44 Hours

That is how long I was without power.

If you’d like to read about the last two days, check here: 700,000 Sans Power. That’s my own title for the article, because for some reason "sans", despite being one of my favorite words, is sorely underutilized in newsprint.

It’s astonishing how dark the world is. We become so accustomed to urban glow that it’s only when the lights are gone for miles around that you appreciate what night truly consists of. When I lived in rural Illinois during The Trailer Park Years, I thought I knew what darkness was. Ono. The beam of my paltry headlights seemed to be consumed by the true night, almost sentient with malevolent hunger.

Remember when I complained I didn’t have enough time to read? Perhaps this was an answer, as I basically have done nothing except these four things: Sleep, Drive, Eat, Read, often in concert. I suppose you could put "think obsessively about my life" in there, too, but that’s pretty much a constant.

Dark, and cold. That’s what my life’s been about since Thursday night. A cliché, of course, but an apt one. As I burrowed deeply into my bednest, surrounded by blankets and pillows and candles, I couldn’t help but feel the finger of loneliness tracing my spine. This wouldn’t be so bad, I thought, if I had a companion, someone to curl into and nuzzle. Pillows are a poor substitute when it’s 51 degrees inside. I’ve always been that type; I love the holding, the sharing of space, the tangle and caress of lips and flesh. I sometimes think what hurts most about being single is that absence of pristine affection. I want someone to hold and be held, and I certainly wanted it last night.

Since my complaint about reading was answered, perhaps that one will be as well. Send me someone affectionate, please. Laugh together, love together, learn together, grow together. It doesn’t seem like that much to ask. I don’t need a clone of myself, or someone with the exact same interests or opinions or thought processes. Just someone willing to say, you know, this person is whom I love, and I’m going to commit to them, and fight for us when things get tough, and of course, be receptive to back and foot massages and engage in copious amounts of snuggling.

Since it started with that, figured I should end with that as well. =p

My dear friend Heather, aka My Best Friend West of the Rocky Mountains, commented the other day that it seems like I’m taking the breakup and my current situation extremely well, and then I’ll make some wry comment that lets her know that it’s still at the forefront of my thoughts. I’m trying hard to not turn my OD into Lonely Bits of Melodramatic Rambling Parts 1-2000, I promise. It’s merely that when I pause and reflect as I write, when I’m not distracted by everyday minutia, this is what I think about. It is no secret that I am happier with love in my life than without it. I think I’m a bang-up guy, I have a number of self-sufficient hobbies and interests, and rewarding friendships; these are valuable to me, certainly. Without them, I would be in a much, much worse space, and to be honest, I’ve been in that space, years ago, before I made the commitment to own myself, love myself, and be the Good person I seek to be.

I am tired, though, of being on the outside looking in, and just wish someone would say, "Hey, take a chance on me."

To which I would respond, "Like ABBA much?"

To which they would respond, "What? You’re a freak. I take it back."

Ah well. At least they said it.

It’s just that I don’t get it sometimes. In general, people adore me. I’m popular. I’m funny. I’m moderately attractive. I’m intelligent. I’m responsible, practical. I’m ethical. I’m thoughtful, I’m considerate. I make people laugh, I make people think. I’m independent, but devoted. I’m helpful. I treat my significant others as well as I can. I nurture, I empower, I support. Surely, those outweigh my bad traits, which mostly consist of random fits of grouchiness, a dislike of dirt, and occasionally inappropriate laughter.

Not that laughter’s inappropriate that often, imo.

On paper, there’s no reason I should have been thrust back into the ranks of the miserable. If you take out the 4.5 years I invested in this relationship, there’s a lot of 1-1.5 year expeditions into lands best left undiscovered.

