So, my power was shut off the other day. Everything is fine. I just forgot to pay the bill…for several months. I often forget just what it’s like without electricity. We think that our houses or apartments are dark and/or quiet when we have everything shut off and there isn’t anyone else around but that truly is not the case. My eyes are considerably more sensitive to light than peoples’ and my hearing has always been borderline super-human, which means that with the little bit of light created by the small LEDs in a few recharging devices throughout my apartment is just enough that I can effectively negotiate the mounds of garbage and bullshit more easily than anyone else. The faint hum of electricity whirring through our walls is the most faint of white noise that admittedly I don’t notice until it stops. This gives me some faint idea of how tinnitus feels. With my power off for a whole day I couldn’t stop myself from noticing the void of sound. Even playing podcasts on my phone much of that time, I just kept not hearing the electricity that wasn’t around me anymore. And that night when there was just a faint stream of light coming through my bathroom window, one really understands the effect of light pollution. Seeing so few stars in the sky most of my life and the few brief moments like this is boggling to the mind just how little it can take to get us back from where we are. I’ve been in this circumstance many times before but this time, knowing that I actually had money on hand, I was able to appreciate and almost enjoy this experience. Remembering what it’s like before the profound ubiquity of interconnectivity and electronic devices consuming our attention and time. Don’t worry, my iPads and phones were charged so, I was able to draw most of the night. So, I wasn’t having to battle with my own thoughts as much as I would’ve normally.
I’ve been thinking about when I was child and would almost daily take five dollars out of her purse when my “mother” was asleep and then walk about three miles to In-N-Out Burger to feed myself since she couldn’t be bothered. I would be walking three miles of Van Nuys Blvd. in the middle of the night. I didn’t have a walkman and it was about a decade and a half before the advent of the iPod, let alone the iPhone. Point is that I would be making that walk without anything to distract me from my own thoughts. Which means I was spending about two hours actively working to not break down weeping in public. And then the hour or so walking back where I stopped caring about it and then break down weeping in public. What I’m saying is there was a time when people not only could but had to think for themselves instead of just regurgitating the mindless prattle they picked up off the internet. A thing I STILL can’t comprehend when the whole rest of the internet is actual and legitimate information! Seriously, what the fuck?! Anyway, and something one can learn on the internet is that ‘anyway’ is an adverb which means it doesn’t pluralize. Anyways, it turns out is just the bastardization of the word anywise. Try saying that to sound linguistically competent. Back to my original point. I recommend fully shutting down the power to your home sometime. And I’m sure most of you don’t know, there’s a junction box behind a metal panel in LITERALLY EVERY HOUSE, APARTMENT, AND EVEN SHANTY!!! It’s just a series of switches connected to the electric circuits of the domicile, which means you can cut off the power to entire rooms, and there is even a master switch that cuts off the power to the entire home. Take a day and just turn it all off for a little while and explore your own thoughts for a day. I mean, don’t necessarily try this if you have family members on sort of life support…or maybe you want that. By now you know my experience with that circumstance. Again, just give it a shot sometime. You just might like it.
