Day 231…
Dark this morning. Cold and drizzle outside.
It’s a rare morning, when I am awake, and Michael is still asleep.
I went to bed early last night and slept all the way through. Truth be told, I had one too many frozen margaritas last night out with a friend I haven’t seen since… I don’t know when - February? She and her partner, also a good friend of mine, have been spending this time outside of the city, Yesterday, they were here to vote. She was done and he still had two hours to go.
We went to a place on Columbus Avenue that has built a shelter over some tables in the street.
It was chilly so we kept our coats on. Every time a truck or a bus went by and the lights were green, the plastic tarps flapped and thundered. We were sitting under a tree whose leaves have started falling so when something drove past particularly quickly, I ended up with a lap full of tiny yellow leaves.
I don’t regret the extra margarita. Much. It was so good to be able to hang out for a bit yesterday.
Yesterday, I also made like a tourist and went up to the new observation platform called The Edge in Hudson Yards.
The Edge claims to now be the highest open-air platform in the western hemisphere. It is nine feet higher than the CN Tower in Toronto. With the opening of The Edge, the CN Tower gets pushed down to number 12 on the list of the world’s highest decks. Many of the ones that are higher than that are in China which I’ve never visited.
I have been to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is the tallest building in the world, but its observation tower isn’t at the top, so it comes in at number three. I’ve also been to the Tokyo Sky Tree which is 9th.
I don’t like heights. At all.
I got hired to be the Assistant Stage Manager on the Broadway production of The Phantom of the Opera way back in 1993. It was beyond thrilling. I was so excited to start working.
My first day there, I followed the Stage Manager around during the show to start to learn it. Towards the end of the first act, we made our way out into the house under the stage right box which was curtained off from the audience. There was a straight ladder there, going up.
“Go ahead,” she said.
I laughed and then saw that she was serious. I told her to go first and that I’d follow. My hands were sweating. They are actually sweating now as I write this.
She started up and I made a decision. I wanted the job much more than I was scared of going up. So, I followed her up.
At each rung, I held on so tightly that my fingernails made deep red grooves in my palms. My hands were so slippery with sweat that I was terrified that they would just slip off.
We climbed all the way up to the proscenium - the top of the stage. At the top, there was not really anything to hold on to, to pull yourself up with, but I got up there somehow.
Once we were up, we had to crawl out on the platform to the center of the stage. By crawl, I do actually mean crawl. The facing was only a couple of feet high and if you didn’t crawl you were in view of the audience.
The whole platform moved. The Phantom and his dresser came on from the other side. All of us moving up there jiggled it. There were slats in the floor that let you look down onto the stage. I had to pretend that they weren’t there.
In the audience, when you watch the show, the whole proscenium arch looks very fancy. It’s all gold and ornate and at the top in the center is a gold angel. The Phantom gets into that angel. Our job was to make sure he was in and set and, once he was, to call “clear” to the stage manager who was calling the cues. The calling stage manager then cued the angel to drop and the Phantom rode it down, singing the end of the act which is when the famous chandelier falls.
All of that, by the way, making the platform shake and shudder even more. I thought the whole thing was going to collapse into the audience.
Then, in the dark, the angel comes back up and gets out and goes off left again with his dresser and we have to crawl back to the ladder and go DOWN. It was even more difficult to go down because at the top of the ladder, as I said, there was nothing to hold onto. Also, by that time, water was visibly dripping off of my hands.
I ended up doing that several times a week for about six months.
I then left that job to do a new musical that bombed. Phantom offered me a job on the road as Stage Manager right after and I took it and ended up touring with it for two years. The ladder on tour was upstage of the proscenium, it had thicker rungs and it had a cage around it. On tour, however, we also had to bring up the Phantom’s water bottle as well as his large wide-brimmed black hat.
I got to the point where I could go up and down without thinking about it. I almost enjoyed it. I thought that I had cured my fear of heights. I was wrong. I had cured my fear of THAT height. The rest of them were still just as bad.
If there is a lighthouse or an old church tower to climb, I will do it. If there is an observation deck, I’m there. I always regret it, but I’ll always do it.
