Darkness Falls

"They are the last romantics, these candles:
Upside down hearts of light tipping wax fingers,
And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,
Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints."
--Sylvia Plath, "Candles"

We were living by candlelight here last night, watching the wax drip and the light flicker in the sweltering darkness. You could see the stars over New York City--something you never see otherwise. We sat on the front steps of our building for hours, listening to anonymous voices passing by in the darkness. Car lights occasionally caught faces for a second, like still photographs.

Now everything is back to normal -- almost. I still can't get my e-mail, though I can access the web. We may have to throw away most of what's in our refridgerator. We're told not to turn our air-conditioning on yet, so as not to overload "the system."

The system: so complex and delicate, and we're utterly dependent on it. They said, after the big blackout of 1965 ("Where were you when the lights went out?"), that it could never happen again. But so many things that could "never" happen have happened in the last few years . . .