The Fire

Tonight, Chelsey and I walked to the local Chipotle. As we were getting ready to leave, we heard at least half of a dozen emergency vehicles (a far too common sound in the city, I'm afraid). I made some off-hand comment about how close the location of the emergency probably was.
As we left the building, we noticed a few people on the corner looking up at a high-rise building a block away. When I looked up, I saw a fire had burst open windows on the seventh or eight floor of the building. The fire was lapping at the window above it, yet seemed fairly contained to the one, corner apartment. My initial reaction was to go try to help... I'm not sure how I would help, but that was my first thought. "Someone's in trouble," I told myself, "I should help." Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending) there was a cop directing traffic (including foot traffic) away from the road leading up to the building. There were also two more fire trucks and a few more cop cars down the road, on their way. There was nothing I could do, but I certainly wasn't about to stand there and watch like the people on the corner. As we turned the corner, we approached a bus stop. Since it's naturally a place where people stand, I wouldn't have normally thought anything of the literal crowd waiting at the stop. However, tonight it seemed the crowd was all looking up: looking at the fire. That's when I started to get angry. I understand human curiosity... but this is someone's home! You're standing and watching someone's whole life burn as if it was the Friday night movie. And it relit my fire of hatred for the city--any city. Not that people wouldn't stand and watch in a small town (because they would), but simply because standing and watching is something that humans do and there are SO MANY of them in the city.
Also... it felt really good to be passionate enough about something to get my blood pressure up and really get mad. Moron that later. Happy 2007, InterWeb audience.