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Reply to "Blackout!"

I was having sex when the fan in the window went dead for a second or two. Then it did this weird sort of being on half power for about three minutes. I just thought a fuse in the building blew, it is a very old Ave C building that blows fuses sort of regularly. But then the power plant at 14th went in to convulsions, it figures prominently in the view out my window, especially from the bed, - an emergency venting of filthy grey steam and dark black smoke together from the stacks. At my age and for another reason having to do with mental health I don't get very excited about much of anything and I see emergency venting from that plant every so often, and it practically blew up altogether last year. It was reactions from people down on the street that aprised me something else was up. It is the first hour or so that was unsettling because there is no information about the cause, the extent. So you feel very vulnerable just waiting to be hit by whatever it is. Mentally, emotionally I kind of feel prepared for just about anything life on planet earth tosses my way. Though I don't seem to manifest a lot of affect externally about things I very much enjoyed the deep mood of disconnection having to walk very slowly on the street in the dark that night. But one of my biggest thoughts is, What is it that separates this experience as being one of relative calm and cooperation from what could be the experience of chaos, violence and bedlam? How was that collective decision made by eight or nine million New York City inhabitants?

I also had a really weird physical reaction to not being in an environment super-saturated with very high volumes of electric current. Like my every living cell had been unplugged. For a while I felt very dampened and tired. But ultimately I had the physical sensation of more corporeal calm and clarity. Odd.

I like the chaos of free time from the stopping of the technologicalworld.

I had quite a bit of food that did not require electricity to prepare on hand, my preferred libations were in order, I posses a really good flashlight, suitable methods of home defense should anarchy arise, and most of all a mental/emotional orientation to calamity and hardship that just sees this stuff as routine.

And I think the vast majority of people in this city have a very well developed survival instict, know how to persevere with even good humor, and are actually united more by a shared opinion about the nature of the failures that lead to our collective predicament. But I still think about that answerless question concerning what separates the collective choice for calm from the choice for depredations.

And of course, everyone in my building knew the lower east side would be the last neighborhood to be given power back. That is what is really an indication of how sick 'back to normal' means.

[This message was edited by seven on 08-18-03 at 12:41 PM.]
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