It’s a scary night.
My sojourn with power outage is over. But, like everything
else in my life, it comes with a side order of annoyance. Let us take a peer
from the rear, shall we?
My kerosene lantern worked great, as usual, and burned on
throughout the night while I dozed on tranquilly in semi illumination, though a
little bit dusty. The lamp that is. I was a large bit dusty, as always.
My generator fired up the next morning with barely a bit of
benzene to blow it into neo-blivion, and kept my AC circuits flowing. I had hot
water and power to the essentials. Well, my essentials: Ice cubes remaining
cubic, computers doing stuff, microwave flashing nervously while wondering what
time it was, milk not becoming involuntary cheese. OK. I watched stuff on my
laptop I had recently downloaded: American Gods, Stranger Things. Nuf said. I
was glad to have kilowatts at my disposal.
I made sure I had enough gas for the generator’s appetite. Well,
I had better have had that already done, right? Yup. You can’t have had thought
about that sort of thing in the present, now can you? I should have already have
had in the past had a stealthy stash of petrol in the shed and other places for
my needs in the past’s distant future’s past, right? Distant futures of the
past have a habit of having distant pasts of the future which become annoyingly
todays of the present sooner or later. Rainy
day hydrocarbons? Some cans for the lawnmower, perhaps? Right? A gallon or two?
In the shed? Next to the mouse nest? For the odd lawn trim? Or leaf blow? Or
weed whack? Next to the chain saw I never use? Well, rarely use. OK. Never use.
God. That paragraph would give Shakespeare a hernia.
OK. I’ll pour whatever passes for gas into the generator…
When the inevitable strikes… Which it
did… Like this morning, for instance… I’m unprepared-well, partially prepared… OK.
Totally unprepared… Pour in the gas… Give the generator a pull… PUT, Put, put… It’s old gas… Pull again…
Sputter… PUT, Put, put… Pull some more… PUT, Put… Spritz in starter fluid… Pull...
PUT, put, PUT… Pull, damn you…! PUT, Put… PULL! FIRE! It starts…! put…Put…PUT… It
stays…! PUT! It runs…! PUT! Civilization exists…! PUT, PUT, PUT… Civilization runs…!
PUT, Put, pfft… Civilization sputters…! Put, put…, Spark… Civilization strikes
on…Huh?! Put, pffft, umm… Gasp…? Civilization…Stumbles? PUt… Dark ages…?! Put…Cough…put…choke…?
GASP…Nothing... What comes next…?
To be fair, the generator worked marvelously. I had power.
My furnace worked, water, refrigerator, various circuits, Internet; all the
electrocutions of Modernity.
And then the lights came back on again! PUT, Put this, Pal!
Though the next day, before Mr. Tesla’s gift came back to
me, I noticed that the chimney of my kerosene lamp was a bit blackened, so I
took it out to clean it. I had no idea how long this sojourn with the
nineteenth century was going to last, so I wanted to be prepared and do my work
while the light was there in the window, just as my ancestors would have done. I
sponged the lamp black from the chimney and trimmed the wick while I was at it,
as was its need. Any lamplighter will tell you as much. And yes, of course,
while swabbing out the inside of the chimney I dropped it with a crash and a bang
upon the kitchen floor. There went my light.
Fuck, as they said in colonial times.
Lamps are precious. They scare away the night.
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