Still, in my quest to include Aspects Of My Life That Don’t Always Revolve Around My Relationships Or Lack Thereof, here are some random thoughts about the past 44 hours:

–Thursday night, we had windstorms in the Puget Sound area.  Our power and connectivity kept alternating brownouts, which was frustrating but an insufficient barrier to my finishing my freelance work a day early, since I didn’t figure I’d have time to work on it Friday. It pays to be proactive, as shortly after I FTP’d it to the server, crawled into bed, read a few chapters in Peter Straub’s If You Could See Me Now, and turned out the light, I heard what I swear was an explosion in the distance.  About five minutes later, approximately 11pm, our power went kaput. I am glad the freelance work is starting up again, because I cannot subsist on my own if it goes away, and I really need to get out of this house.

(Memo to self: Check The Olympian in depth to see if there actually was an explosion, or if I was hearing the initial salvos of our interstellar war vs. Andromeda.)

-Life without light and heat sucks. As I alluded earlier, when I woke up this morning, it was 51 degrees inside the house. (Heh, I almost said "our" house, gotta break that habit, don’t I?)  If you don’t know, 51 degrees is fucking cold. To that end, I have a major suggestion for anyone buying a house:

The house has a small gas furnace in the computer room. The hot water heater? Gas, so there was hot water available for washing and steaming. The stove? Gas, which meant you could cook food.

This means that when I buy a house, years from now, it’s gonna have gas, and not electricity. Remember this, kids. Always be sure you have alternate ways to produce heat or cook.

And have lots of candles. Lots. I sometimes look around at all of the candles and think about throwing some away, and usually wind up saying "Nah, I might need them some day." Sure enough, those candles were saviors.

-The pattern of outages made no sense. Driving around, you’d see dark patch, dark patch, dark patch, fully operational strip mall, dark patch, dark patch, lucky bastards in houses with full power, dark patch, dark patch, crowded-and-only-one-with-power restaurant, dark patch, dark patch.

-It’s amazing that people actually were able to get through all the intersections without running into each other. I was impressed–I expected people to not wait their turn, to move slowly, to honk and scream, but that wasn’t the case at all. Everywhere I went, traffic proceeded smoothly and efficiently without stoplights.

-From what I can tell, there weren’t any riots or incidents of looting. I’m thankful for this, though at the same time somewhat disappointed, because in the movies (or books), the threshold for people retaining a veneer of civilized behavior lasts about 4 hours, after which they become savage, me-first monsters that will rape and pillage anything not nailed down. And yes, I did make sure the doors were locked and keep an extra alert ear out, because I am many things, and paranoid about being gang-raped and beaten is one of them.

-Did you know traffic lights were invented before cars? 1868. Go figure. A lantern with red and green signals was used at a London intersection to control the flow of horse buggies and pedestrians. When motorcars were introduced to the US in the late 1890s, Police Officer William Potts used railroad signals for street traffic, adding the amber light. His electric traffic lights were installed in 1920 in Detroit. They were manually controlled. The first automatic traffic light was invented later in 1920 by Garrett Morgan and first used in Cleveland.

-I thought that an excellent way to pass time would be going to a movie, but with amazing precision, the Lacey theater complex had no power, the Yelm theater complex had no power, and the Olympia Mall had electricity, but the theater walled off til 2007 for remodeling.  Bastards.

-Just to amuse you, when I finally ceased my stumbling through the mall trying to find the Magical Disappearing Theater, I paused at the walled off area, twisted my lips in a wry grin, and turned around to head back–and lo and behold, what should be in front of me but the clothing boutique known as Claire’s.

-In a perfect symbol of our relationship, a branch was blown off a tree into my car, leaving a healthy dent in the rear driver’s side panel. The reason my car sits in the driveway is because the two-car garage is completely taken up by her boat and woodworking crap. Yes, I knew that when I moved out here, so it serves me right, but it’s a great metaphor for how her obsessions result in my being devalued and damaged.

Dammit, I said I was staying away from that. To punish me, the gods have just made my Internet connection go out. At least the power is still on. *waits for an explosion*

There’s a reason that my OD is named what it is, however. Because here, in the spaces between words, I am a supplicant…for a reason to Believe.