Tunnel Vision

Mrs. Word Player and I took in an afternoon showing of CLOVERFIELD yesterday. Good flick, smartly executed. I actually found myself biting my nails at one point. A lot has been made in the reviews that scenes of destruction in the film echo the footage permanently etched in our minds from 9/11, but I found myself flashing back to my experiences from another traumatic day in New York.

The subway is a very good setting for a monster movie scene...

August 14, 2003. The great Northeast Blackout that knocked out power for 50 million people in the U.S and Canada.

There's a scene in CLOVERFIELD where the survivors decide to flee the streets and walk the darkened, abandoned subway tunnels uptown. Aside from the monster part, I knew exactly how they felt.

By this time MWP and I had moved to Brooklyn, and I'd just landed a job reading scripts for A&E Networks three weeks prior. I got a call from my contact person Mr. RH that he had some scripts for me to pick up, so I hopped on the 4 Express Train at Nevins Street. The evening rush had already begun, and the train became progressively more crowded with sweaty people (the temperature that day was in the low 90s) as we made our way towards my final destination of Grand Central/42nd Street, just a few blocks from A&E's office on 45th.

The train goes express all the way from 14th to 42nd street, so I wasn't quite sure where we were when the train suddenly ground to a halt. At first, nobody batted an eye. Subways make unscheduled stops all the time, usually because another train up ahead is running behind schedule.

But rarely for five minutes. And never for ten minutes. The lights remained on in the car, but the air conditioning did not, and it got very hot very quickly. The conductor soon came over the PA system and told us that the subway system was out of commission, and that they were working on a fix as quickly as possible. People, myself included, were getting antsy. About twenty minutes in, we were told that the entire city was without power. That's when the crying began.

It was like Central Casting had handpicked my fellow mass transiters. A very pregnant woman. Some very old people. About fifteen or twenty 8 to 10-year-old kids, all wearing the same brightly colored t-shirts, on their way to or from camp. I kept waiting for Leslie Nielson to walk into the car and tells us there's no reason to be alarmed. As we were still less than two years removed from 9/11, everyone was speculating about whether the blackout was caused by a terrorist strike. This didn't help the people who were beginning to freak out. I tried to stare straight ahead and be very aware if someone needed my help and/or if someone was going to lose their cool in a violent way (a frequent thought of subway riders even when things are running smoothly).

At some point, the conductor assured us that the blackout was not terror-related and that a crew with flashlights was coming down the tunnel towards us and that we were all going to have to walk through the subway tunnel to Grand Central.

It was the first and only time I've been rescued.

Seventy minutes we were in there.

We were led out the front of the train, where we crawled out one of the front windows, down a ladder and onto the track. We walked single file towards 42nd street from about 37th or 38th. About every 200 yards or so was someone with a flashlight, but other than that it was almost pitch dark.

Yes, you could hear the rats running alongside you. Thankfully, couldn't see 'em. When we made it to 42nd, we were treated to the spectacularly eerie sight of Grand Central Station completely empty, lit by a few emergency lights and, as we walked further out, by the sun coming through the windows. It was one of the most exhilarating feelings I can remember when I finally walked outside onto the street and took a deep gulp of fresh air.

The streets were chaotic with hordes of people walking seemingly in every direction. Nobody's cell phones were working, so after a call to North Carolina on a payphone to let my parents know I was OK and to see if they'd heard from Mrs. Word Player (they hadn't), I decided to walk to MWP's office at 38th and 8th, about six avenue blocks west and four south. When I got there, the buzzers weren't working, so I walked up 15 flights to see if she was still at the office.

Nope, everyone was gone and the doors were locked.

photos ©mrs.word player 2003

Back down the 15 floors, the whole time thinking that the only thing I could do now was not worry about MWP and start walking the 40-50 blocks to the Brooklyn Bridge. My feet hurt and I was drenched in sweat, but by the time I got to the Bridge I started to get a sense of how bizarre this day really was.

it's not every day that cops give out drinks of water

The foot traffic was so thick you could feel the Bridge swaying gently. A look back and you could see the Manhattan skyline in the fading daylight, not a single light on in the thousands of windows. A look ahead and you saw Brooklyn Mayor Marty Markowitz shouting "Welcome Home!" on a bullhorn. Twenty five blocks later and I was home. Thankfully, MWP and her friend and workmate Mz. Art Designer had made it home long before me, snapping the pix I've posted here along the way.

By the next morning, the power was back on, but there was still one more bizarro moment to come. Our good friend Mrs. CFA was working at CNN Headline News back then, and asked Mrs. Word Player to be interviewed live on the air, via telephone, as the pictures she took during the Blackout scrolled across the screen. I sat in the other room, watching the interview live, just one closed door away from the interviewee.

Strange days indeed... most peculiar, mama!

In Search Of: Optimism

Six years ago today, a phone call woke me up for the second time that morning. The first time was when Mrs. Word Player got up to go to work, after which I promptly fell back asleep. The phone call was from a close friend who worked at CNN Headline News in Atlanta. She told me that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, that it was apparently no accident, and was asking if we were OK.

By the time I got dressed and ran up to the roof to see, a second plane had struck the towers. Words cannot describe the feeling of shock, how time seemed to slow down, and how scared I was. Mrs. Word Player called from work, and soon would return to our tiny West Village apartment with several of her workmates in tow. We numbly watched the news coverage, drank scotch, and made and fielded phone calls checking on friends and loved ones.

taken from our rooftop at 14 Horatio St. on my 30th birthday, 8/24/01

The acrid smell of smoke and scorched metal would waft up to us later that morning and linger for weeks.

taken from the same rooftop 18 days later

And of course, all of our memories of that morning will linger for the rest our lives. I'm a big fan of milestones and statistics, eras and epochs, and as I've been thinking about today's sixth anniversary of 9/11/01 I've thought about how it demarcated my own life.

From 8/24/71 to 1/28/86 I was an optimist. Until my gym class that day, freshman year of high school, when we were called back to our class and informed that the Space Shuttle Challenger had disintegrated shortly after liftoff, I had no question that the future would be even brighter than I could imagine (and to paraphrase Han Solo, I had imagined quite a bit). I was a sci-fi kid, and I was certain that in my lifetime I'd be visiting Space Stations and Moon Bases. SPACE: 1999 and The Martian Chronicles had been huge favorites of mine, and they weren't set so far into the future that I couldn't believe.

Anyway, from 1/28/86 to 9/11/01 I was a realist, with cynical tendencies. After 9/11, I began skewing more and more pessimist. No need to go into detail, but suffice it to say that I no longer saw a bright future for the people of Earth.

But wait, there's more?

NYC-based artist and graphic designer Reed Seifer (pronounced like "cipher") created his Project Optimism long before 9/11/01, but for me it has taken on a special personal meaning in the months and years since then. He has incorporated the word and the spirit of "optimism" into a variety of media and format, but the one that I thankfully can't seem to stop thinking about is his series of brightly colored buttons with the single word "optimism" emblazoned on them.

optimism!

Life can appear cripplingly complicated to me at times, and the fact that a simple button with one word on it can be so powerfully affecting comes as a great relief.

The Optimism of childhood was a gift, but I've come to realize that the Optimism of adulthood is a choice. It's not whether you see the glass as half full or half empty, it's how hard you work to add just enough to the glass that it's no longer a judgment call.