Edition #137: Illuminations During a Power Outage
Plus, why we never have enough time, life is easier with a fake assistant, and the foodie newsletter of my dreams
A Note From the Editor
The year was 2004. The location: Kissimmee, Florida, my childhood home. A hurricane was coming and none of us were as prepared as we should have been. It was a time before Instagram, before constant connection and Smartphones. On the news, a family of country folk was interviewed by a sly newscaster attempting to hide his bemusement. The show showed a packed house, red solo cups stacked in the background. The newscaster asked when the family was planning to evacuate. “We’re not leaving,” the patriarch said proudly. Whopping in the background; the energy of a college football tailgate. “We’re having us a hurricane party!”
We, my family, were not having a hurricane party. That first hurricane of the season was brutal; me, my mother, my little brother and sister, my older brother, and our dog all crowded in the windowless bathroom. My father and eldest brother, bold with drink and insatiable curiosity, outside with flashlights, watching the damage transpire in real time. One of two trees in our front yard uprooted, the fence knocked down. A few broken windows, a collapsed pool enclosure, a swath of shingles missing from the roof. That year, five hurricanes would hit central Florida over the course of six weeks. We would move out of our house for a full year as it got repaired. FEMA was a regular part of my sixth and seventh-grade vocabulary—mom’s calling FEMA, we have to wait for FEMA to send the money, FEMA is backlogged, try again in three weeks.
What I remember most vividly about that treacherous hurricane season was the stretch of days without power. It was August in Florida, the heat so sweltering heat and thick you could taste it in the back of your mouth. No running water, nothing to eat but bags of chips and granola bars. It should’ve been a miserable time and in some ways, I suppose it was, but it was also quite fun. I remember having all my siblings and my parents in the living room together, a rare occasion. With nothing to do and nowhere to be, we relaxed into each other’s company. If we were miserable in the heat and in the uncertainty, we were miserable together and that was something. A few days later, when a smaller hurricane hit, my little brother and I tied garbage bags to our wrists and ankles like makeshift parachutes. We rode our Razor scooters around the cul-de-sac, the strong winds whipping air into our trashbags as we picked up speed. It felt like flying.
Just yesterday, a much smaller scale situation occurred. The year was 2023. The location: a beach town in Costa Rica, where I’ve been living for the past six months. A small white house at the top of a grueling, unpaved hill. It’s dry season here, so the town was ill-prepared for the torrential downpours that would dump all evening. I had a deadline—this essay—and it was going to be a complex one, inspecting American culture from what I hoped would be a nuanced lens. I turned down company and dinner plans and my favorite yoga class to dedicate time to this writing; I had a plan. And then the power went out.
My cell phone had less than 10% battery, the sun was quickly going down; it was dark and I was alone. I resisted it, initially. Felt panic, felt annoyance. Then I found a forgotten stash of tea-light candles from a recent dinner party. I poured myself a glass of red and lit enough candles so that, if you had passed by my heavily windowed home, you might think I was performing a seance. It was warm, so I laid on the cool tile of the floor and opened all the doors, listening to the sounds of the rain. By the time the power came back on a few hours later, I was almost sad about it; nostalgic for the forced simplicity of the former situation.
It’s funny when we become set on a particular task only to be humbled by forces of nature. This is something I’ve only learned living in an underdeveloped town in Costa Rica; your plans are only suggestions. You are not in control, no matter how many Google calendar invites you send, no matter how tight your deadline is. In a way, this is a liberating reminder. It makes me think of early COVID times, when, as miserable as living in Manhattan was, it was also a bit of strange relief. Never worrying about missing out on anything, never feeling like there might be somewhere better to be, becoming malleable to the situation at hand. Disasters of any scale can be something of a pressure valve release—if you’re too sick to go surfing for a week, you’re too sick. If your power goes out and you can’t complete the necessary research for your planned essay, you pivot. If you're a bored kid waiting through the third hurricane in a month, you use the wind as a prop in your game. There’s a profound bit of beauty in that sort of forced surrender.
A year or so ago, I was at a friend of a friend’s (very cute) Brooklyn restaurant watching amateur standup comedy. A lot of it wasn’t funny but one man’s set stood out and has stuck with me all these months later. It was during the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the comedian talked about his father, an old war veteran. His father had said if we were younger and able-bodied, he’d go to Ukraine to help in the fight. “And he meant it,” the comedian said. “My dad only knows how to do two things; go to war and go to Home Depot.” A good joke!
He went on to his thesis; that he could never go to war because he didn’t know how anything worked. He couldn’t make a fire, he couldn’t tell the time based on the sun. He possessed no survival skills; no real hard skills, for that matter. “I really noticed it during COVID. Suddenly, I couldn’t order my Starbucks on the app for pickup. A few times I tried for delivery, the delivery dude never showed up. I was miserable. I realized I couldn’t do anything—I literally couldn’t get my morning coffee without assistance.”
He continued down that line of thought until, I presume, a vast majority of the audience was having similar existential crises to the one I was having between bouts of nervous laughter. We have let ourselves become so useless, he said. We cannot do anything without our phones, without money, without this hyper-dependant, Capitalist machine we’re so plugged into. My dad could survive in a war; I can hardly manage ot caffeinate myself. It happened so quickly without us even noticing. Imagine what might happen if the whole system collapses, if they pull the plug on us. We’ll learn we’re as useless as we’ve let ourselves become, he said. If you’ve seen Triangle of Sadness, this will resonate even deeper. The sentiment also reminds me of this song.
I thought about this when I realized the power was out and the sun would soon be gone. I initially didn’t know what to do without my phone’s flashlight; I didn’t know how to think logically under environmental stress. No hard skills. But after a beat, I decided the best thing to do would be to fill my quad’s gas tank while I still had the last bit of sunlight, that way I could leave if I needed to—check. After filling the tank, I sat around in the dark for a while before I rediscovered the tea light. In less than 30 minutes, I went from panicking in the dark to relaxing in the sweet simplicity of candlelight, rain sounds, and forced stillness. I ate a can of chickpeas for dinner. See, I can figure shit out, I told myself. Perhaps the lesson in all this is that it’s nice, sometimes, to have no choice in the matter, to be forced to face the circumstance at hand. To pivot. And, maybe, to learn some hard survival skills. Just in case.
Cheers, my dears, and as always, thanks for reading! Now, a bit of housekeeping:
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Have a wonderful weekend. I only have two weeks left in Costa Rica, so I plan to spend it surfing as much as possible, doing some sweaty vinyasa, walking on the beach, and eating my favorite desserts in town. Might I suggest lighting a bunch of candles one evening and turning off all the lights? Qué magical. Until next time,
Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming
Why We Never Have Enough Time. Whenever I’m running against a deadline, rushing to a meeting, or realizing it is time for bed and unsure of where the day went, I hear the words of a dear friend: “Time is made up!”