Thoughts in the Dark
by J. Daniel Janzen

This week, New Yorkers took to the streets yet again.

It couldn't be more different from terrorism. It wasn't an enemy attack but a system breakdown, and that's our bread and butter. It was an opportunity to rise to the occasion, man the barricades with beer in hand, put on our New Yorker hats. And this time it was an easy one, untainted by victimization and tragedy — we'll handle it ourselves, no help needed from Pataki or the Feds. ("Re-modernize the grid," fumbled President Bush at his most somber, amid words like resolve and grateful and lesson.)

Bars overflowed, candlelit bodegas emptied their inventory onto stoops, rooftops and fire escapes. People met their neighbors — the ones they didn't already meet two years ago — while radio voices and music echoed up and down the block. On the Brooklyn Bridge, a slow-moving party began that would last well past midnight.

Drunks directed traffic until the orange-vest brigade arrived, each perhaps having a tiny personal Sept. 11 moment. The customary thousands were stranded in elevators, tunnels and tubes, and passed a terrifying few sightless hours straight out of Stephen King. Picture these desperate souls, emerging at last from the green-railed staircases, drenched shirts plastered to heaving chests, eyes and hair wild, blinking at the fading light through clenched fingers.

Mayor Bloomberg (remember those early months when we called him Mayor Mike?) boldly called it for nightfall, creating TV movie-level expectations among more than a few New Yorkers caught in a rare moment of unguarded trustfulness. Still, he did well enough answering every possible question at interminable press conferences, smooth and substantive in command of his junior varsity crisis. One reporter referred to him as "Giuliani" more than once. (More of a compliment to which man? Two hundred words or fewer, winner gets a free bottle of emergency water).

It wasn't even remotely our fault this time. Islamic extremists may see it as a smiting, but a lightning strike at the Canadian border is as snow day as it comes. Gaslights burning in brownstone districts and mounted police gave the twilight a timeless quality.

In the absence of much solid information beyond the all-important "not terrorism" message, talk, news and traffic stations filled time with raw speculation and "Where were you when the lights went out?"-type fare. WNYC's emergency generator lasted less than an hour, leaving its staff to anchor by cell phone — for shame, those of you who enjoyed "A Walk Through Brooklyn" but switched over to ESPN during the pledge segments!

Police Athletic League kids on a field trip from Brooklyn to the Bronx gave a hectic account of a subway evacuation, though the same reporter later admitted that most of the other extractees were perfectly calm. Another correspondent reported drivers at the Brooklyn Bridge rolling up their windows at their supplicant fellow citizens like so many squeegee men. Perhaps chastened by this public calling-out, a later cohort of automobilists was seen throwing wide its doors to the crowd.

A family of eight set out on foot from a darkened Times Square for Westchester County, including a 6-year-old girl, an infant and a pregnant woman. Out of nowhere, these out-of-town Joads were picked up by a relative in a roomy van, one of several such "miracles" recounted. Everyone got home eventually, everyone got his or her story told.

Then what?

Even the airiest apartment was sticky warm by dark — dark except for the light from Jersey City, which leered fully lighted across the harbor, avenged at last for the cruel upstaging of its July 4 fireworks grand finale by the still more awesome overture of Manhattan's salvo. And by then all the WNYC guys had left to talk about was how weary they were. The sound of sirens was constant now. At least there was no smell of concrete dust and smoke this time.

The stars were technically out, but it was hardly the Milky Way, not even as many as you'd expect to see anywhere else on an ordinary night. Each beer was more tepid than the last, and the frozen fruit was quailing in its duty of keeping the breast milk cold. Cold pork chops wwre fine (what possessed her to cook two extras last night?); cold Parmesan grains less so. The room smelled of paraffin and defrigeration. Surely we weren't expected to sleep in this.

Let there be light.

E-mail J. Daniel Janzen at dan at clownyard dot com.