Complacency Interrupted
Aren't we creatures of habit? Don't we relish the familiar, the tried and true, the comforts we manoeuvre our lives into, the threads of habitude and pleasure, our expectation that our creature comforts will always be there for us. And then, poof! Something happens, our sense of the rightness of things is challenged, we are kept from our normal routine by an intervention outside our control. The result: a sense of disquietude.
That is for those whose routine is interrupted on a fairly small scale, by an otherwise innocuous event in the certain knowledge that this is but a hiatus in a daily routine. Whatever went wrong will be corrected and leave not so much as a memory of irritation. Not to be compared to people who, through no fault of their own, experience trauma visited upon them by happenstance, initiated by an outside source.
That outside source can be as unanticipated as a phenomenon of nature such as people living in the Solomon Islands experienced earlier this week when giant waves caused by an undersea eruption, too close to them for forewarning. For them the experience is truly life-altering. Apart from those unfortunates who died, the survivors face ruination and deprivation; are now dependent on the compassion of others to come to their aid.
For people like me, living in the security of a first-world country and certainly not in a geographically-vulnerable coastal area, the sense of well-being and security can be shattered by something as unexpected as an energy shut-down. Which is exactly what happened last night. One goes about one's ordinary, everyday business and suddenly, whatever it is you're doing, you are faced with - nothing.
It is night, winter conditions still prevailing here, and abruptly, all power-generating electricity has been disrupted. Sitting in your living room reading or watching television, or sitting in front of a computer suddenly darkness envelopes you completely, as does an eerie silence. You sit there, stunned, half anticipating that the light will be immediately restored and you resume whatever you were doing.
But nothing happens. The darkness still presses softly around you, not a glimmer of light to be had, and the silence looms large. You think: what to do? You rise from where you're seated, begin to grope about you, knowing full well the lay-out of your home, how to avoid the obvious, like falling down stairs, hitting a wall, bumping into sharp projections. A flashlight is the first object you search for, and having secured one, you grope about to rescue those laid-away candles.
In our case, the first thing my husband did was put on the gas fireplace in the family room. After I had groped my way downstairs, in the process looking outside to note that there were no lights on anywhere down the street, including the street lights which have their own power source; nothing - although it was still somewhat lighter out than it was indoors at 8:30 p.m. The fire flared nicely and lit the room handsomely. Then we looked for candles and candleholders.
And put on that little battery-operated, handle-crank-operated radio. After a few minutes of listening to vapid radio-speak in between pop-music we heard what we already knew, that power appeared to have been cut off to a huge area in the east and south end of the city. The cause unknown, but the hydro utility was on the case. Small comfort; how could they not know whether a transformer had blown? It couldn't be weather-related; we weren't experiencing storm conditions, just light snow alternating with rain.
So we sat there, hardly speaking, watching the flames in the fireplace. We sat beside the fireplace, valuing its warmth, but feeling bereft of comfort, regardless. A half-hour without electricity and we're disconsolate. Can't watch television, can't complete my blog entry, can't read the newspaper with that insufficient candle-powered light. Our little dogs don't mind, they don't feel there is anything amiss.
So we again discuss the news between us, after hearing the 9:00 p.m. news. I begin flipping through a new cookbook I'd recently bought with print sufficiently large to permit reading, and we begin to discuss the possible virtues of one recipe after another, some so unappealing that it gives us cause to laugh in amusement, enabling another mood to set between us. Still, there is that unease that something isn't quite right, and it's bothersome.
We let the dogs out into the backyard before ten, decide to plod up to bed early this night. We try to recall which lights were on so we can shut them off in case the electricity is returned at some disturbing night hour. Off goes the television, the computer monitor, a few lamps. The candle we had set on the mantle has almost burned to the bottom, leaving a carbon trail on a picture frame, although we thought it had been set sufficiently back of it.
Each of us takes a candle set in its holder and we go upstairs. I take mine into the bathroom and wash up as usual, in the bathtub. He settles into bed, places his watch and candle on his nightstand. He's able to read, I'm not, and I lie there, thinking, composing things in my head. Do I want to listen to the news again? We do, the 11:00 p.m. news. Everything is still, and he asks do I hear that faint sound of an ambulance? I don't.
I've almost fallen asleep. He gets up to go to the bathroom, and returns, to snuff out his candle. We think, this is what is must have been like for people before the advent of electricity. People would become accustomed to it, if they had to. Before we'd gone up to bed he checked the thermostat, determined it was holding steady, so the insulation in the house must be pretty good, considering the temperature has dropped below freezing.
But we're comfortable in bed with the goose-down duvet which I had threatened to remove just two days earlier despite his protests we'd need it at least another week while the atmosphere warmed up to spring. Just as we're both finally falling to sleep, there's a ping and a light comes on. One of the lamps in our bedroom; we'd forgotten it. When we finally do fall asleep it's with a sense of relief.
