Day 179 of Staying the Fuck Inside

Electricity went out at 3:14am.

Fortunately, the temperatures didn’t get as bad as feared today. Also, me cooling the house down to ridiculous temperatures last night may have helped.

The sky has been bruised yellow all day, with enough smoke in the air to taste like an ash tray.Not to be overly apocalyptic, but there is a tone of ontological decay to it all. I expect to see chunks of the sky missing, with gaping holes of black void beyond, while fissures spread across the remaining bits like a cracked windshield.

It feels like the Langoliers are langoliering.

This is what it would be like just prior to Hodgson’s Night Land, prompting a call to build the Last Redoubt. We remain on the Borderlands in the House of Silence.

I say all of this with the sound of cars driving by, and the sight of neighbors walking around outdoors with and without masks. Everything and everyone is covered in ash.

Pandemic. Civil unrest. Fires. Overall uncertainty, of course, contribute to all of this. Things will uptick a smidge once the lights come back on, tomorrow night.

But this darkness – wholly natural and forgotten by “civilized” people – is rich, deep, and mysterious. If not technically the “underworld,” it is an interesting momentary side-quest; a pause for deep reflection, where one can lose oneself at one’s pleasure into the remembrance of a natural order of light and dark that goes far beyond the reality that only appears to decay around us.

Here’s Tom, with the weather…