“Frankly, we have to change our attitudes,” Senator Hillary Clinton said at Sunday’s breakfast. “We have not been a vigilant country, and now we must become one. I think we have to be alert, but not alarmed.”

Okay. I'll admit it. I'm alarmed. Sorry, Hil. As in really alarmed. Riding the subways is never a fun thing for me. Living in New York to a huge degree means devoting a lot of energy to NOT THINKING about things. Back when I was with my Ex, we would make visits to his Lesbian sister down in Washington County, Kentucky. Sister and her partner lived on a farm. Whle there, we would bottlefeed lams and kids, ride horses, milk goats and make cheese and ice cream and the like (there was a lot of milk to be consumed), and enjoy the wilds of Kentucky. Pretty idyllic, huh? Well, no. There were fleas and ticks everywhere. Pulling ticks off yourself was sort of a constant. There was never not a tick on you somewhere, and usually there was more than one. The dogs (between five and twelve depending on the visit) had the run of the house, so the bedsheets were gritty with Kentucky dirt, and everything was covered in animal hair. After spending time there, I was always worn out. And after mulling it, I realized why. If you let yourself think about the ticks and the fleas and the dirt--oh, and shitting in a bucket and not really bathing the entire time you're there because there's been drought conditions for the past decade--you would go out of your fucking mind. So you had to devote considerable psychic energy to NOT THINKING, beating down those thoughts like copperheads when they would pop up. Same with the subways. I've seen ugly confrontations, fights, robberies, and had my train delayed by fires, derailments, and power failures. But, when you descend those steps, you kind of have to force yourself to think that nothing bad is going to happen.

I heard an amazing account of the impact that the Sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo trains had on the psyche of the Japanese. For many, it was like a curtain was pulled back, revealing how incredibly vulnerable they all were. Many people, even though they hadn't been affected in the least by the attack, were too terrified in the aftermath to leave their homes.

I can't imagine much worse that spending my last minutes on an E train as some poison gas or other shuts down my central nervous system. There we'd sit, in the tunnel, while the conducter tells us to remain calm because there's congestion on the line ahead of us and we'll be moving shortly. Or something. (It really, really irks me when the MTA lies to us, saying there's congestion ahead when you've been standing on the platform for a half an hour and not a single train has gone by. There's a problem all right, but it's not congestion on the line in front of you. Lies lies lies.)

So I'm not paralyzed. If I need to take the subway, I'll take the subway. I'll be catching the PATH train home, and possibly all those people staying away will mean that I'll be able to get a seat. And, maybe the PATH won't be a target, since it's more a matter of New Jersey extending it's tentacles into New York City (like a Plantar's wart) than it is New York City. (The psychological term for that last statement is 'rationalization.')

I'll go down the stairs. I'll wait on the platform and I'll read my book. I'll sit on the train and read my book. I'll get angry at the doofus who stands right in front of the train doors so you have to push around him to get on and off, and the guy who is taking up two seats because he needs to keep his knees sixteen inches apart when he sits down, and the annoying school kids that crowd into cars, and all the rest of it. And then it will be my stop, and I'll bolt through the doors and go running up the stairs into the frigid fresh air as though I'm running for my life. Because that's what I'm thinking I'm doing. And maybe, in fact, I will be.

And on top of everything else, I have to be at work. And I just found out that Boss Sunshine has cancelled the week in Puerto Rico he was planning for this month. Hate that.