Our Unconditioned Fifth

Our new central air system had worked splendidly since the second of July when, on the morning of July the fifth the power failed around here. At that very moment I was engaged in composing an irreverent verse celebrating Not the confirmation that the Higgs particle was for real. Needless to say, no power, no air conditioning. After three weeks of enduring the disruption of our routines while our new system was born by A- B- C- and even D-section of our 1929 residence, the event totally demoralized me. Brigitte took it much more bravely. Detroit Edison predicted that our power would be back—and this is an estimate, said the lady on the phone—by about Sunday night at around 10:15 p.m. We suffered through the day and then decided that we’d spend those projected days of darkness, humidity, and heat with Monique and John at Wolverine lake—one of the few pockets in this metro area that had been spared. At last we got going around 4 in the afternoon and drove off with all of our most vital perishables iced in coolers—and with our six caterpillars nicely boxed. Could we leave them behind? No. We arrived at Monique’s and John’s at about five. Ten minutes later our neighbor, Lindsay, telephoned. The power was back! Yes, back. All is well. Detroit Edison had beat its own estimate by three days!

Now the Fifth of July was a rather quiet day for me. I felt a deep guilt for this blackout. It happened to us, I believe, because I was irreverent to the God-particle. However briefly, it actually absented itself from our electric current, teaching us a lesson about Particulus absconditus—and what that feels like. When it had chased me from my computer, finally, it relented and returned. And all was well again.

A Sometimes Slippery Slope

Or should I say that the ice is sometimes very thin? No. I think I’ll stick with Maslow’s hierarchies of needs; it presents a nice slope. A simple thing like a power outage—especially when you discover it at 11:30 at night, returning from a Memorial Day spent with family far from here—can plunge you straight from the dark blue into the red. And it doesn’t get easier with repetition. The last time this happened was in August of 2010. Bad transformers—then and now—with big (if spectacular) electric arcs sizzling and lighting up the night in white to orange to red flares. This one was over by 1:30 this morning, but since the last one lasted, intermittently, for better than a week, we walk about with fingers crossed.

Oh, and yes. We sometimes walk in our innocent habit-world admiring the decorations frost has formed on the branches of nearby trees, thinking exalted thoughts about beauty, symmetry, and the wonders of nature—when, suddenly, crack! And we find ourselves waist deep in water. The sublime parts of us are still sticking out, but, unfortunately, we’re right up to our “friendship, family, and sexual intimacy” in freezing nasty water.  

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Image courtesy of Wikipedia (link).

Intimations?

Another power failure quite early in the morning—I’ve mentioned a series of these that took place three weeks ago with literal fireworks—caused one of our neighbors to mutter: “Just like the third world.” To which I responded saying, “Welcome to Iraq, Betty.” But the sun was out, the sky was a deep blue, a cool, a lovely Indian summer day, which prompted me to pen, literally, a blog for LaMarotte out back. Done with it I read it to Brigitte saying: “No power, no Internet, no blogs. But posts can still be written.” And she: “Yes, but how are we going to post it?” This led to some bemused speculation.

We still have a typewriter, but it’s electric—and the F key doesn’t work (which might please linguistic puritans). The answer therefore was to use the daylight while it lasted to make neatly legible hand-written copies. Brigitte could make two, I could make three. The telephone still worked, thus while lunching on home-harvested tomatoes (we wouldn't dare open refrigerator doors) we might attempt to locate the physical mailing address of the two of five blog readers whose whereabouts we only vaguely know. The Post Office near us might still have power—although the stop lights on Mac had gone blind—and while I was out I might still find a functioning restaurant where thermos bottles might be filled with real hot coffee.

If you’ve wondered why some of my posts are so doomy, it’s because, from time to time, we’re getting intimations of cultural mortality.