WASHINGTON

Only five weeks ago, we inhabited a paradise of trivia, wallowing in celebrity, consumerism and cosmetic-surgery advances. Now we inhabit a paranoia of trivia, worrying about potential mortal threats in everyday actions — opening a letter, getting on a plane or train, going to the mall or a football game.

When I was little, my older brother used to play classical music for me.

The record I loved best was Rimsky-Korsakov's romantic "Scheherazade," about the young Islamic woman who spellbinds an Arab sultan with 1,001 tales. The record that frightened me was Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain," the surreal celebration of evil during the night of the Witches' Sabbath — so vividly animated in "Fantasia."

The lord of evil and death, swathed in a dark cape, stands atop a jagged peak, as ghosts, witches and vampires swirl up to pay homage. At dawn, the church bells drive him off and the spirits return to their graves.

More anthrax scares popped up on Friday, from Tom Brokaw's office to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and St. Petersburg Times newsrooms to the State Department to a Microsoft office in Reno to an L.A. movie studio (it was a sign of the times that envelopes of white powder, once redolent of partying in Hollywood, now reeked of plague).

America has entered the season of the witch.

From his jagged lair, Osama Bin Laden was summoning up a swarm of demonic creatures to invade our brains. It will take more than the power of good, or the power of bunker busters, to knock this lord of evil off his Bald Mountain.

Maybe terrorists were responsible for the spewing of spores — some real, some hoaxes, some still being analyzed. Or maybe it was the work of tormented spirits who, according to the F.B.I., have been inspired to mayhem by the jihad. Either way, it plays into bin Laden's diabolical plot to infiltrate our subconscious.

Only five weeks ago, we inhabited a paradise of trivia, wallowing in celebrity, consumerism and cosmetic-surgery advances. Now we inhabit a paranoia of trivia, worrying about potential mortal threats in everyday actions — opening a letter, getting on a plane or train, going to the mall or a football game.

America was singularly unprepared to go through a season of the witch. We were optimists, a big, bold S.U.V., Sex-and-the-City society, confident in the security that our geography afforded, flush from the 90's, happily absorbed in the secondary questions of existence.

There were awful things — Waco and Oklahoma City and Columbine — but no primal threats that forced us to turn to primary questions of life and death: Whom do you love and who loves you? What would you grab if you had to run from your house or office? Whom would you designate to raise your children if you died?

The president, an Andover cheerleader, was doing his best to pull the nation out of its despond. He was suddenly engaged, on top of the issues, reflecting our pain and puzzlement. His message was, by necessity, schizophrenic. "Our nation is still in danger," he conceded on Friday, adding that we had to get on with our lives, to shop, travel and play.

But how could we? There was news of frightened New York Times and NBC employees getting tested for anthrax. And there was Tom Brokaw calling this "the ultimate nightmare" and becoming emotional, on the "Nightly News," about his assistant contracting the disease. "This is so unfair and so outrageous and so maddening," he said. "It's beyond my ability to express it in socially acceptable terms."

The president urges us not to be "cowed" by terrorists, even as the vice president worries that they may be spreading these plagues.

Antidepressant sales are soaring, and people are drinking and smoking more. Beyond that, we will need to toughen up and learn to be alert but not inert, to go about our business and pleasure while we are in a wigged-out state of apocalyptic readiness.

The president says the government is "responding as quickly and as forcefully as we can." And we trust that the government is trying. But any idea that there was a federal firewall has been shattered. So we're flying blind on a lot of things we've never encountered before.

We were living too much in the present when the terrorists struck — we were not ready to be attacked from the inside, not ready to overcome turf fights and identity crises at the C.I.A. and F.B.I., not ready to fight a spidery global war with medieval brutes, not ready to take on the hypocrisy of Saudi Arabia and Egypt on terrorism, not ready to combat bioterrorism.

So now we have to live too much in the future, on watch, even though we're not sure what to watch for.