| 96%
I’m afraid I’m currently part of a statistic.
Well, I suppose that we all are part of many statistics at
any given point, but in this case it’s one that none
of us look forward to. Right now it’s about 10:15 on
a warm July evening, and somewhere on some radio or TV station,
someone’s probably reporting on the storms that came
rolling though the fair city of Columbus this afternoon. Due
to the diligent work of a news copywriter, eventually the
on-air personality will probably mention this statistic: the
storms have left several thousand people in the area without
power. Yes, I too am currently one of those people.
92%
So yeah, it’s kind of inconvenient--it looks like my
entire neighborhood is out and probably has been since about
3 o’clock or so. The only lights in the area are a row
of street lights and one traffic light. How it is that they
remain powered when all around is dark I don’t know,
yet there they are amid a sea of increasing blackness. The
stuff right over the freeway (which I live next too) is fine,
including the Anheuser-Busch brewery. Looking down the street,
you can see the night being brightened only by a giant red
“Budweiser” and an equally massive neon “Bud
Light.” It’s almost enough to make me want a beer
right now, but I’m not going to open the fridge. It’s
probably a moot point to try and keep the cold in at this
point, since the power’s been off for around six hours.
There’s not really anything in there to spoil except
for the milk. It’s really the milk that I’m afraid
of--it was maybe a little funny this morning (a day after
the expiration) but now I’m sure it’s taken a
turn for the worse. Fear the milk.
88%
I’ve not bothered to call the electric company or anything
because they’ll just say they’re working on the
problem. Same thing they’re probably telling a whole
bunch of other folks that are calling right now. I’m
not going to bother, because it’s really not going to
change when the power’s coming back on. It will when
it will. Hopefully by the morning. In the meantime, I’m
trying to stave off electric oblivion with the help of my
iPod (currently serenading me with Bela Fleck) and I’m
typing all this on my trusty Powerbook. In case you’ve
not already figured my game out, the percentages you’re
seeing between paragraphs are the amount of battery power
I’ve got remaining.
82%, by the way.
The only other thing I need to worry about is whether my cell
phone will have enough battery power to be my alarm clock
in the morning. Apart from that, I’m actually kind of
enjoying this. I’m kind of taking it as nature’s
way of saying “Hey, slow down. Take a look at what’s
going on. Be free from all the electrically powered annoyances
and braindead connections to the world that the media and
internet bring you. Light some candles. Make some ambiance.
Do some thinking, maybe.” So I tried that out.
78%--It looks like I’m writing about a paragraph per
4% of my charge. With any luck, that means I’ll finish
this without having to come back to it later. I could write
it with pen and paper, I guess, but that means I’d have
to try and read my writing at some point later.
I thought back to what I learned at camp - one of the coolest
things in my opinion. It’s that sound seems to travel
farther at night. Now, this is of course more a trick on the
ear than anything--mostly is just seems to travel further
because everything else is quieter. There’s less noise
of the world being awake--from mankind and his machines to
all the wildlife awake during the day. The nocturnal creatures
are really much more stealthy about things, so the bottom
line is you really hear a lot more of what’s around
you.
73%
I thought about how I’m usually pretty attention deficit.
I don’t think I’ve got that particular disorder
so speak, but I usually spend a lot of my time multi-tasking
with various things. I kind of wonder if that’s why
I seem to miss things every now and then--because not all
of my resources are directed at one particular thing. Example--before
I booted up my laptop, I was sitting in the dark listening
to Radiohead’s “Kid A” on the iPod. Now,
likely not all of you mare familiar with the group, but it’s
a pretty subdued work. Really kind of mellow in the same way
that a coiled spring is not. It’s really kind of hard
to get your arms around, in terms of listening to it and really
understanding it. Tonight I listened to it and got a lot more
out of it than ever before, because it wasn’t just on
“in the background” as usual as I worked on something
else. I was actively listening to it, and I finally really
appreciated it.
63%
So I’d say my point in all of this is that maybe we’d
all be a little better off if we had a night in the dark.
Kill the lights, sit down and reflect on what’s going
on in the world around us, our own lives, and our companions.
Maybe in the process we’ll notice a few new things about
ourselves and the world around us. You know, find new appreciation
in something that until out of the normal hustle and bustle
of our lives, had gotten to seem ordinary.
59%
So I’ve now just over half my power capacity left. Instead
of using that to dial in to a part of the world that’s
not without power, I’m going to turn my computer off.
I’m going to boot up my senses instead, maybe even go
take a little night walk. Funny how sometimes it takes a good
night in the dark to make you really see. |
