The Sheila Variations

Flashback of a Flight Crowd

Ramble. Follow me if you dare.

So I go out into the muggy grey streets to get some lunch. I am very very busy today, and I'm traveling down to Princeton tonight to see a friend, and so I'm kind of frazzled, and my shoulders ache.

In order to calm myself down, I have been listening to "The First Cut is the Deepest" on an endless loop. Believe it or not, it helps.

So anyway, I emerge onto 7th Avenue - just in time to see a taxi cab explode into a fireball down the block.

It was absolutely horrifying. You just don't see stuff like that every day. Things bursting into flames. At least not in New York City.

I didn't know it was a taxi cab until 5 minutes later - which felt like an eternity - because for one brief ice-pick-in-the-shoulder-blades moment - I thought that it had finally happened, my worst nightmare, the thing that I am shocked has not happened yet: a radical Muslim blowing himself up in some crowded area. I mean, nobody knew - I walked outside into the immediate aftermath. Firetrucks weren't even there yet.

The streets were packed with lunch-hour people, and everyone started freaking out. People started running. Some were running away from the flames, others were running towards the flames, to see what had happened.

The smoke was black and thick and the flames created a literal wall across 38th Street. I can't even tell you how crowded that street is, I can't even tell you how awful it looked.

I admit I went into a panic, for about ... 10 seconds. Which felt like an eternity. I didn't know which way to go. I didn't know which way would be safe. I started north, but then ... stopped ... No ... I should maybe go south ... took a couple steps ... and in the middle moments of indecision, I stood on the sidewalk, staring at the flames, wondering what I should do.

Within literally 5 minutes, the fire trucks arrived. God bless the FDNY. Also, the street was completely blocked off by cops almost instantly. God bless the NYPD. I don't know how they do it.

I heard some woman say (in the middle of my panicked: let's go north/let's go south dance), "A cab exploded."

Maybe it was overheated? I have no idea.

It was horrible, seeing those flames raging out of control along the street. Terrifying. I walked over there, and the cab was literally a blackened shell, all the windows blasted out, and the hood was scarred and blackened, and completely blown off. The thought of people being in that inferno was ... just so terrifying. I always identify. That's the thing. And that's what makes New York mentally exhausting for me. I have no separation. I cannot help but look at that horrible blackened cab and imagine one of my family members in there. I shiver. I shiver at the horrible-ness.

And that one moment of the north/south dance reminded me (and not in an intellectual way - but on a gut-level) of my first day back in Manhattan after September 11. It was that Thursday, I think. Or maybe it was Friday. I had been blockaded off in Hoboken for a couple of days, and then decided to make the trip in, and see if I could make it to work.

Now there is so much else to tell about those days - and maybe someday I will do it - so much, so much ...

But what I really remember is getting to work ... (the feeling in Manhattan was indescribable. And whenever you looked downtown you could see the plumes of smoke, and every single available wall space EVERYWHERE was covered in Missing Persons pictures ... The same was true in Hoboken, of course.)

And nobody did any work. We all just sat around and told our stories, and hugged each other, and cried, and asked if everyone's loved ones were okay, and listened to the news on the radio ...

The book Crowds and Power that I just finished talks about the phenomenon of "flight crowds": huge groups of people who suddenly, for whatever reason, start to run.

And ... I was just sitting at my desk, which looked out onto 7th Avenue, and all I can say is that my consciousness was not an individual consciousness on that day, my consciousness was MUCH wider, and seemed to encompass the energy of every single person living on the island of Manhattan. Perhaps that's the intensified feeling that being in danger will give you. I was not just myself, I was 100% aware of every single person around me in a 3-mile radius.

If one person made a sudden move 10 blocks away, I feel like I would have picked up on it.

From my desk, I couldn't even see down onto the street, I'm too high up, but suddenly, somehow, I just knew that something was going on down there. I stood up, peered out, and the street below was FILLED with people. Cars still were not running in Manhattan at that point - or maybe they were, I don't know - but people were not limiting themselves to the sidewalk. As a matter of fact, everyone was crowding their way into the middle of the street. Away from the buildings.

Without a second thought, I grabbed my stuff and ran for the stairs. I wasn't the first one, either. It felt like - psychically - spontaneously- all at once - everyone in my office, everyone in a 5 block radius, actually - stood up and started running.

Why? No reason.

It was a flight crowd.

We get down on the sidewalks, nobody can move, everyone is staring up, up, up ... looking looking looking for the danger ... terrified - I heard some security guard mention something about, "Oh, we had a bomb scare..." About 6 or 7 people standing near the security guard heard the words, "bomb scare" - I was one of them - and I stepped forward and said, "What? Bomb scare?"

Meanwhile, though, it was like things were spreading by ESP.

The entire crowd could not have heard the words "bomb scare" but it was like - I can't explain it - it spread by osmosis - and suddenly the static crowd turned into a fluid crowd. No longer content to huddle on the sidewalks, murmuring questions, everyone started running - myself included - in the same direction, for some reason. We all started running south, down 7th Avenue.

I remember thinking: Jesus. If any of these buildings explode - no way will we escape. 7th Avenue isn't wide, like Park Avenue - we were trapped in a funnel.

Maybe this sounds silly and melodramatic now. But taken in the context of those terrible days, it makes total sense. Our city was still burning, and it was still a "rescue and recover" mission at that point. It was a horror.

I then went to my favorite Irish pub and drank for about 3 hours, talking with my friend the bartender. It was 10 o'clock in the morning, when I arrived.

Every office in the neighborhood had emptied out because of multiple bomb scares, apparently, so when I walked into the bar, it was as packed as if it were a Friday night. With this wacko end-of-the-world gaeity. I drank and drank and drank, and yet - weirdly - the alcohol didn't really affect me at all. I didn't feel drunk.

When I finished drinking, I walked down to 14th Street, and volunteered at the Salvation Army for the rest of the day. My eyes burning because of the air down there. Tears in my eyes, as homeless people walked up to the volunteers and gave us paper cups, or a blanket. I mean, obviously rich people were coming up, too, having bought a truckload of bottled water to donate, and stuff like that - but it was the people who obviously had NOTHING to give - and who still came up and gave stuff - which KILLED me. KILLED me. There was one little old black man, in filthy clothes, who came over to our area, stood in line for 25 minutes, all to give us one small bottle of Poland Spring.

You just can't even talk about stuff like that.

Posted by sheila