Weird weekend here in Manhattan.
New York City: Day 216
It’s going to be a weird post, too. I can feel it.
Last night, I was supposed to be researching Rabbit Hole, but that led me to reading about Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf which really meant that I was going to spend my time reading about Virginia herself. I was deeply engrossed in the Dreadnaught Hoax– in which Woolf and four of her friends dresses as “Abyssinian princes” and tricked the Royal Navy into showing their flagship, the Dreadnaught, to the visiting “royals”– when I heard it. Three hollow, loud (for lack of a better word) booms.
My heart jumped into my throat. I’m not a particularly skittish person, but there’s something about walking by the World Trade Center site on a daily basis that will put a girl on edge. After my initial tension, I was quick to remind myself that this city makes strange noises. And it does. But as soon as I looked out my window and down onto the street, I saw people just running. Then a voice on a mega-phone was yelling, “Get out of the streets! Get out of the streets!” In seconds, there were a dozen police cars and fire trucks at the intersection of William Street and Maiden Lane. I was looking down at them. They were all looking up.
Then I remembered earlier in the day when I’d been intrigued by the massive crane right outside my window. I remembered thinking that I’d almost gotten used to seeing the men doing facade work on my building coming and going outside my apartment on the 14th floor, but to see a giant metal structure just feet from me where one hadn’t been hours before was still surprising. It all clicked when I realized the crane wasn’t there anymore. I learned that it had fallen into a residential building.
The collapse alone was scary. Then my roommate came home and started telling me about the rash of crane-related deaths that have hit the city in the past few years. Three buildings in the here Financial District were evacuated last night just incase the crane fell which might just cause a building to fall into another building. I was awake until the wee hours of the morning watching the efforts to right the crane. At one point, a few NYPD vehicles appeared that each had large rafts attached to them. Rafts. Really, guys? Though I waited to see how rafts were going to aid in the situation, sleep got the better of me.
This morning, there’s no more yelling, roads are opened again, and the police, their rafts, and the crane are all gone.
So, after a frightening evening, I’m back with Virginia. She fascinated me for awhile, but this is the first time I’ve really read in-depth about her life. Strange, then, to find out just a few hours ago that today is the anniversary of her death. Sixty-nine years ago today, she filled her pockets with stones and walked into the river. She was a brilliant, though troubled, woman. Here’s to Virginia. Who’s afraid?
Yeah. I could feel that this was going to be a weird post.
Everything is a little bit peculiar right now. Or, at least, that’s my sense of things. I’m trying to figure out why I feel this way. Maybe it’s because Spring decided to come to Manhattan, but then she abruptly left. Or maybe it’s because I’m playing a series of particularly dark and tortured characters at the moment. Maybe it’s because I have to move out of my first New York apartment in about a month and that prospect is a little daunting. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that I saw a show on Friday night that consisted of three naked women performing in and around a giant bowl of soup.
I think spring just needs to come back to us.
