I am always amazed at how an “apocalyptic” event tears the yoke of every day life off of people’s necks, and in my experience, always with positive results. Power failures, ice storms, blizzards, whatever the event, when it jerks you out of your “normal” routine and forces you into what Joseph Campbell described as being “totally alive”, that is when the magic that surrounds us all comes into focus.

The kingdom of the father is spread out before us, and men do not see it.

Though things could have turned different a week later without electricity.

The city I live also passed through a blackout, but things went completelly different. The blackout was caused by the explosion of the bridge where the power cables are due to incompetence of the maintenence team. In a thirs wolrd country, things happen really slowly, so we went without light for almost 3 days. People were shut within their appartments, the police called to duty any officer they could and kept constant patrols and even closed roads that led to slums, people were pretty much scared of their own shadow those days, leaving home only to buy any suplies they could find (the good side was that supermarkets ussualy have independent generators, so we could find ice and other cold things). After the power finally returned, everyone could do nothing but complain that they have to spend 3 days without absolutelly nothing to do and that they lost everything they had on the fridge. It was damn hard to find anyone that shared theyr food or found a way to enjoy the break from day-to-day life.

Well, maybe it was only the sheer longer blackout time that made people so much more unhappy here(Florianópolis-Brazil) than in NY, but maybe people are just not ready to let go theyr routine and just try follow their zombie-like path no matter what happens…

I had a similar experience with my family some time last year. We all sat down to watch some show and all the power went in our area. It was pitch black and I loved it. Me and my dad had to hunt around the house to find torches n stuff and light candles. Then we went outside, had a chat with our neighbours and then sat in the kitchen and told stories by candlelight. I was also pretty disappointed when we all had to go back to watching the TV with the lights on :0(

I think it’s great how much we can theorise and rant about things like this but a simple experience like this can teach you so much more and give you a sweet sweet taste of the slow collapse. I want another blackout!