Welcome to August 14th.
I remember it like it was yesterday...just making the train...the train stopping...the sweat soaking through my gray pants, creating little splotches of dark gray on a background of lighter but darkening gray as the air conditioner turned off...the panic that was the subtext of the shared silence on the packed subway car...I remember the air thickening like gelatin, and my breath becoming cautious and more measured, as if oxygen might not last...I remember the deafening thought that terror had struck us again, and that we were among the cellular-impaired and trapped underground...I remember my writing my way through it, staying centered on the page instead of on the situation, diffusing my panic and delaying hyperventilation and averting something my doctor once called 'a vasovagal syncope' but which online experts would likely prefer to term 'situational syncope'...
I remember not knowing what it was or how long it would take before we were rescued...if we would be rescued...I remember sitting in silence with others, as sweat dripped audibly onto the floor of the subway car...I remember the bits of information we received...and how we learned we'd be evacuating through the front of the train and onto the track to the platform, hugging the side of the subway tunnel and stepping blindly ahead into darkness...then up a ladder and onto the street, nine blocks from where we started...
I remember emerging from blackness into light...feeling the sun and air on my skin for the first time in two hours...I remember the tears, suppressed while subterraneanly imprisoned, sliding down my face as I tried to catch my breath and not hyperventilate...I remember sitting on the ground in Lincoln Center as people looked at me, sweat -soaked and grimy, as I cried...and I remember picking myself back up again and walking the twenty blocks, fighting emotional collapse every step of the way...
I remember arriving at my building and realizing how incredibly dark things were without any lights...I remember stumbling through my door, peeling the clothes off my body and climbing into the shower...I remember standing there under the water, cold as it was, letting it wash the trauma from me...
I remember packing a bag with some clothes and candles...I remember heading out to my brother's apartment, not knowing if he and my sister-in-law-to-be were there...I remember walking into their apartment to the sound of laughter of friends who had gathered there...I remember feeling safe for the first time in hours that had felt like days...and again, I cried.
When the first anniversary crawled around a year later, I thought to myself, "damn, if only I'd blogged that..."
(And this just in, Tokyo's dark. And it's not an homage.)
Very vivid, trapped in the subway. At least you didn't have indigestion.
Makes me appreciate the 'burbs, where we think hardship is having to sit through 2 changes of the traffic light.
Posted by: | August 14, 2006 at 07:01 AM
Luckily I had just come back from camping in Costa Rica and so was not working and was not used to electricity. I was living in Brooklyn and everyone brought their candles and battery-operated radios out to the stoops and also the booze from their no-longer-working refrigerators and we had a party. Mr. Softee trucks, and the middle eastern place and the pizza place with wood-burning ovens were the only places to get takeout, and as people's cell phones ran out of juice, my apartment became a phone booth for the neighbors since I was one of the few people who had an old, non-wireless phone not requiring electricity.
So, the blackout - scary as it was for those caught on the subways - was a bonding experience, too.
Happy Anniversary.
Posted by: Lubes | August 14, 2006 at 07:20 AM
That was beautiful and sad Esther. Very visceral post.
Posted by: Petitedov | August 14, 2006 at 07:48 PM