Tonight, trying to decide whether to watch the start of the ABC docudrama or the end of the Manning Brothers quarterback duel on NBC, I found myself remembering the night a few weeks after 9/11 when somebody at my newspaper found what might have been (but wasn’t) anthrax on a desk. The LAPD came over and, rather than throwing everybody out, it quarantined the place, locking everybody in.

Everybody at work was frazzled and tired from the insanity of anthrax scares that appeared to bleed out of the World Trade Center attacks, and I kept thinking of the word “madness,” thinking about it almost like a chant—if I repeated it enough, maybe it would go away. Madness…madness…madness…madness...

Lacking an immediate work responsibility—just wanting to go home and unable to do so--I found myself typing, desperate for catharsis, on a blank computer screen:

Every time I kiss you I’m convinced that it’s the last Time I’m ever gonna see you, ‘cause there’ll be another blast ‘Cause some stupid motherfucker had to make a point ‘Cause he couldn’t get his way, ‘cause his nose was out of joint All I think about are caskets when I see those flags unfurled Kiss your ass goodbye, there’s a madness in the world Madness in the world, madness in the air A billion little particles floating everywhere But it’s too late to say you’re sorry, too late to bolt the door Kiss your ass goodbye, there’s a madness in the world Half the world is crazy and the other half is scared When it comes to dying, they’re religiously prepared They cross the street on red lights, they don’t look the other way So confident they’re never gonna make it through the day They used to love to greet the dawn, but nowadays they hurl Epithets at sunrise; there’s a madness in the world Madness in the world, madness in the mail Buy another gas mask in case the first one fails But it’s too late to say you’re sorry, too late to bolt the door Kiss your ass goodbye, there’s a madness in the world

After a couple of hours the cops were convinced it was OK for people who wanted to leave the building to exit. I heard the word with every step I took down two flights of stairs: Madness…Madness….Madness….Madness. I laugh now at the disproportionality of that word--at how “madness” would be pitifully insufficient to describe what would later befall us, from casualities to casual torturing to tortured intelligence reports. If the collective experience of the first month after 9/11 was “madness,” what state of insanity do we find ourselves in now? What’s the word? What's beyond madness?

The Colts are killing the Giants. I think I’ll watch the docudrama. Maybe the right word will come to me. Until it does, I'll be watching with the rhythm track playing in my head: Madness…madness…madness…madness....