Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Keep Calm and Carry On

Just over a week ago, a makeshift bomb was found in a car in Times Square. I was just blocks away from the area with a group of friends when Twitter and text messages alerted us to the news. The keywords: "suspicious vehicle," "street closures," "police activity." Fighting the initial urge to panic, I reassured myself that we were out of harm's way and told my friends we didn't need to relocate. The night went on.

The armor I put up for my friends and family, the mantra I reiterate to myself, goes something like this: it takes a lot more than a car bomb to scare me. The only justification for that statement is that I've lived through a lot worse. Not on a daily basis, thankfully, but on one particularly bad day. Tatooed on my brain, its memory pops up more often than I'd like to admit.

As a New Yorker, I'm supposed to keep going. I'm supposed to tell myself everything is going to be just fine. I'm supposed to buy one of those trendy red mugs that read "Keep calm and carry on" at Barnes & Noble (a slogan originally created by the British government in 1939 for propaganda posters that were never sold). What a perfectly marketed item in this current atmosphere of silent dread.

What I mean by that is not a time of outright panic and hysteria, but rather a lingering, back-of-the-brain paranoia. This kind of dread builds itself up underneath a facade of normalcy. A fear that's simultaneously subtle and ever-present.

Even if I could pack up and leave (pending financial independence of course), would I do it? This has always been home: my home, our home. Every other place I end up living in will always be compared to New York, the measure of all cities. I like to believe I'd embrace my big move with open arms, but uprooting is easier said than done.

So then, how to live in New York against such a backdrop? Keep calm and carry on? Appropriate instructions for ushering kids out of school during a firedrill, no doubt. Not always effective.

A more accurate slogan to epitomize the state-of-things: "If you see something, say something."
These words have appeared on MTA ads for years as part of a subway safety campaign. They're a quiet call to arms, directing us to be avid crime reporters in case we're needed. "If" is the keyword used here as opposed to "when," implying that we most likely won't be needed. We live for that possibility that everything really will be okay.

As New Yorkers, as innocent civilians, as everyday working stiffs, all we really want is the right to remain exactly who we are: the steady, uninterrupted heartbeart of the city. We don't just carry on-- we beat on.