Madison Avenue elevator tragedy

News of the elevator accident in a Madison Avenue building that crushed a woman to death in December made me shudder, as it probably did most New Yorkers, since most of us take elevators as part of everyday life here.

Sunday’s New York Daily News (4/1/12) had this story: “Mechanic Michael Hill, who worked on elevator that killed Suzanne Hart, says he’s haunted by her death.”

The mechanic who worked on an elevator that later crushed an advertising executive can’t get the image of her trapped body out of his mind.

Breaking his silence for the first time, mechanic Michael Hill told the Daily News he dreams of the horrifying day when the midtown elevator suddenly lurched upward, killing Suzanne Hart….

Hill insists he has been wrongly accused in the Dec. 14 incident and says investigators are downplaying evidence of other bizarre problems with the fateful lift.

The trauma of that event is likely a heavy burden to all involved–the woman’s family and friends, the witnesses, building occupants, and building and elevator staff. It’s another event that renews my gratitude for the many years I’ve lived in NYC physically unscathed.

For anyone not so fortunate, the Nightmare Help web page of the International Association for the Study of Dream offers some resources to help deal with trauma-related dreams: http://asdreams.org/nightmare/index.htm

Advertisement

Nuclear power dream and Tokyo workshops

Had my first nuclear power dream this morning, Wednesday, 3/30 (my first remembered dream of any type to do with the ongoing earthquake/tsunami/meltdown disaster in Japan). It was extremely vague—two spherical towers with a dark gray waffle pattern, appearing how the Indian Point plant 40 miles of New York City seems to look in recent TV news stories about its safety or lack thereof.

Indian Point nuclear power plant—Joe Larese/The Journal News, on LoHud.com

Except that in my dream, the plant fits into my bathroom and the towers are truly spherical (which I thought they were, until looking for an image); in waking reality, they’re cyclindrical with spherical tops. The feeling in the dream is a sort of dull resignation: “Of course this was coming, but now that it’s here, it’s hard to take in.”

My friend Misa Tsuruta, who lived in Manhattan and then Brooklyn for much of the time I’ve known her, returned to Tokyo a couple of years ago. She’s the International Association for the Study of Dreams’s regional co-representative for Japan. She returns to New York City a couple of times a year, because she’s pursuing a Ph.D. in cognitive, social, and developmental psychology at the New School. Last May, she gave an informal talk for IASD-NYC about dreams in Japanese culture.

Misa is putting together  a series of art therapy workshops for children traumatized by recent events in Japan. The World Dreams Peace Bridge has a PayPal button for donating toward Misa’s workshop supplies and expenses. Please consider supporting Misa in this effort.