78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



The Seriousness of Coincidence
2003-08-15   12:00 a.m.

I figured it was just Rutgers' inability to pay their electric bill.

It wasn't.

I spent most of this morning laughing over exams again with the people I like most and have become pretty good friends with at school - Amanda, Paul, Frank, Jen, Kevin.

Then I saw my favorite person who kindly brought me the tickets I had left on our kitchen counter this morning, and then sweetly invited me out for lunch at a pub around the corner from school.

I kept checking my watch, since I had to be back by 4 pm to meet another friend and make it down to Penn station on time for the 4:15 train. She suggested we go inside to use the potty before trekking it down the streets of Newark to get to the train station.

My favorite person told me he loved me very much, gave me a big hug, told us to have fun and be careful, then drove off.

We went into the building and lingered outside the second floor bathroom. There was no reason for this lingering, it just sort of...happened. Finally, I suggested quite randomly that we go to the sixth floor bathroom instead. She shrugged and said OK. We were in the elevator, and hit five instead. Neither one of us questioned the other why.

As we stepped out of the elevator, the lights flickered and popped. My friend headed to the bathroom, and I noticed that the elevator suddenly stopped working. The floor number signal flashed over and over again. This was my first inkling that things were not ok.

I shrugged it off anyway, and told my friend through the bathroom door that I'd go to the mailroom and check her mailbox for her. Then I proceeded to sit down.

She came out, and said "Ok, ready?"

I stood up.

"Did I get any mail?"

I sat down.

"I forgot to check."

We went into the mailroom, and lingered some more. Since we were supposed to meet another friend at the 33rd St. station and then take a train uptown to get to Central Park, we should have been rushing.

"The phones are out!" One secretary yelled to another. The hallways went dark and then the eerie buzz of emergency lighting came on. I had heard that buzz before, at a time too traumatic to relive.

My friend and I walked back down to the first floor, all bluish white from the back-up lights. Most students had scattered, and the ones with panic on their faces I assumed had just lost something on the computer, since the school seemed to have lost power.

I decided once we were out of the building to move my car, from one parking lot to another directly across the street. On my way there, I was stopped by a random student. I told him I didn't have time to talk, that he was slowing me down, that I had someone to meet. I let him talk anyway.

I moved on and into the parking lot, got in my car, and pulled out toward the exit.

There was a mail truck blocking my way.

I got out and asked him to move.

"Can't."

Excuse me?

"The gate won't go up - the power's out."

Fine, fine. Leave the car then. We're gonna miss the train.

I crossed the street after re-parking my car in the same lot, and stood next to my friend.

She looked at me, I looked at her, and we started walking.

"Power's out all over Newark. In Kearny too," she said.

We started walking to the train station, in the completely wrong direction.

There were no traffic lights, and sirens everywhere. More people than I'd ever seen on a Newark city sidewalk, including during the parade. More cars on the street, including during that major snowstorm in February.

"Wait," my friend said after a few more blocks. "We're walking the wrong way."

We both knew the way. We'd walked it a thousand times. I can do it in dreams on auto-pilot.

We turned around, then turned back. Then turned around again.

We'll go to another station, we thought. By this time, we missed our train anyway.

The station was crowded, teeming with people. Everyone was on a cell phone. Some waiting in line for the pay phone. A lone train sat on the tracks, a few feet from the platform, on a bridge high above the street. There were people in side. Lights were flashing all over the train, but it didn't move.

My friend and I went into the station, but were quickly directed out by a cop.

"Nothing?" was all I could manage.

"Nothing here. Or in New York. Or in Connecticut. Or in Ohio. Or in Canada".

We turned around, walked out. My heart raced faster and faster. My friend's face got red and sweaty. We pushed through to the street, headed back to the school. I looked around, but kept moving. Sunlight poured through a fence, creating a peripheral strobe for me. I thought the lower half of my line of vision started to get fuzzy. I can't get a migraine now, I told myself, I can't because my friend cannot drive a stick, and we have to get out of here.

There were no planes in the sky, I noticed then suddenly. No planes at all. No plane sounds. When else was I a half mile from the airport, and neither heard nor saw any planes?

*

So maybe it was just a bolt of lightning, some natural occurrence. Maybe it was not. It made us feel our vulnerability again. It made the panic that I thought I smothered to death a few years ago rise up in me again. My mind started racing. Andrew's in the city. He was taking the ferry. My brother, Susan, Jen. All in the city. They have to get out. I have to get out of here. There could be looting. A bomb. An explosion. At the tunnels, river crossings. On the bridges, they'll cut the wires. On the runways, they'll shoot missiles at landing planes. They'll kill us all, and I can't use my cell. Can't call my husband. My new husband, who I'm just starting to know. I can't call my friend, my dear friend who is waiting for us somewhere in Manhattan, maybe on fire as I think this.

The fuzzies got worse.

We pulled each other dumbly, stumbled back to the cars, squeezed out of Newark traffic and onto a highway, back to my mom's. Power there. An impromptu power-is-out party. Loved ones safe. Me safe. Husband playing with my hair. Friend came back on a ferry, waited in a line 400 people deep, and somehow made it back.

So it was nothing, but it brought back something in all of us we like to pretend we never even think about anymore, because as they told us so long ago when our fears were more legitimate "We all must move on and put the past behind us". Easier said than done, apparently.

I love New York. I never want to leave. Doing this every time the power goes out, there is a traffic jam, or I see many flashing lights ahead of me in the Lincoln Tunnel might take years off my life.

I'm still watching, out of the corner of my eye, even now, to see - if what we're afraid of is true. I wonder what will happen tomorrow?

Tomorrow, we catch a flight out of Laguardia and get out of here for a few days. NOLA apparently has plenty o power - I'm counting on some beignets and live Jazz to shake this crippling fear loose. I hope the Garbage trucks come late tomorrow - any loud noises in the next few hours will probably make me start crying.

Cheers to getting through this day with no looting. Maybe mayor not-rudy is right: New Yorkers can handle crisis like it's going out of style.

See you next week,

T