Commentary

by Rena Silverman

Don't you just hate it when cranes collapse in front of your face? what's that you say? I'm making it sound like it happens all the time in this city? Well of course it does, silly! Two times in three months defines the word "often," just the way two makes a collection. I've been walking umbrella-in-hand, in case there are any future, surprise crane showers.

On Friday morning, my brain was pretty sure it was taking my body to work. I looked at the crane, as I always do in the morning, and sort of wondered to myself when it was going to crash and if it did, would it land on my building? Well, my dear imagination, schooled in the comedy of the apocalypse, was  forced to reconsider the daily site as a terribly tragic, down-right need to RUN. It was hard to make the switch; the fireball of impact was exactly as it should be, and the cracking waves of dust that barrelled all over my own street were so absurdly familiar--I had seen and heard them way too frequently in other forms, (ie, September 11th), that I found myself in a cloud of evaporated frenzy, trying to sift through the different yellings, most beginning or interrupting with, "GET OUT OF THE BUILDING." Not that my instinct was any different, believe me, I grabbed my cats and went for a run.

One day later, I am able to return to my evacuated apartment (because that's really where I want to live right now in the death-midst of wreckage). But nonetheless, I am safe.

I want to take a moment to thank the New York City Police Department for their sympathy when I peppered their ears with babble and whine.

But more importantly, I want to thank the Written Word for allowing me to write instead of say what I'm about to relay because i am boiling below the belt. My question, is simply this: If the Stonehenge has existed for the past 5000 years without a stutter in stance, and if the theory is that with time comes development, especially in Urban areas of supposed decorum, how did something built HERE not even make it 3 months??  Do I seriously have to go into a whole rant on Tensile Strength? Post and lentil construction? THE MEANING OF GRAVITY? I mean, Einstein would pull his white-wired hair out!

The main point, and I do have one, is that this whole thing is a mere tragedy, and if it happens again, I have a bag full of threats.