power, fear
In the months following September 2001, I had the same nightmare over and over:
I have just landed at the airport; I'm finally home; my parents are there to pick me up. Suddenly, all the power goes out, we learn that the radio stations etc. are no longer on air, and it somehow becomes clear that something terrible has happened to the city. We are suddenly horribly afraid for my brothers, and we begin to try to find a way to get home somehow, not knowing what we'll find there.
That's it. Nothing really happened onstage at all. But it was a very effective nightmare nonetheless.
One night during those months, I awoke in my apartment in Oakland at 3:30 or 4 AM to find I had no power. That is, no lights, no radio, no clear idea of what was going on. I couldn't stand it; I couldn't get back to sleep until I'd called my mother (already awake at 6:30 or 7 her time) just to ask whether anything awful had happened. It hadn't, of course.
So I guess maybe it's progress that when the power went out at 4:20 or so this afternoon while I was at my parents' house in New Jersey, I thought first of the circuit breakers- but as I found it was not just the house, not just the neighborhood, but even the New York radio stations that had lost power, I could feel the point of a thin icicle of fear slipping easily into my brain. My brothers were at work, in the city....
And, of course, there was nothing to worry about. Just some lightning, a power outage, an inconvenience: we'll have to reschedule the dinner we planned to have at Mike's restaurant tonight; I'll have to sleep here tonight instead of returning to my own apartment; Chris will have a long walk home. No problem. A little adventure.
How I hate that my mind leaps so quickly to disaster now. Why do I have such an excess of fear- and such a dearth of power?
I have just landed at the airport; I'm finally home; my parents are there to pick me up. Suddenly, all the power goes out, we learn that the radio stations etc. are no longer on air, and it somehow becomes clear that something terrible has happened to the city. We are suddenly horribly afraid for my brothers, and we begin to try to find a way to get home somehow, not knowing what we'll find there.
That's it. Nothing really happened onstage at all. But it was a very effective nightmare nonetheless.
One night during those months, I awoke in my apartment in Oakland at 3:30 or 4 AM to find I had no power. That is, no lights, no radio, no clear idea of what was going on. I couldn't stand it; I couldn't get back to sleep until I'd called my mother (already awake at 6:30 or 7 her time) just to ask whether anything awful had happened. It hadn't, of course.
So I guess maybe it's progress that when the power went out at 4:20 or so this afternoon while I was at my parents' house in New Jersey, I thought first of the circuit breakers- but as I found it was not just the house, not just the neighborhood, but even the New York radio stations that had lost power, I could feel the point of a thin icicle of fear slipping easily into my brain. My brothers were at work, in the city....
And, of course, there was nothing to worry about. Just some lightning, a power outage, an inconvenience: we'll have to reschedule the dinner we planned to have at Mike's restaurant tonight; I'll have to sleep here tonight instead of returning to my own apartment; Chris will have a long walk home. No problem. A little adventure.
How I hate that my mind leaps so quickly to disaster now. Why do I have such an excess of fear- and such a dearth of power?