I had just sat down to write at the computer when everything went dark.
It’s storming again. The power is out. There are now three candles around a notebook, and I’m wondering how those great old authors did it—dipping into the ink, squinting even as I am now. I can’t imagine Emerson would have permitted himself the extravagance of three candles at once. Perhaps he wrote only during the day. Perhaps he could see in the dark. The old bat.
Later I’ll transcribe this into the computer. Even Emerson could not argue with the efficiency of simply clicking send, although perhaps he would decry the medium’s lack of aesthetic appeal.
I’m accustomed to power clicking off for a few seconds occasionally. You curse because you have to go around resetting all the digital clocks, perhaps muttering that timepieces with actual clockworks in them do not forget the time when the power is momentarily interrupted, but also forgetting that all those digital clocks to not have to be wound; do not lose minutes over a few months. The outages I’m used to last for just a flash, not even long enough for the darkness to come crushing in to fill the void of light.
I recall when I was a boy, calling a friend when the power was out. “Hey, the power is out here, is it out there?”
“Yeah.”
”Wow, it must be out everywhere.”
I think I also recall, now that I consider it, one or twice when the power was out the whole night. What did I do?
It has been dark here quite a while now. When the lights went out I waited expectantly those first few moments but the power never returned. Where was the flashlight? I didn’t know. Even after months this house is strange to me. Drawers full of knobs and bobbins that don’t belong to me; closets full of clothes that wouldn’t fit. Foreign smells. Pictures of people I don’t know; people who wouldn’t know me.
In the profound dark I found—of all things—my cell phone. I flipped it open and turned it on, intending to use its meager light to find my way, but the battery was dead. There was a scented candle I bought when I arrived that I burned a few evenings and then forgot about, so I knew that there were matches somewhere, but in the dark I found that somewhere is such a bigger place. I fumbled for a bit and then my eyes began to adjust. There was a faint blueness in the windows. There were sounds like something being tortured at the bottom of a great chasm. In desperation I began taking things off the table and setting them on the floor, hoping to find the matches by elimination, but I had been at work at the table for several days, and there was an embarrassment of clutter. Before long I was knocking things on the table over, kicking things I’d just placed on the floor.
As I searched I began to think that if the power stays out it will get very cold in here tonight. I began to think that if the power stays out I won’t be able to recharge my cell phone and my laptop battery will remain depleted. There will be no way to reach anyone. I’ll miss my flight. I’ll be stranded. In the dark.
The wind right now is blowing harder than I have ever seen wind blow. The air pressure is changing. The house has outgassed; the warm air it exhaled must have condensed into mist as it escaped. There are drafts now and my candles flicker. I set them closer to the page. Through the windows I can see the large trees outside moving in unnatural ways—as though their roots were wrapped in canvas and they were being lowered into holes by rabbles of reckless men. But these trees are much too large to handle that way. The noise, too. The house popping, moaning. The wail outside. The sound of detritus blowing against the roof. There are crashes occasionally. I don’t know what they are and what I imagine frightens me.
I’ve just moved. I thought I shouldn’t be so close to the large windows. That’s something I’m sure would have been obvious to Emerson much sooner, but I am irrevocably a Modern. I glance at the candle’s flame—a act I’m sure my progenitors instinctively avoided because, for several seconds thereafter, I am unable to see the page. All that wind has drawn the heat from this house. I think it must be ten degrees cooler in here than it was a couple of hours ago. I’ve moved into the basement. I expect it will stay warmer here. If I had sense I would have set some wood to dry in the garage. If I had sense I would have known where matches were—been able to find them easily in the dark. Emerson would have known to do these things.
Eventually I did find the matches, on the end-table across the room. I wasted three of them finding the candle. That found, and lit, I used it to look for another. I tripped around; I tilted it. I groped into unlit recesses.
This is my last week here. Each step I take on these walks is, in a way, a step towards home, but I am not ready to depart just yet.
1) “Through the windows I can see the large trees outside moving in unnatural ways—as though their roots were wrapped in canvas and they were being lowered into holes by rabbles of reckless men.” I rolled this phrase around in my mind several times, savoring it.
2) I admire your consistent ability to describe your experiences in a way that can be interpreted as extended metaphors, should the reader wish to do so; but you never push a larger (or perhaps I should say deeper) view on the reader. There’s a particular talent both to choosing subjects that lend themselves to bi-level composition, and also to not “leading” the reader too much.
3) I remember, on a story of yours, tut-tutting at your having described a frightened cat’s tail as a bottle-brush . . . I believe I said that Mr. Daniel Eckhart, The Creative Simile/Metaphor King, should be able to come up with something more original. You proved me right in this essay — describing the cat’s tail as “a Christmas tree” was a wonderful and unexpected visual.
Mr. Rochester,
I know that’s you, despite your clever pseudonym. And thank you. I was thinking of you when I wrote that about the cat’s tail. That bottle-brush incident was a, well, a metaphorical albatross around my neck.