Outage

I found myself meditating this morning on the powerlines outside the window of the yoga studio I go to.

You know how you get that instant of amazement when the power goes out? All the sudden it's dark, no clocks, the dryer stops, everything is suddently quiet. Then a sense of adventure sets in. You get out the flash light that you only use for camping and power outages. You light candles. You start thinking of what's in the freezer that you now have the perfect excuse to eat. And this Alice in Wonderland feeliing lasts for a few hours even, maybe. Then you flip on the lightswitch by instinct and nothing happens and you think, 'of course, stupid.' You had plans, you wanted to finish the laundry and email a friend, but those things require something that you don't have. You have no idea when you might have electricity again. You have come to rely on something that is ephemeral, a system that took years to build, and you have no good alternative to it.

And imagine if the power doesn't come back on. For weeks, you are bereft. You have all these patterns of your life that no longer work. You can't watch BBC's What Not To Wear, you can't google that thing you were thinking of but couldn't remember what it was called, the microwave doesn't work so the food in the freezer is pointless, 'of course, stupid.'

You are going to have to restructure your life. You have to find another way to play music, you need to make different meals, your time has to be spent very differently. Once you've resigned yourself to being powerless, you have to be creative. The electricity is gone. You have to become a sort of survivalist. And hope that the power comes back on.