Blackout

Very weird experience last night. After spending the evening on Staten Island with Adam and his girlfriend, Naomi, I was riding the ferry back to Manhattan when I looked up from my book and noticed that some fog had rolled in and obscured the lights of New Jersey that I should have been seeing. In fact, I couldn’t see a single that at all outside of the ferry. If you have ever seen the harbor and the skyline at night, you know that there are quite a few lights out there, so this was really freaky. I walked out to the front of the boat to see if anything was visible out there, but there was nothing whatsoever. This was scary and wonderful all at the same time. It was a little surreal to be in the middle of New York (fucking) City with no signs of life around me, but it also had this strange sense of being on a haunted ship or something — no sky, no shore, just the sound of the water and the engines.

I walked to the back of the boat to see if Staten Island were visible at all, just as the lights along the Brooklyn waterfront began to reappear. Still no sign of Staten Island or Jersey, however. I raced back to the front of the boat, and there was the Manhattan skyline, lit up like a Christmas tree and clear as anything, as if nothing had been out of the ordinary. I looked back and saw this thick black cloud of fog hovering over the harbor behind us. It looked tangible, and more than a little evil.