It's mostly nice having our power back...
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 12:00PM Thanks to the big thunderstorms that hit DC on Sunday afternoon, we were without power for 30 hours, along with 299,999 of our neighbors.
You know what? It was kind of nice.
Not all of it, of course. It wasn't nice sleeping without the AC. I hated throwing away the melted carton of brand-new ice cream, and the sad squishy popsicles.
But being forced to slow down, to live without the constant in-your-face option of TV, video games, video chats, twitter chats, e-mail marathon sessions... that was pretty great. We read lots of books out loud, and made art with Little Dude. He loved the undivided attention, I think, even though he did cast wistful glances at the basement and its silenced Wii.
I loved feeling more connected to our neighborhood, too, thanks to our open windows. Living in DC, you either have your windows closed because it's muggy and the AC is running... or you have them closed because it's cold enough that you need heat. Then you just get out of the habit of opening the windows, for those few glorious times when the weather is perfect enough to welcome it in your house.
During the power outage, though, we opened each and every window. When Little Dude was in bed, we sat in our dark living room and just listened. We heard the whistle of a train a few miles away. We heard people walking down our street and softly laughing. We heard crickets and the rustle of animals in the bushes and our little urban meadow. We heard what each other had to say, too--because there was nothing to distract us from fully listening. I could feel my brain slowing down. All of my stresses didn't seem so important anymore.
When the power came back on at 9:00 last night, the entire neighborhood cheered. You could hear shouts coming from several streets away. And then... the AC kicked on. We ran around the house and slammed the windows shut. We locked them, too, sealing away most every outside sound.
If anyone was cheering, still, we couldn't hear it. We pretty much couldn't hear our neighborhood at all.
This makes me think about how important it is for writers, and other creative people, to keep our "windows" open... and to be still, and silent enough, to hear everything that's going on outside. It's so easy to seal yourself into your daily life, and not notice all the fascinating things on the fringe, waiting to become part of a story. Even if you can only do it once and awhile, it's worth sitting still, opening your mind, and waiting to see what you notice.





