STUCK IN THE GRID 6-3-03
How plugged in are we? It's shocking...
Friday, 8:00 PM The telephone rang, I answered it.
VOICE: "Hi, can I speak to Jennifer?"
COJO: "Whom may I ask is calling?"
VOICE: "Vanessa."
COJO: "OK, Hold on Vanessa, I'll get her."
JEN just got a new job, so a lot of people have been calling here recently whom I don't know regarding this whole job switching thing. I haven't kept track of who is who, so I'm not sure if Jen even knows a Vanessa. I brought the cordless into the bedroom where Jen was sleeping and nudged her awake with the phone.
JEN: (half awake), Jen asked me quietly: "Who is it?"
I handed her the phone.
COJO: "Vanessa?" I said.
JEN: -Jen listened to the phone for a few seconds then cut Vanessa off apparently in mid sentence- "....Um, considering that was my boyfriend who answered the phone, please take me off of your call list."
COJO:-to Jen- "Who was that?"
JEN: "A dating service."
We both laughed and I hung up the phone in it's receiver. At the split second as the phone hit the cradle, the lights went out. The TV went off, and my computer blinked out.
I ripped my painting off the wall that hides the fuse box, and started cluelessly flipping switches and punching buttons. Thinking to myself "I hope I saved my file." Jen walked in with a flash light.
JEN: "Did we forget to pay the electric?"
COJO: "No."
JEN: "We better light some candles before it gets too dark."
I walked out onto my balcony and realized that all the lights in our entire apartment complex were dead, including the streetlights. People were milling about outside confused, and wondering what to do. I decided to take out the trash.
While walking down to the dumpster, the apartments looked eerie and foreboding. People were murmuring and gossiping to one another like the President or the Pope had just died. Most had cell phones and were calling the electric company-the super-whomever they thought would be able to help.
It was a very strange site to say the least. I thought about the movie Escape from New York, long after electricity was cut off, how would people survive? Our apartment looked like that, like one of those shelled out vacant buildings.
This is when it dawned on me... how completely cut off I was. I couldn't work on any of my jobs with the computer powerless. I couldn't eat because the appliances wouldn't work to make anything. I couldn't go on the net. I couldn't tell what time it was because all the clocks were electric. The portable phone wasn't functioning because the powersource was gone. I couldn't play video games, or watch a movie. After a few hours of use my cell phone would be dead. Even the book I'm reading is on CD!
I have never felt so reliant on electricity to function in my normal day to day activities, I've just taken it for granted, and the fact that I felt so reliant at that moment kind of sickened me. It was too dark outside to play a sport or anything, so I was just stuck in doors, in my dark man-made and very expensive modern cave. I resigned to read a book by candle light, and maybe write a bit. Then, as though nothing had ever happened, the lights flipped back on.
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo