I spoke to him about the extreme fragility of life, while he continued to play on mute, his eyes staring straight ahead.   I emphasized the importance of remaining vigilant—so that one didn’t miss the warning signs when they came. This kind of talk always made him laugh.

“Even if you stayed awake all day and all night and did nothing but look out for possible life changing events, you’d STILL miss something. You can’t be everywhere—all the time.”

He suddenly switched the console to Netflix and began scrolling aimlessly through the new movies.  His ADD was acting up.

“You’re trying so hard to understand 9-11 that you’re missing the whole point: 9-11 is about not understanding. It’s about how real change has very little to do with so-called progress.”

“But what if there’s a way to stop the next one?” I said, “What if we’re being given clues that will give us more time so that we could go to the media and hit the internets and let everybody know? Don’t we have an obligation to find out as much as we can?”

“The only obligation we have in this life is to die.”