Yesterday, at 2:00 sharp, the wind blasted across our windows with such a tremendous thrust that it sounded like a howling beast had landed on our terrace. The sky, looking dark and dangerous for days, showed no change in color or temperament, but the angry wind descended on us like a thing of prey. When the wind hit some people were still out and about with last minute shopping for food stuff and dog walking.
But then in the middle of all this early chaos, from somewhere nearby we heard a man shouting. At first we could not hear what he was saying until we listened more closely and then we heard that he was preaching. There was damnation, fire and brimstone in his sermon. From time to time the wind swallowed his words, muffling his warnings of the end of all our days. He stood on the street corner pleading for the unconverted to come to Jesus. And then the wind and pelting rain must have been too much for him, and the only noise we heard was the howling wind.
Most of the stores in our area were open for only a short time yesterday before the storm winds hit, and then the shop owners quickly pulled in carts and advertisements, securing them behind locked doors. A few vehicles traveled the streets, but we are not far from a major fire and police station and we heard plenty of sirens as the emergency teams headed downtown to do their rescue work. A huge crane on top of what will be, when it is completed, the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, was bent in half and now dangles precariously 1,005 feet above 57th Street. The wind ripped off the entire facade of a four-story apartment building somewhere in Chelsea. The rescue teams had plenty to take care of last night. It was all on the TV news, the streets flooding in places that were thought secure, exploding power generators causing fires and lighting up the sky like a Forth-of July fireworks display. Yes, and then there were very serious and sad things that happened to people up and down the Eastern Coastline. I suppose that’s kind of the way life is some days. But we went to bed, read for a while, checked our e-mail, a friend from California called to see if we were okay and we turned out the lights and went to sleep.
Then about 2:30 in the morning, the wind had died down quite a bit by then and a stillness hung in the air as though I awoke waiting for something. That’s when I heard her. At first I thought I might be locked in a strange sleeping-wakefullness. I thought I was dreaming. And then I heard her again. A meso-saprano singing as she walked up the street. It didn’t last very long and I supposed she must have been walking quickly, for I only heard a few notes before the concert was over and the night became quiet again.
The morning brought a quietness to the neighborhood. It was like everyone had stayed up far to late the night before and were now, in this early hour, groggy and perhaps exhausted from yesterday’s ordeal. Dog walkers ambled along the streets with hounds in-tow. Some merchants were open for business while others, like the two restaurants across the street looked like they might not open until dinner. I decided to take a walk, heading for Central Park where I found that barricades were in front of all the entrances to the park and that no one knew when the park would be opened. “Maybe tomorrow, or perhaps,” the guy standing guard at one of the entrances, said, “the day after that.”
It was the trees that caused the most trouble in our area.
This car was parked next to a perfectly healthy looking tree, except that this giant oak was rotted out in the middle and could not hold its own against Sandy’s winds.
The scaffolding alongside a building fell onto this poor unfortunate car.
There was no telling what tree or what car would fall prey to the winds of Sandy.
Parking in Manhattan last night was like playing Russian Roulette with the life of your car.
This car owner did not have much damage to his car, but this poor fellow is not going very far until he gets the vehicle out from under this tree limb.
This is a dark street of destruction.
And across the street from where one of the cars sits trapped under a tree, a trio of goblins quietly watches.
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