Dear Team:

I have now relocated to Big Sur. Monterey is not far and this wealthy area is the target of my money search in an era of economic slow-down and war fever in the USA. Driving along the freeway watching the cars one senses a subtle difference. The flags are at half-mast....the openness is now contracting. Fear is creating subtle boundaries.

Things will never be the same again....

There is a run on American flags in all the retail stores even as people watch the news constantly on CNN.

Things will never be the same again....

A mini-Hiroshima has hit New York. There is a material vacuum and a psychic one too. There is a vulnearabilty eating away at the global mind. The emptiness that is full and all-knowing in the open mind is now even more out of reach. Yet this is where all wisdom comes from....

Things will never be the same....

The Black Stress is descending. Everyone feels it. It's echo effect is reverberating....

It's important to feel this fear and slowly, gently release it...to see the hideous boundaries it is creating and to gently push them away and feel the openess that is always there. It is the greatest spiritual practise in town.

Here is another letter from New York sent to me by our Italian editor.

Michael

Hi Michael:

It's just still a bit unreal and very sad. Yesterday the smoke was spreading on the city and even from Queens you could smell it, it was very depressing. To think of those people that were still covered in that dark hell; then it rained all night and it was scary, to think of bodies under the thunders and the steel, can you imagine what their families must feel? I don't think anybody can.

THen there is the thought that everybody I think wants to remove, of looking to the Manhattan skyline, or simply walking happily around town, maybe in a beautiful summer morning just like Tuesday was, and not being able to see the Towers. They were a piece of heart landscape, a mind place. THey were beautiful and gigantic, a reassurance for Newyorkers. This will leave and empty space in everbody's psychology and emotions that, I believe, has not been yet foreseen.

I keep thinking of those moments when I was looking at one tower, first, and then two on fire, in the distance, with the Ocean and the Statue of Liberty in the background, against the clear blue sky of a beautiful September day. I felt lucky in a way because I could watch and remember and did not want to leave the building, the window, but just watch to try and understand what was going on. Bu the mind refuses the horror, we couldn't even realise at first that in that smoke and fire there were
people dying, or trying to live. It was simply unreal, and when they fell it was totally out of reality.

I hope politicians will work for peace and communication, for knowledge and understanding, and not for show of strength and aggression, power and anger. I think Newyorkers have already understood that this is the way, they always knew.

Just spare many prayers for all the people directly involved, that they can find some peace of body and mind.

Elisa