There have been a lot (well two, but even just one seems nutso) of really spectacular, bang-up car crashes in my neighborhood this past month.

Just a few weeks ago, someone took out a fire hydrant in front of the apartment building kitty-korner to mine. The skidding crash woke me up just as my alarm went off, so I got up, got ready, and when I left to go to work, I found myself behind police lines, right in the middle of a low-budget, post-car-chase calamity scene. The car and driver had already been carted away, but a telephone pole still stuck out at a kooky angle and water geysered fifty feet up in the air where the hydrant once stood. A clutch of firemen bumbled like Marx brothers against the blast, holding up a stretcher to protect themselves as they tried again and again to get close enough to turn off the water.

A photographer had set up his tripod right in the doorway of my building and was sighing "Wow!" to himself as he machine gunned off a whole bunch of pictures. I asked him what was going on, but before he had a chance to answer, two cops zeroed in and "Ma'am"ed me until I agreed to truck on over to the other side of the police tape, stat.

Then super-early this past Sunday morning there was a terrible crime/accident right up the street. I was in the middle of a sweaty (not sexy) dream -- something about driving around in a really small and poorly ventilated vintage car with my friend-since-high-school Megan -- when gunshots, exploding flashes, and a huge crash jolted me awake. My bed is backed up against the window, so all I had to do was turn over on my stomach to see the billowing black smoke and the glow of a car fire reflecting off the buildings one block over. I could hear people screaming "Call 911!" and "Get away from the car, get away from the car!" and it wasn't long before all kinds of sirens pulled up to the scene. It was in-fucking-sane. And completely horrible: The ambulance rushed in and they got the gurney right out, but then they never left, which meant someone had died for sure.

As I took it all in from the comfort of my warm bed, I felt, and this is pretty shitty, I felt as though I was watching TV, or maybe fireworks. Even as I was thinking how incredibly sad it was that someone had just died, how the lives of an entire group of friends and family had just changed irretrievably, I was also noticing how amazing, beautiful really, the dark smoke looked against the low clouds, which were blowing past so fast, they seemed almost time-lapsed.

A little of that detachment can be blamed on my tired brain: Sometimes I actually do lie in bed and watch television (fireworks too), certainly more frequently than I lie in bed and watch real-life tragedies unfold, and part of me was defaulting to known experience ("Wait, what? Oh, we're in bed, watching things! It must be television! Yay, television!")

And sometimes things are just so confusing or engrossing, it takes time for the bad to sink it. Like the "fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens" of Philladelphia's Mutter Museum, which I found totally fascinating until I was struck by the realization that each "specimen" (oh, deformed babies, for instance) represented a devastated mother, at the very least. And then I got all nauseated and had to leave (Mars and Todd were already outside, having hit upon that realization much earlier than monster me).

I think on Sunday I was also experiencing some of that natural "life is good!" response to tragedy. Abrupt reminders of how grossly awry things can go in just one instant can make a girl feel very lucky to have semi-clean sheets, a tummy full of acceptable Thai food, and the afterglow of an evening spent accordion festivaling with a nice boy.

Then, finally, there's the plain, ugly fact that I didn't know anyone who was directly affected by what I was seeing, and that made it so easy for me to turn away and go back to sleep. Which is what I did after just a few minutes.

Even knowing that -- that most onlookers watch tragedies with sick fascination, self-congratulatory relief, or as though it's television -- the (thankfully) few times that I've been even remotely on the other side of tragedy, I'm still convinced that everyone around me is just as affected as I am. When I was riding the bus to the hospital to go visit someone I loved (and whom I didn't expect to have to go visit in the hospital that day), I felt sure that everyone was experiencing my worry and fear right along with me. How could they not be? The air felt a full ten degrees warmer with the heat of my thoughts.

But no one even noticed me. Or maybe they did, but didn't let on. I'm pretty sure that a woman sitting next to me on BART recently was crying, though perhaps it was a cold? I couldn't really be sure because the unwritten rule of public transportation prevented me from looking at her directly. Certainly no one else was looking at her. Of course it was nicer not knowing definitively because that would mean having to do or say something, or at least consider it. And who's to say she even wanted my comfort? Sometimes the soothing of a stranger only reminds us of how alone we are -- when the only person you have to turn to is a fellow BART crazy, you're at the bottom of some sort of barrel, right? A barrel going over another sort of falls? As usual, my oscillating kept me occupied until well after the point was mooted by her getting off the train, so I never had to make an actual decision. So that was good.

Fine friend Liz's stint in group therapy confirmed this suspicion that no one is listening. Week after week, a woman told the group how depressed she was, but she was a funny lady, and the way she described this black depression was with goofy little comments and insights. Month's later, another one of the groupies confronted her, "Right, but you're not really depressed," he said, "I mean, we know you said you were, but you didn't really seem that depressed, what with all the joking?" Everyone is so wrapped up in their own fears, worries, and obsessions, they never have time to dig too deeply into you and your peccadillos.

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Hey!

I'm heading to LA this weekend to see the shit out of a whole bunch of people that I love more than chocolate: Lulu (it's her third birthday! I'm hoping she blows out her candles and then pulls off all her clothes and screams "no clothes on, no clothes on" like she did last year -- there is just nothing better than a naked baby laughing and panting and gallop-hopping around a green, flowery yard, her wispy hair floating in exact reverse of her gait: down when she's up, up when she's down), her little sister, Dinah, her new baby brother, Rex, and of course their parents, Jonathan and Sophia (who do not, and this is a little weird, have a website I can link to here). Plans are afoot to hook up with pretty lady and Evany-editor Mary, ex-boy and pal since forever Jeffrey, my hott friend-from-third-grade China (by the way, the "adult woman with a childish clip on her hair" you'll see mentioned if you follow that link is me, haha), Mouki (aka Angeleno Magazine editor Alexandria) and her man, anecdote magnet Tom, and maybe even the Cooks! I'll report back with pics and stories on Tuesday. Promise!

Until then, stay cute!
e

(PS: My diary has officially moved over to my official evany.com website. Let's meet up over there!)

(PS: My diary has officially moved over to my official evany.com website. Let's meet up over there!)