In other words, you constantly compare what you've become with how you used to be and feel with a passion the obvious truth of that old song: they said don't change the old for the new, but I've found out this will never do.

In some ways, these are idle worries — a natural part of getting older, not an experience that's exclusive to my life. To put it more bluntly: isn't ruminating about missing a sense of oneself some coquettish show put on to stylise oneself as the ever-fashionable outsider, too elusive and ethereal to be tied down to one place, geographically and intellectually? 

I became aware of the dimensions of my irritation only when I returned to New York, for a short trip during which I was to meet young writers and intellectuals living there.  

The week I went back happened to be the week Special Operation forces killed Osama bin Laden. While I was living in Palo Alto, and later New York and Washington DC, 9/11 still determined the country's conception of itself. It shaped the atmosphere, from the various "threat levels" that were announced at airports to the uncomfortable feeling you got when you saw a plane flying a little bit too low over the skyline. Now, almost ten years later, it wasn't as if the country had changed overnight. 

When I arrived, I had just missed the night-long spontaneous celebrations at Ground Zero and elsewhere, and there was a sense of confident calm in New York. Americans seemed relieved, not happy, at the death of the terrorist. Just as President Obama had called for in his speech, when he spoke calmly of Americans "coming together" in the weeks after 9/11, the atmosphere was one of restraint. 

The message was simple: "The United States has, at long last, dealt with Osama bin Laden. Dealing with his legacy will pose a greater challenge," wrote David Remnick in the New Yorker.