When the Power Goes Out

Sometimes, I can concentrate. When the stars align. Today, however, my power was out. 

I don’t mean my mental power. I mean the literal electricity. While the rest of the country languishes in an Arctic Vortex, California’s maddening, relentless balmy sunshine soldiers on without a drop of precipitation in sight. Yet, inexplicably, in a complete absence of weather or nearby traffic or construction incidents, my electricity went out this morning. We are delicate in California.

I had only been awake for about 10 minutes, and had barely made my tea, when I realized that the power was out. I only noticed this because, staring intently at my phone, I realized in a panic that the internet wasn’t working. When I looked up, it became instantly clear that, also, all the lights were out, including the clock on the stove, and there was an eerie dead silence belied only by a few clueless birds outside. No comfortable, soothing electronic hum. I felt unsettled.

When the electricity goes out, it’s not just a minor inconvenience. It becomes obvious that, despite my proud claim to not be addicted to anything—not coffee, not booze, not pills—I am actually quite reliant on electricity for almost every daily activity in my life.

Don’t panic, I told myself. Just because you can’t jump on the internet and start your work day does not preclude you from doing other things. For instance, you can make some breakfast.

Oh but wait, maybe you shouldn’t open the fridge. That’s the thing about power outages: how long will they endure? If days, will you starve? Will the expensive homemade almond milk go rancid? Will you be forced to — gasp! — leave the house for food?

So black tea without milk, then. Huddled by the window for a swath of daylight, reading. Reading and Scrabble are the two things you can do when the power is out, as long as you have access to some light in the form of sunshine or, if it’s night, a battery-powered headlamp. Or candles. Reading by candlelight is beyond horrible for aging old lady eyes, but rather romantic in an Emily Bronte kind of way. As is eventual blindness brought on by trying to read in low-light conditions.

Unfortunately, one can only read and drink black tea for so long in the morning before one needs to get First Breakfast and maybe spin out about the mounting piles of work. That’s when leaving the house becomes unavoidable. But, one has to put on mascara to leave the house, and, BURN!, there’s not enough natural light in the bathroom — the one room in the house with a mirror. Have you ever tried to put on mascara without a mirror? I have, this morning. The results were tragic and not presentable.

I don’t have a lot of pride, though, so I did present them at the coffee shop, where I promptly texted my neighbors and found out the power had come back on within minutes of leaving my house.

Too late, though. My concentration is shot for the day. So it’s going to be a coffee shop write-off day, where I eavesdrop on the tech drones having a boisterous meeting in the booth next to me and stare dreamily out the window, imagining places where it rains and even snows, and where power goes out for a good goddamned reason.