Thursday, October 24, 2002

The crazy thing is that

The crazy thing is that the streetlights do go out around me.  Not all of them, not all the time, but often enough that people who’ve known me for years see it happen when we’re together and know what’s going on.  “Dude, stoppit,” they mutter as the glass globe fades to orange, ochre, and then - not black, but a silvery reflective darkness, dusty glass glistening internally far overhead.  It all started that night in Greenwich Village when I hit the lamp post and killed the streetlight with my own inherent vital power, channeled through my stalwart arm - an arm that had never killed anything, never had much of an impact on the world.  And now as I drive through the big park at night and the lamps go out one at a time as I approach them, I wonder what I’m doing, what bizarre sodium-halogen poison I’m exuding.  I wonder whether I am getting charged up with their power and energy, sucking it forth from their concrete and steel conduits - or if it’s just evaporating, disappearing into the darkness that precedes me.  I once had the opportunity to talk to a public works electrician about it, asked him “why would streetlights go out when I get near them, not all of them, but one or two every month?” He looked at me as if I was an alien just landed from a planet where electricity is food, and sat back as he told me: “No reason.  That doesn’t happen.  You must be imagining it.” Let me tell you bucko, I imagine a lot of stuff, but not this.  I’m a rolling brownout, and it weighs on my mind.