For three days, the clocks flashed twelve. The computers shut down. The line was dead.

For a while, there, the power went out when there was lightning in the sky. Or if there was rain. Or if the Earth orbited the Sun.

Sometimes, now, the power drops out in the middle of the day, maybe for a minute, maybe for a few hours. Sometimes it flickers, you know, on and off, waffling before settling finally on darkness. It’s base, it’s primitive, it’s a drop into simple fecklessness.

Sometimes, the electricity goes out, too. This week it’s gone out three or four times, rapid enough that I stopped resetting the clocks until at least a day went by without an outage. It went out one night when I needed the Internet, and stayed out long enough that my cell phone battery withered away. No electricity, no power, no alarm.

It was happenstance, but there was a message in it, I think.

I’m home, hundreds of miles from an annual party, because I haven’t done what I wanted to this year. I didn’t pay the dues I set for myself. By the metrics of the evening, though, I can say with pride that I have stood behind wonderful people with talent and skills worthy of admiration.

These people flew through the air on fuel-burning engines. They sat in a room buzzing with nerves and handshakes. They got lubed up on well drinks. They got injected with medals and meaningful looks. The place hummed with electricity, I imagine.

Noise: The Faint, “The Geeks Were Right”

I washed bile and ire out of this and I think I regret it.