This is the end, my only friend, the end…

It’s just like the opening of "Apocalypse Now". The helicopters are hovering, the news vans are out in force, and on the freeway…

Claustrophobia. Many say they’ve got no problem with heights, but tight spaces, the inability to move renders everybody a bit queasy. In this case, I was sitting in my house in Santa Monica, knowing that at some point I wanted to be in Felice’s house in Sherman Oaks, how exactly was I going to get there?

In case you’ve been under a rock, they’re closing the freeway. They’re tearing down the Mulholland Bridge. They got Gaga to tweet about it, it was on electronic signs as far away as Oregon. Would L.A. creep to a standstill or would it be like the ’84 Olympics, clear sailing?

But the Olympics were twenty five years ago, more, and the traffic density is ever worse. And the more people referenced that free-flowing time the more it seemed there would be a backlash, a loosening up, and it only takes a few gawkers, a few joyriders to muck up the works. What do they say, 250,000 cars go through the Sepulveda Pass every day?

And you can go around, through downtown, if you get the memo. If not, Mayor Villaraigosa held out the possibility of a twenty mile traffic jam. How do you cope with that?

And you can take the canyons, Topanga, Beverly and Coldwater, but they’re narrow and twisty and how much extra traffic can they handle?

I figured I’d wait until two a.m. Take Beverly then. Turn around if it was crowded.

But maybe I should go early. But would everybody be doing this?

And I’m sitting in my house getting more and more anxious, wondering if I should just get it together and jettison myself NOW!

It’s kind of like being a Jew in Europe in the thirties, do you heed the warnings or relax? True, the consequences are not as dire, but you lose your reference points, you don’t know who to believe, how to act.

And then my mother called and some unexpected e-mail came in and the clock was ticking and I felt tense and nervous and I just could not relax.

Midnight. That was closing time. But ramps started closing at 7, I’d already missed that cut-off. And lanes were restricted beginning at 10.

And I’m planning alternative route after alternative route.

Should I drive down Wilshire, check out the traffic on the freeway there, would the entrance be closed? Could I just scoot through the underpass to Beverly Glen?

And there was always Topanga. The long way home, but had everybody else decided on the same route?

So I’m driving down Sunset, and there’s almost no traffic.

There’s less traffic than there is at 2 AM.

And I decide to creep up to the freeway.

Which is almost empty.

And I get on Sepulveda, and it’s clear sailing.

I go right past Ground Zero, literally, right by the Mulholland Bridge. No destruction has begun, but there are trucks and the aforementioned helicopters but really, it’s like the eye of a hurricane, calmest at the center.

Utterly amazing that at this late date we cannot predict the future.

And that we can get the word out and change everybody’s behavior.

What else can we change?