I Kept Thinking That I Should Make Soup.

My friend was arriving from California for a week in New York, a much-anticipated visit, and for her a much-needed week of rest and change of pace in New York City. She arrived Sunday, October 28—just after the announcement that the subway was being shut down and offices and schools were preemptively closing. A strange beginning to a week, a week whose strangeness would catch up to us slowly. Later we would refer to it as hurricane camp, as our time was arranged in neat segments, a walk in the morning, an effort to read, a walk in the afternoon, some thought about dinner. We spent long hours talking, and what we knew later was that each of us conducted the other's anxiety, like a well-worn and good container. It was only later that the anxieties could be named and thought about fruitfully.

The hurricane didn't touch us except insofar as it dictated the range of our movement (traffic was terrible, we couldn't drive) and our time (I couldn't work, as my office was without power). Power became the metaphor—and more than a metaphor, it emblematized a link that had been broken for many people. Not the catastrophe of lost homes, lives, businesses, but a daily psychic link that was disrupted if not severed. The link and what is unleashed in its absence was to me the lesson of the hurricane.

Patients came talking of having or losing power. The notion that one had not lost power seemed to provide reassurance against the utter helplessness and chaos that many felt. We take for granted what Ron Britton has called ontological security. The hurricane, with its torrential winds and walls of ruinous water charging into streets and buildings, blew through ontological security. Time was suddenly without character or markers. What would ordinarily be a welcome expanse of “free time” now became uncharted and impossible to enjoy. Only the most elemental movements were possible. Neither of us got dressed, except for yoga pants and running gear. Neither of us felt much like talking to anyo