words to ward off the coming dusk
Jul. 13th, 2001 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aslantlast night i was so dead tired, i fell asleep as soon as i got home. i woke up, feeling very disoriented, around 7:30pm, and i realized that the power had gone out. this was an odd turn of events.
for the first two weeks in this apartment, the power would go off every day around 2:00am, very annoying. so i moped around a bit, to see if it would come on again. i realized it was going to be a while, so i lit the stove with a lighter, and cooked some dinner. i ate out on the porch, watching the beautiful clear sky get shades and shades darker into the deep blues. my mom called and we talked for a long time, just gabbing about nothing. i sat in the front room watching the hospital out the window. the hospital, of course, had power, although the rest of the street was dark. i could see that the grocery store one block over was dark, too. it started to get to me pretty badly, especially once i got off the phone and started looking around, and realized i had no candles. none.
considering how many candles i accumulated when i was younger, this was an odd turn of events. so i set off to the store, for candles and ice cream. i set off to see what the square would be like without any lights.
all the houses were dark, and all the little stores. walgreens was darkened as well, and a small group of employees stood outside the door, just watching the traffic go by in the darkness. no streetlights, even. i asked and the guy there said they heard it might have been an explosion in a sewer. it felt like the entire world was paused. like i had woken up and everyone in the world was still sleeping.
i found a convenience store that was open and had power, down the street, and got two cheap red candles (all they had left) and walked home. there wasn't an emergency light in the front stairwell, so i lit the candle and walked up the stairs, still feeling a little crazed about all this. you have to remember, i'd woken up from one of those odd naps to find all this going on, and my mind was still half convinced that it was an exceptionally detailed bad dream. like i was treading water in a little frozen pool of time.
all the apartment doors were open and i could hear jason playing away at his guitar, an electric guitar, not hooked up to an amp or anything. he's rather good, actually. i held the candle above my head when i walked in, saying hello. i told him the dark was driving me nuts, that i'd had to go out and buy some candles. he played away, quietly. so i went back to the front room and scribbled in my journal a little bit. eventually he walked in and sat down. "i think it's rather peaceful, really," he said. we talked on for quite a while, about various different things, he played his guitar the whole time. we talked a long time. guitars, comics, jobs, his undergrad work at oberlin, math, books. on and on we talked. we even had a few of those much-lauded comfortable silences, into which he would strum away, absently, while i picked at strings on the couch. he's really very smart, which i knew before, but now i think he's not so much shy as he is withdrawn into his own observations most of the time. so once he started talking things were really open. it was really very nice. he taught me some interesting stuff about math. about the other kinds of zeroes. about imaginary numbers. things like that.
a girl from downstairs, julie, wandered up, and she stuck around for another couple hours of conversation. she brought a candle upstairs with her, in a little jar. we talked and talked, we laughed, we went around in conversational circles. after a while vladas and his girlfriend came home, at which point julie went back downstairs to see if anybody at her place had come home yet. when she took her candle with her we sat in a room a little less brighter, a little more quiet. i wished the lights would never turn on, that we would just keep on talking into the dark like that.
jason and i talked for a while longer, about nothing, really. more comfortable silences. i felt so comfortable with him, that was the best part. around 1 we reluctantly went to bed, me carrying my candle back to the bedroom, feeling rather old fashioned when i climbed into bed and blew it out. like in a movie. i had trouble falling asleep just thinking back over the night in my head. how amazing that suddenly we were talking like normal people, when for a month i've lived here and we've exchanged a total of 2 minutes of conversation between us. this is what the dark does to us.
and then this morning the power was back on. the sunshine woke me up. and the world has unpaused again.
for the first two weeks in this apartment, the power would go off every day around 2:00am, very annoying. so i moped around a bit, to see if it would come on again. i realized it was going to be a while, so i lit the stove with a lighter, and cooked some dinner. i ate out on the porch, watching the beautiful clear sky get shades and shades darker into the deep blues. my mom called and we talked for a long time, just gabbing about nothing. i sat in the front room watching the hospital out the window. the hospital, of course, had power, although the rest of the street was dark. i could see that the grocery store one block over was dark, too. it started to get to me pretty badly, especially once i got off the phone and started looking around, and realized i had no candles. none.
considering how many candles i accumulated when i was younger, this was an odd turn of events. so i set off to the store, for candles and ice cream. i set off to see what the square would be like without any lights.
all the houses were dark, and all the little stores. walgreens was darkened as well, and a small group of employees stood outside the door, just watching the traffic go by in the darkness. no streetlights, even. i asked and the guy there said they heard it might have been an explosion in a sewer. it felt like the entire world was paused. like i had woken up and everyone in the world was still sleeping.
i found a convenience store that was open and had power, down the street, and got two cheap red candles (all they had left) and walked home. there wasn't an emergency light in the front stairwell, so i lit the candle and walked up the stairs, still feeling a little crazed about all this. you have to remember, i'd woken up from one of those odd naps to find all this going on, and my mind was still half convinced that it was an exceptionally detailed bad dream. like i was treading water in a little frozen pool of time.
all the apartment doors were open and i could hear jason playing away at his guitar, an electric guitar, not hooked up to an amp or anything. he's rather good, actually. i held the candle above my head when i walked in, saying hello. i told him the dark was driving me nuts, that i'd had to go out and buy some candles. he played away, quietly. so i went back to the front room and scribbled in my journal a little bit. eventually he walked in and sat down. "i think it's rather peaceful, really," he said. we talked on for quite a while, about various different things, he played his guitar the whole time. we talked a long time. guitars, comics, jobs, his undergrad work at oberlin, math, books. on and on we talked. we even had a few of those much-lauded comfortable silences, into which he would strum away, absently, while i picked at strings on the couch. he's really very smart, which i knew before, but now i think he's not so much shy as he is withdrawn into his own observations most of the time. so once he started talking things were really open. it was really very nice. he taught me some interesting stuff about math. about the other kinds of zeroes. about imaginary numbers. things like that.
a girl from downstairs, julie, wandered up, and she stuck around for another couple hours of conversation. she brought a candle upstairs with her, in a little jar. we talked and talked, we laughed, we went around in conversational circles. after a while vladas and his girlfriend came home, at which point julie went back downstairs to see if anybody at her place had come home yet. when she took her candle with her we sat in a room a little less brighter, a little more quiet. i wished the lights would never turn on, that we would just keep on talking into the dark like that.
jason and i talked for a while longer, about nothing, really. more comfortable silences. i felt so comfortable with him, that was the best part. around 1 we reluctantly went to bed, me carrying my candle back to the bedroom, feeling rather old fashioned when i climbed into bed and blew it out. like in a movie. i had trouble falling asleep just thinking back over the night in my head. how amazing that suddenly we were talking like normal people, when for a month i've lived here and we've exchanged a total of 2 minutes of conversation between us. this is what the dark does to us.
and then this morning the power was back on. the sunshine woke me up. and the world has unpaused again.