Three hours without electricity and it wreaks such havoc with our sense of well-being. Everything is relative, after all.
That is for those whose routine is interrupted on a fairly small scale, by an otherwise innocuous event in the certain knowledge that this is but a hiatus in a daily routine. Whatever went wrong will be corrected and leave not so much as a memory of irritation. Not to be compared to people who, through no fault of their own, experience trauma visited upon them by happenstance, initiated by an outside source.
That outside source can be as unanticipated as a phenomenon of nature such as people living in the Solomon Islands experienced earlier this week when giant waves caused by an undersea eruption, too close to them for forewarning. For them the experience is truly life-altering. Apart from those unfortunates who died, the survivors face ruination and deprivation; are now dependent on the compassion of others to come to their aid.
For people like me, living in the security of a first-world country and certainly not in a geographically-vulnerable coastal area, the sense of well-being and security can be shattered by something as unexpected as an energy shut-down. Which is exactly what happened last night. One goes about one's ordinary, everyday business and suddenly, whatever it is you're doing, you are faced with - nothing.
It is night, winter conditions still prevailing here, and abruptly, all power-generating electricity has been disrupted. Sitting in your living room reading or watching television, or sitting in front of a computer suddenly darkness envelopes you completely, as does an eerie silence. You sit there, stunned, half anticipating that the light will be immediately restored and you resume whatever you were doing.
But nothing happens. The darkness still presses softly around you, not a glimmer of light to be had, and the silence looms large. You think: what to do? You rise from where you're seated, begin to grope about you, knowing full well the lay-out of your home, how to avoid the obvious, like falling down stairs, hitting a wall, bumping into sharp projections. A flashlight is the first object you search for, and having secured one, you grope about to rescue those laid-away candles.
In our case, the first thing my husband did was put on the gas fireplace in the family room. After I had groped my way downstairs, in the process looking outside to note that there were no lights on anywhere down the street, including the street lights which have their own power source; nothing - although it was still somewhat lighter out than it was indoors at 8:30 p.m. The fire flared nicely and lit the room handsomely. Then we looked for candles and candleholders.
And put on that little battery-operated, handle-crank-operated radio. After a few minutes of listening to vapid radio-speak in between pop-music we heard what we already knew, that power appeared to have been cut off to a huge area in the east and south end of the city. The cause unknown, but the hydro utility was on the case. Small comfort; how could they not know whether a transformer had blown? It couldn't be weather-related; we weren't experiencing storm conditions, just light snow alternating with rain.
So we sat there, hardly speaking, watching the flames in the fireplace. We sat beside the fireplace, valuing its warmth, but feeling bereft of comfort, regardless. A half-hour without electricity and we're disconsolate. Can't watch television, can't complete my blog entry, can't read the newspaper with that insufficient candle-powered light. Our little dogs don't mind, they don't feel there is anything amiss.
So we again discuss the news between us, after hearing the 9:00 p.m. news. I begin flipping through a new cookbook I'd recently bought with print sufficiently large to permit reading, and we begin to discuss the possible virtues of one recipe after another, some so unappealing that it gives us cause to laugh in amusement, enabling another mood to set between us. Still, there is that unease that something isn't quite right, and it's bothersome.
We let the dogs out into the backyard before ten, decide to plod up to bed early this night. We try to recall which lights were on so we can shut them off in case the electricity is returned at some disturbing night hour. Off goes the television, the computer monitor, a few lamps. The candle we had set on the mantle has almost burned to the bottom, leaving a carbon trail on a picture frame, although we thought it had been set sufficiently back of it.
Each of us takes a candle set in its holder and we go upstairs. I take mine into the bathroom and wash up as usual, in the bathtub. He settles into bed, places his watch and candle on his nightstand. He's able to read, I'm not, and I lie there, thinking, composing things in my head. Do I want to listen to the news again? We do, the 11:00 p.m. news. Everything is still, and he asks do I hear that faint sound of an ambulance? I don't.
I've almost fallen asleep. He gets up to go to the bathroom, and returns, to snuff out his candle. We think, this is what is must have been like for people before the advent of electricity. People would become accustomed to it, if they had to. Before we'd gone up to bed he checked the thermostat, determined it was holding steady, so the insulation in the house must be pretty good, considering the temperature has dropped below freezing.
But we're comfortable in bed with the goose-down duvet which I had threatened to remove just two days earlier despite his protests we'd need it at least another week while the atmosphere warmed up to spring. Just as we're both finally falling to sleep, there's a ping and a light comes on. One of the lamps in our bedroom; we'd forgotten it. When we finally do fall asleep it's with a sense of relief.
Three hours without electricity and it wreaks such havoc with our sense of well-being. Everything is relative, after all.
Labels: Realities
posted by Pieface @ 1:14 PM
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