i woke up early friday from the anxiety and couldn't get past the racing of my head to sleep again so i went to the living room and switched on the gymnastics news of gold medal interviews and was soon back to dreaming. a bit later, i don't know how much, i woke up to someone laying on the horn out the window. i had a quick flash of a decommissioned face planted in a steering wheel, but i let it go considering that the flatbush traffic is backed up past my door most mornings and honking. i got up to shake a futile fist and found that the on and off of the day's sleep had left me in a thick grog approaching drunkenness. i stumbled hard to the window to find not a human in sight -- bizarre considering that i live directly above the subway entrance and usually look down on an ant farm -- not a car on the street, and not a sound in the world but that rude horn and the crackling of two story flames engulfing an access-a-ride mini-bus illegally parked so perfectly across the street that, framed in my window, it looked like tv. it was terrifying and surreal and i was overwhelmed by fear, which i realize is redundant, but terrifying and surreal are thrown around so carelessly these days and i was sincerely profoundly afraid. there was black smoke thick enough to completely obscure the buildings across the street, no evidence of a driver or foul play and the fire burning more and more out of control. windows popped and i was sure i was dead. finally my head got with it from the adrenaline and i grabbed a camera. took one picture. and with the click, the whole scene hiccuped back to reality. firetrucks raced up, the column of smoke was gone in under two minutes and the skeletal heap was dragged away. the ants came back, marched past the charred curb and down to the subway without a second look or thought of the violence they'd missed. my viking funeral for five years in park slope ending. then i went to work and got bored all day and that's it.
DOWNLOAD: The Traveling Wilburys - Congratulations [mp3]
(thanks for the link, andrew sullivan!)
4 comments:
great photo.
cry.
Look at all those strollers burn.
I had a similar (yet not so picturesque) situation a few months ago. I live in a townhouse community, about 1 mile from a firehouse. Sunday AM, coffee still brewing, siting in the kitchen window reading the comics (I can't handle anything harsher until I've had my coffee).
Sirens in the background. Getting louder. REAL loud. I go outside to see what is up, and it was flames. A car was burning in the front of another building, flames about 15 feet high. Firefighters put it out in about a minute.
I'm not quick on my feet without my coffee - no pics. Darn.
We later found out 1) another minute or two and it would have reached the gas tank; and 2) the car owner's ex-boyfriend, recently kicked out of her house, decided to firebomb it. (He's now serving 2 years for that.)
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