At 9:30 I was on the phone with Jamie, boiling water for hot chocolate, watching TV and most of the lights in my house were on. “Most of the lights were on” because, at night it gets very very dark here. There aren’t many street lamps, and not too much traffic. There are no lights surrounding the building that I live in at all. For several irrational reasons when the trains go by at night my imagination runs amok and I invent all kinds of terrifying stories about demon trains, and portals to netherworlds opening,
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
screw energy conservation, for my one little apartment in the country, I like to have all the lights on at night. I was talking on the phone with Jamie and had just finished saying something about my addiction to HGTV when SHUDDER SNAP everything turned off and all I could see was the glowing swirl of the red hot element boiling my water. I definitely squeaked in fright, yes much like a mouse, and completely forgetting that my phone was cordless (hence needs electricity to operate) I implored “Jaimeeeeeee!” into the dead line
Darkness there, and nothing more,
For approximately ten seconds I was terrified.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
My fear at this time is not because I am inexperienced with power outages, but is because in all other power outage circumstances I have been in a house full of roommates or at the very least in a city full of people with friends nearby in the same situation. Power outages of yore were cause for happy shrieks, flashlights in faces pretending to be the cops, bar-b-ques... Never completely utterly all by myself in the black deep cold velvety November night in the country. No comforting motor sounds no lights no cars no friends. In all other power outage experiences I have also had a land line, or a cell phone. This time I had neither, and no internet either since that gadget is also wireless. For ten seconds standing in the kitchen with a steaming pot of water a glowing element and a dead phone I was truly shocked and scared! To make matters worse, at that very instant a train began creaking and shaking along the tracks behind the apartment.
Then, thankfully, I felt my wits gather,
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
I let my breath out and tried to remember where my lighter was.
After much scrambling and swearing I found my lighter and lit some scented pillar candles (ocean spray, cedar and vanilla). I put them on a plate and finished making my hot chocolate. At that point I was actually starting to feel OK. The candles cast a warm, flickering and comforting light. It was very quiet, it's amazing how much noise you notice when it's suddenly not there, but that was OK too. I left my hot chocolate to cool down, pulled on my parka and my boots and went out the front door to see how many other houses were out. What I saw was truly breathtaking.
Pitch black in every direction. I was holding one of my candles (cedar) and looking around. It was quiet like a church I could see the black silhouettes of houses across the street. Further up the road I could see that the Foyer (though in my darker moments I imagine it is The Asylum) must have some kind of emergency generator because lights were dimly showing through some of the windows. From time to time a car's headlights would fill up the road like a UFO. But best of all was the immense black sky now scattered with stars. Stars that were before drowned in village lights were now piercing Saint-Basile with their cold ancient light.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
It was incredible and I knew exactly how I wanted to spend the power outage. Edgar Allan Poe and all the demons took a hike and I was happy and excited.
I set up a chair on my balcony and bundled up in my parka, with my hot chocolate. I let the darkness, the quiet and the vast starry tapestry fall over me, like cool silk. I could see not only Orion’s belt, but also his sword and arrows. I could see the yellowy North star, and the little dipper with its cute upside-down ladel. In the center Cassiopeia was more brilliant than ever and on the horizon the crescent shaped Venus was mysterious and blue. I could locate a cluster of stars that I recognized from star gazing in Algonquin park. I like to think of them as the constellation Coma Berenices (Berenices Hair) but I’m not sure they actually are. My Coma Berenices is not too bright because it's very far away, but it's very sparkly. It’s one of those constellations that you can see better if you don’t look directly at it. A lot of stars are like that, you can appreciate them more if you aren’t focusing so hard on trying to see them. If you just let the whole sky wash over you at once you notice so many more stars, patterns and colours than if you try to center them out.
I also saw two shooting stars and in thinking of wishes I was so very very overwhelmed with gratitude for everything. For how hard it is in Saint-Basile and how hard I try to be better, refine myself, fine-tune my life, I’ve sometimes forgotten to be thankful for the way everything has turned out. I’ve been focusing too much on how hard it is, rather than letting all of it just happen. It's when I let go like this that the patterns emerge and my life seems brighter, more sparkly, and my part in something bigger, though usually more difficult to see, becomes apparent. I’m not talking about god, or maybe I am, I always get philosophical like this when I star gaze.
People, including me, are so self important, it’s a wonder the entire industrialized world is stressed out. All of our gadgets are capturing our eyes, drawing them in, forcing us to focus on smaller and more trivial details. Take a minute to shut it all off, and look up and away, realize that we are just tiny organic miracles on a small fuzzy rock floating around and around an average sized sun that has forever been burning inside a galaxy. Only one of billions inside an infinite universe. Now HGTV, computer-sore eyes, worn out work pants, missing out on "the scene," unreliable cars, fitting in at work, "what am I gonna do next year?" doesn’t matter a lick anymore. For me it’s quite beautiful and calming to allow myself to just let go and put faith in the, for lack of a better word, unknown pattern. The one we can’t see unless we look away. Yes I cried, I cry easier these days. You should try it!I spent the rest of the outage contemplating the infinite and the patterns and reading by candle light under my duvet with the window open just a crack. An hour or two later the power came back on and I called Jamie back. “The power went out…” I said “I thought that was what happened" he said, "what were we talking about?”
