Dark City

The wake of superstorm Sandy has provided the world with devastating images of loss of lives, homes, submerged cars, wrecked businesses and coastline destruction of the Northeast.  

There are also many who have lost much less, yet four days later, are having a very tough week.

As the news media has shared, thousands of people across the greater metropolitan region are without power - lights, water, heat - and basic connectivity with the outside world through phone or other electronic devises.  Uptown, life is as it was a week ago, unchanged.  Downtown it's the 19th century, with hundreds of thousands of people traveling nomad like many blocks north to charge phones, get water for flushing toilets, visiting ATMs, eating, sitting in warmth for a few hours, then returning home before nightfall. It's devastating on a wholly different level to look across the harbor and see the bottom half of Manhattan in the dark, like the heart of darkness in Gotham City. 

Some friends in Manhattan and New Jersey without power I've stayed in touch with via quick texts and facebook posts.  When you read the posts you have a sense of them reaching out from the abyss, and you can almost feel the pure desire to connect, with somebody, anybody, even through the cold and impersonal nature of facebook.  You can imagine how cold and lonely it must feel, and scary too when winter darkness arrives at 5pm and the light has drained from the day, and there's many hours until bedtime.

No one really wants to complain. They feel bad about it, they know this is temporary, they haven't lost their home or a child or a husband - and they know they live in the 21st century, in a first world country, in New York City aka "The Center of the Universe" no less.   They intellectually know that millions of people all over the world have to walk miles for water, never have electricity, heat, indoor plumbing, hot showers.  Still, this is not what we are used to here, and it's really very difficult to sit in your home at night, in the cold and in the dark, and try to remain positive. 

A close friend in TriBeCa who has been living in Dark City with her husband, teenage son and sick dog, sent a joyful text and image today - a Duracell truck parked in Lower Manhattan giving away free batteries and charging stations for all people who needed it.  She and her husband walked across the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon to come to Brooklyn Heights for grocery shopping, showers, phone charging and hugs and we proclaimed Duracell PR heroes and that we'd never buy another brand of battery again. 

Soon the time came for them to leave, to travel back to Dark City before night fell, to walk the dog, take care of their teenage son, and then sit in the dark and try to sleep.    She sent another image walking across the Brooklyn Bridge of Manhattan Bridge and said how scary and lonely it was to walk across the bridge in the dark.

Everyone is hoping that power will be restored by this weekend, and eventually flooded subways will be drained and functional, and soon we'll be back to 'normal.'     In the meantime, a lot of people are trying to remain positive, and waiting for our bright lights to return.