The power is off… again.

The utility company warned us: they’d cut power in case of fire danger.

There’s no fire. No fire danger.

Still, the power’s gone—in a patchwork pattern across the countryside.

Something broke.

And it keeps breaking.

What if we’re on the edge of a larger breakdown?

Not a grid failure, but a general physics collapse.

What if the mysterious quality we call electricity just stops flowing?

It can’t be all bad.

We had civilization for thousands of years, and electricity for only a couple hundred.

But still—it feels like disaster.

I blame the name we gave it:

Power.

No wonder it feels so essential.

Going without Power sounds existential.

If we’d called it Sparky, we’d probably shrug and move on.

“The Sparky’s out.”

“Oh well. Candle time.”

Today is the third day without power—at least most of the day.

I’m doing powerless things while I wait for power:

Napping.

Reading.

Cooking thawed food.

And mostly—waiting.

Waiting for Power.

I want power to freeze my frozen things.

To light my entertainment boxes.

To shine into the dark corners of my life.

Was life so different two hundred years ago?

Yes.

And no.

They waited too.

For rain.

For word.

For fire.

For something that could carry them through the night.