I’ve even been hot air ballooning twice. Once in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya and once in the Yarra Valley in Australia. Both trips were absolutely terrifying and absolutely amazing at the same time. Breathtaking in the truest sense of the word.
There is a perspective that you can get from great heights that you cannot get in any other way.
At the top of the Westerkerk in Amsterdam, which has a terrifyingly old and narrow stone staircase up to the top, you can look down on the building that Anne Frank and the others hid in and see how they were able to do it. The annex that they were hidden in, is truly separate from the buildings that line the canals in front and behind it. You can’t really see that from the ground.
At the top of The Edge, you can look out over the entirety of New York City and even out across New Jersey. You can easily see that we live on an island. Central Park stands out as a green rectangle in a dense forest of steel and concrete towers. All of those towers are teeming with people. We are all actually on top of each other. All eight million plus of us.
Looking out across all of that, the fact that most of us joined together, wore masks and followed social distancing becomes all the more remarkable. You can see just how many people had to come together and agree to do the same thing to make that work. Yet, we did it.
Going up to The Edge was a distraction. We are six days away from the election. Having my heart pump for something besides the anxiety I have around what the results are going to be was lifesaving.
The glass walls on the outdoor platform tilt away at an angle. To take a picture without glare, I had to put my phone against the glass which meant I had to reach over the edge of the roof.
(I think that my sister, who suffers this fear worse than I do, has just stopped reading.)
Like the CN Tower, there’s an inset glass section of the floor that you can walk on and look down between your feet at the city 100 floors below. One couple was letting their baby crawl around on it. The baby seemed fine, but I couldn’t get anywhere near it.
They have admission to the deck at timed and limited intervals. There is a maximum of four people in an elevator at a time and you have to wear a mask.
I got to the 100th floor and the inside viewing areas had very few people in it. Near the windows are stickers every six feet on the floor to keep people apart. Outside there were far more people, especially because I was up there as the sun was setting. Even so, it’s open and breezy and I could find places to be away from other people.
Yesterday, the President continued to lie.
At rallies around the country, he again told his packed-in supporters that the virus is going away, that we are almost done. At the same time, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in an interview, said that we will likely not resume our lives in any sort of normal way until 2022.
He downplayed the home-grown terrorist plot against Governor Gretchen Whitmer saying, "I mean, we'll have to see if it's a problem. Right? People are entitled to say maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn't."
While his crowd in Michigan chanted, “Lock her up,” terrorist cells around the country rejoiced and took what he was saying as an endorsement.
The President’s Supreme Court nominee, arguably one of the least experienced and potentially most biased nominees in the Court’s history, was sworn in yesterday and took her place on the bench. Heading into the election, there are now six conservative Justices versus three liberal ones. Just when we need it to be balanced, the court is badly askew.
Six more days.
Six more news cycles until the day of the election.
Nearly 72 million people have now already voted. Anyone who has a mail-in ballot should now, instead of mailing it, drop it off in person. You don’t need to wait, if you are dropping off, you can go right up to the box.
I probably should have saved the Edge for a few days from now when I really am going to need it.
I’ll have to find something else to distract myself today. And tomorrow. And for the few days after that.
I don’t know what’s going to happen on November 3rd. Whatever it is, it isn’t going to be this endless waiting.
Once we’ve voted, there is nothing more that we can do. If there are people who need help getting to the polls, let’s help them. If there are people who aren’t going to vote, there’s still time to convince them to do it.
Beyond that, we wait.
And hope.
❤️your post today
took my breath away
but
not my fear ( also) of heights
I’ll just look up
at The Edge....
I V💙TED yesterday in Brooklyn
15 minutes of waiting time as the autumn leaves lent their song
5 minutes to cast my vote
and be counted
I cried
with joy
as I was give a sticker and slice of pizza as I left the Masonic Temple
The action
the voice from voting
to be heard and counted
amist all the yelling and negating of truth
So power full to vote
and will remain powerful in standing with my truth and live it
give the best care to myself
take responsibility for me & my actions
keep the dreams alive that I envision
true freedom, that I can do something about
thank you for taking me (up) backstage of The Phantom
❤️