Okay, so I’m an idiot. I received my electricity bill from Southern California Edison, set it aside with a thought to look at it again as the due date got closer, then put something on top of it, then something on top of that.
This morning at about eleven am, while composing a Tweet (yes, I Tweet. Don’t you?) to a fellow writer, the power went off. At first I thought it must be the whole building, so I sat for a few moments listening for any of my neighbors who might be coming out to see what was up. No one seemed to be coming out. Then I remembered the Edison bill. Damn.
My phones are Internet based, so, without the modem and router, I couldn’t call out. My cell phone is old, needs a new battery, so I knew it would die before I actually reached someone to pay the bill, so I went out to my car, plugged the phone into the cigarette lighter adapter and called. They said the lights would be on in between three and six ours.
I spend my life at the computer. I spend my life on the Internet. It is where most of my business is conducted, most of my socializing is at least initiated, most of my creativity happens and most of my communication with the world takes place. The soft hum of the hard drive and fans in the computer is a constant companion, so much so that, like an old lover, I have become oblivious to it’s presence. It was suddenly very quiet. Even with the street noises, and I live on a major boulevard with much traffic, it was quiet.
After calling Steve (the business/writing partner, for those of you who don’t keep up) to let him know not to come in, and to call the answering service occasionally, I picked up a book and started reading. The blinds were open, as was the front door, and the light was bright and natural, riding in on a cool spring breeze. At first I felt guilty. Not, as you might expect, because of the “not paying the bill” thing. I felt guilty because I wasn’t working. I wasn’t writing. I wasn’t doing things that would bring in money.
After a small while, I realized that the guilt was pointless, that I might as well decide to take advantage of the day. Several pages into the book that has been long wanting to be read, (one by Orson Scott Card,
Being forced to simply not go on the computer, being forced to not spin my wheels, to sit, read and think, was an amazing experience. No one needed my attention that quickly, nothing needed to get done, tasks that were there in the morning would still be there tomorrow morning and no one was injured or died because I didn’t get to them. At about nine pm the power finally came back on. It was a wholly wonderful day.
So, of course, as soon as the power was back on, I turned on the computer and wrote a blog about it.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
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Except on a drizzly Christmas Eve day. There were no lines. The drizzle wasn’t enough to make you wet, only enough to put a sharp chill in the air that kept most people huddled up in their homes by their Christmas trees, waiting for the turkey or ham to come out of the oven. To me, though, it put a soft filter on the world, making the plastic splendor of Disneyland glow with an unreal magnificence. It felt like moving through a beautiful, Impressionist painting. Monet’s Cathedrals with men dressed as large mice.
“You are now officially an old lady,” he said to me when he saw the pothos cuttings in a vase on my kitchen windowsill. That was five or six years ago. I told him the pothos needed trimming and it was a waste to just throw the cuttings out. He shook his head sadly. They are still there. Pothos like to grow long tendrils and look sickly odd if you don’t trim them back. If you do trim them back, the plants can become full, lush and bountiful. I liked my plants lush, so I trimmed the pothos and put the cuttings in water to root. Sometimes I then replant them. It doesn’t make me an old lady.
I went to the local library to look up some scripts and worked up a couple of monologues, the requisite comedic piece, a cut and pasted monologue from Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood, “Mr. and Mrs. Pew are silent over cold grey cottage pie,” and a dramatic piece from Hamlet, “Oh, that this too too sullied flesh would thaw, melt or resolve itself into a dew.” I did, I think, fairly well. Because I had already planned on moving to Los Angeles, I gave them the family homestead address in Spokane to make sure any mail would eventually get to me, then told my family to look out for anything from them. I went back to my job in Northern California, then moved to Los Angeles in another ballsy move that deserves it’s own essay.
I was told to go to the Variety Arts Center, that venerable, stately old building. The audition was in a medium sized rehearsal room upstairs. I brought in the requisite comedic and dramatic pieces, the same two I’d used in Ashland. I walked into the room and was introduced to Bill Bushnell, the artistic director of the theatre, and his assistant. I did the Thomas piece. It felt good. It felt wonderful. I peeked over at the two sitting behind the long folding table and they had smiles on their faces. I did the Shakespeare. I was dead on. I had never done it better. It rang with emotion, with betrayal. “Oh God, God, how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seems to me all the uses of the world that it should come to this… But two months dead. Nay, not so much, not two.” I felt it in my bones. I was Hamlet. Albeit an overweight one with dark curly hair, but I was Hamlet.
