Surreal imaginings
In the first few minutes after I wake up, it sometimes feels as though I'm still in dream mode -- where things happen that are sometimes stranger than real life. Such a thing just happened to me, six hours before I'm scheduled to fly home from New York.I woke up, found my eyeglasses and then awoke my computer from hibernation mode. (I'm an avid news reader, and that was compounded by the events of Sept. 11. It's never eased up.) I waited the few seconds for my computer to turn on, then checked e-mail. While I was doing that, I had a thought of "must check CNN" going through my head. In the short amount of time it took before I got to a browser window and glanced at the news headlines, a whole scenario had played through my head, probably due in part to the fact that I'm flying today, and also to the fact that specific international flights to the U.S. have been canceled this week due to terrorism warnings.
I imagined that some sort of 9/11-type thing with airliners had happened and that I knew I wasn't going anywhere, on any plane, for a while. That meant someone else was going to have to cover my busy court day I had planned for work on Monday.
Then the CNN window loaded. "Airliner crashes in Red Sea" read the headline.
My brain completely froze for a few seconds, then revived itself and quickly scanned the article, learning that it was an Egyptian airliner with 148 passengers, mostly French tourists, and that officials believe it was an accident.
What a surreal way to start the day.
Posted by Layla at 9:01 AM, January 03, 2004
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