Crisis is familiar to us in New York

There are the reverberating lights on television screens. The headlines of news websites revise death counts higher and higher. Until only that intermediate modifier applies: “Many.” There are more new tweets, more updates. Dozens dead in Bataclan concert hall. Explosions across Paris. A border sealed; troops deployed on home ground. Little knowledge, and so we grasp at particulars, knowing full well that in the morning we may be wrong.

We are familiar with this mode of crisis here in America, here in New York. It is easy to imagine a different concert hall, a movie theater. A restaurant, a tower. It’s not real, until you think about it briefly. Then it is.

This is thousands of miles away from here, only connected by the instantaneousness of Internet cables, satellite feeds. There is no reason for New York to be aware. For another few hours, life might carry on as usual. We’ve forgotten the most recent tragedy, whatever it was.

In Times Square, our town hall or village center if we ever had one, there is a large crowd gathered on the east side of 42nd Street. Many people gathered, packed in, voices raised, call and response--but it is just Showtime as usual. Dancers dance, clap.

A police officer standing in front of the Armed Forces Recruiting Station doesn’t think that many people know. Or if they do, they’re carrying on with their night. It’s not their fault, he shrugs. He says that he checks his smartphone, which is why he knew. He wishes he could be over there, he says. Wished there was something he could do.

The ABC and ESPN tickers crawl. A note about the Paris attacks--some people stop and look. The ticker crawls along. “15 yr veteran Turkoglu hangs up sneakers.” The people keep walking.

Want a picture guys, asks a man dressed as Superman? People walk by him too. A man dressed as Thor says he didn’t know about the attacks. Really, he says? Then he sees it on the AP ticker. Quickly, it’s gone. He doesn’t think many people in the square know about it. He spreads his hammer in the direction of the tables, the lights, the chairs. People laughing, taking pictures. Looking at the advertisements above. The man dressed as Thor wonders if the people who do know are just desensitized to all this. Why are they doing this, he asks, about the attackers in Paris? No, really, he says, why? He says, we’re already afraid.