Disclaimer: This post contains disturbing content.

On Friday afternoon at 1:30 p.m I was getting my fingerprints taken on the fourth floor of a run down building across from city hall. A woman was aggressively pressing each of my fingers into black ink and rolling them into paper so that I can teach kids literature this summer. A single landline rested on the floor, plugged into the wall as fluorescent lights flickered overhead. She kept telling me to relax my hand and I wanted to say Oh, my bad. It’s just that this looks like the kind of room you would get murdered in and a stranger is manhandling my fingers. Why don’t you relax your hand Loraine?

But none of that mattered. Not really. Not in the light of what was to come. For at the very same time, a man was walking over to the courthouse down the street with a bottle of accelerant.

BEING THERE

My appointment ended and I started exploring, drawn to the enormous, antiquated pillars and etched numerals towering over me. It reminded me of the summer I visited Rome and how small all of that history makes you feel. Wandering, I followed the pillars down to the courthouse, feeling a change in the air. I knew that the jury for the Trump trials was being finalized a few hundred feet from where I stood, history unfolding right under my nose. You could feel the immensity of that. There’s something about that much stone, that many security guards, and sheer enormity of the place that sends chills down your spine. The street emanates with power. You can just sense that things are happening. It’s written on the face of every person in a suit with a phone pressed to their ear. Being from San Diego, I’ve never felt anything like that. I was dazed.

And then I turned the corner.

A few minutes earlier and I would have seen the flames. A few more and I might have witnessed the man dousing himself in accelerant.

I did hear the sirens. I did hear the frantic undertones of news reporters as they descended upon the scene, placing microphones into witnesses stunned faces. I did see detectives, bomb squad, and firemen shutting the street down as nosy New Yorkers multiplied like moths to a light. I didn’t yet know what had happened, only that it was big. Only that people had that look on their faces.

I kept walking, forgetting about it as I snapped photos of diners and cobblestone streets, when my phone buzzed with the headline. Man Sets Himself on Fire Near Courthouse Where Trump Is on Trial.

I felt the blood drain from my face as I stood still on the sidewalk, staring at the words. I was there. Right there. I sat down on a bench and started writing the whole thing down when a protest broke out in front of me. A group of people holding signs about fossil fuels and environmental degradation start chanting their beliefs as they march in front of the courthouse. I’ve seen stoned high schoolers protesting in Ocean Beach about marine life, but I’ve never seen this. You don’t have to be political to feel something when you witness a scene like that. Everyone stopped and watched them. You feel like you’re witnessing some sliver of history being made.

I kept walking, stumbling into City Hall Park where newlyweds posed for photos, holding hands, not yet knowing what had just happened a block away. I thought of the dichotomy there. Of how metropolitan it felt to witness something that atrocious one moment and that sweet the very next. Sirens wailed, detectives crawled the streets, and couples kissed in the middle of it all.

It was intoxicatingly apocalyptic. I felt like I was standing in the epicenter of the world, headlines around every corner.

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