Pas sur la Lune

She worked for a firm called the Grief Management Council. Grief was not the founder’s name; it referred to intense mental suffering, deep remorse, extreme anguish, acute sorrow and the like. The number of employees varied, sometimes radically, from month to month. In its brochures, which Pammy wrote, Grief Management was described as a large and growing personal-services organization whose clinics, printed material and trained counselors served the community in its effort to understand and assimilate grief. There were fees for individuals, group fees, special consultation terms, charges for booklets and teaching aids, payment for family session and marital grief seminars. Most regional offices were small and located in squat buildings that also housed surgical-supply firms and radiology labs. These buildings were usually the first of a planned complex that never materialized. Pammy had visited several, for background, and the photo she took for her brochures had to be severely cropped to eliminate the field of weeds and bulldozed earth. It was her original view that the World Trade Center was an unlikely headquarters for an outfit such as this. But she changed her mind as time passed. Where else would you stack all this grief? Somebody anticipated that people would one day crave the means to codify their emotions. A clerical structure would be needed. Teams of behaviorists assembled in the sewers and conceived a band of futurism based on filing procedure. To Pammy the towers didn’t seem permanent. They remained concepts, no less transient for all their bulk than some routine distortion of light. Making things seems even more fleeting was the fact that office space at Grief Management was constantly being reapportioned. Workmen sealed off some areas with partition, opened up others, moved ou file cabinets, wheeled in chairs and desks. It was as though they’d been directed to adjust the amount of furniture to levels of national grief. 

– DeLILLO, Don (1977). Players, New York: Vintage Books, pp. 18-19.

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