening stages of anticipation:: I’m tingling to see the smug mugs of Bush and Blair, brimming with “We told you so”; I’m anxious to learn which of our civil liberties will come under attack in this round of the Western World v. “Islamic Fundamentalism”; I am atwitter to hear the enraged and violent threats of my normally reasonable, peaceable friends, reduced to hate by way of fear. I just can’t wait.

But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited about my sparsely attended on roads and rails this morning.