Bad Dreams and Worse Realities

I was having a tough dream. It was likely the worst dream I may have ever had, but it changed in an instant, the last instant, and I was so overcome with positive emotion and relief that I awoke. I sat up in bed and looked around the room, trying to convince myself that everything had just been some kind of nightmare.

But the room, our living room in our studio+one apartment, was flashing red and blue. Cars were racing up our one-way street the wrong way, and they sounded like police interceptors. Sirens and police chirps were audible all around. The room itself kept alternating between red and blue light baths.

A conversation I'd had over the weekend in Texas was coming back to me as I tried to piece together those first two minutes after the nightmare. The conversation was more of me being a sounding board for my brother-in-law's fiance to discuss her comfort level with the possibility of shooting someone in the face. "For sure," I'd said, "mama bear with a gun. I get it. It's primal." It wasn't until later that I could put into words the shape of my reservations: that is, primarily, that I spend very little brain power on imagining what to do in case of home invasion where someone is attacking my kid. Home invasions are not a fear of mine, and thus, they take up very little of my attention.

But in the first hundred seconds of sitting up in bed in the red- and blue-lit room, I thought that maybe the cops knew something I didn't.

I got out of bed and checked the windows. The street was blocked off by police cars---that was the light bathing the living room. Cars zoomed up and down 3rd. Fire trucks were stationed up Lime and they'd already blocked off Atlantic down at 3rd.

In jut a few minutes the helicopter started buzzing directly overhead, and remained a constant sound effect in the zone for the next four hours, nearly all the way to 9 am. This was just after 4:30.

In the morning sun Corrie searched her phone for articles or notices or tweets or whatever about what could have happened.

And eventually the details came out.

Here's a link to the AP article.

A resident at the Covenant House, a high rise elder care facility I can look at right now, and the only place we've voted at in consecutive elections in the entire seven years living in this neighborhood, started a fire in his room and then shot at the firefighters as they busted the door down to make their rescue. A fire captain is dead, another had a graze wound, and a neighbor of the shooter is in critical, but stable, condition after surgery to fix his gunshot wound.

I'm guessing the shooter ran away and was needed to be found? That information is as yet not public.

I'm going to show the pictures that I found online from the various websites that chose to run the AP article, sine they're all different, with the exception of the picture with the above article. Many had that picture and one other, or just a different one. The one from the above article shows the firemen lined up as their captain is driven away in a hearse-like automobile.

I didn't take any of these pictures, just so we're clear.

This one above is taken from Atlantic, looking south as they rounded up evacuated elders and bused them to interview spots away from the fire. We live down the left of this picture down 3rd, and our grocery store's entrance is right there at Broadway and Atlantic, on the left.

This one is from earlier in the day, while it was still nighttime. In the upper right quadrant you can see the church's parking lot, the church right across the street from us.

The one above here is from Atlantic looking south from maybe 5th. All streets around the tower were blocked off.

Below is taken from the middle of the Atlantic and 3rd intersection:

This last one is from Lime St, looking north up to 4th:

That picture is close to home for us.

They apprehended the shooter, and a fire captain leaves two kids, aged 25 and 16, and his wife behind. Tragic...

And my dream has kept my imagination busy ever since yesterday morning...