Ka-Boom

It started like a thunderclap but then it didn't stop. Our offices, with their million-dollar views down Park Avenue South, provided a frighteningly good view of the roiling smoke clouds billowing over the skyscrapers from what turned out to be a steam pipe explosion, but we did not know that at 6 pm last night. After a few frozen moments gaping at the skyline, my colleague and I agreed it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

Evacuations are flustering. Do I turn off my computer first? Should I put on my running shoes? Do I have my house keys? No, no and yes. Saying a quick prayer of gratitude to the fashion gods for decreeing that ballet flats are in for 2007, I hightailed it down 23 flights of emergency stairs to the street.

Controlled chaos. One woman was crying, but most people were heading away from midtown, trying to get their cellphones to go through, asking police officers for updates. A woman I passed was broadcasting her phone conversation with her mother in New Jersey to all within hearing distance: "The news says it's a transistor explosion or something. It's not terrorism. A building did not collapse."

I was due to meet Michael way down at the South Street Seaport for a show an hour and a half later. Having no idea at that point whether the subways were running or if this would bring all of New York to a halt for a few hours, and not wanting him to be waiting there for me with no idea of when and whether I would turn up, I called his office to track him down ("In a bar, naturally," I chided teasingly. "For work drinks with the new recruits!" he defended himself.)

The show did indeed go on - we took the west side subway lines downtown and made it in time to catch Absinthe at the Spiegeltent. (Think avant garde cabaret meets low budget Cirque de Soleil, with a healthy dose of Las Vegas by way of Williamsburg.)

Which provided a good couple hours of distraction from the internal reflection the event seems to have caused for me. After everything else that has happened this year, you'd think that fleeing from a building wouldn't throw me for a loop. But it did cause a "little wobble" (Michael's words) that made me realize that perhaps I am skipping a few steps of healthy self-reflection in the rush to get back to a "normal" life. I don't expect to come up with the answers in the space of a few hours, or even months, but I am committing to myself to dedicate more time thinking about the questions.