8/3/06
These rolling blackouts and natural disasters have got me thinking: have you stopped to notice how incredibly thin our comfort zones have become? The diameter of our comfort zone reminds of those pictures of Earth's atmosphere from space: it seems big when you're in it, but step back a bit and it's as gossamer as skin on a bubble.
Your entire world can suddenly cease to exist in its present form, with the flick of a switch (or, in 2003, by the existence of some trees in Ohio). Once the power goes out, that's your refrigerator and freezer, not to mention internet, air conditioning or any sort of entertainment that doesn't involve cards or dice. The only thing left working is your landline phone (cell phones always fuck up during any outage) and your water, as long as there's no pump. In essence, you and your family are one power line away from being back in the 1890s.
I mention this because Tessa just told me about an episode of "Wife Swap." Apparently a Carmelo Soprano-ish Italian mother of the Stallone family swapped places with a New Agey, slightly granola mom in a beautiful mixed-race family (like GFWD's), and hilarity ensued. The Stallone kids - a prima donna teen daughter and a fat little brother addicted to TV and video games - were asked to meditate, go vegetarian, read books, and turn off the TV for a week.
For their part, the new agey kids had to adopt the Stallone policy of a strictly clean house, television after school, and being on time to everything (which wasn't a big priority for their actual mother). These kids took it in stride, basically liked the experience, and were glad to have their own mother back at the end.
The Stallones, however, had a FULL SCALE MELTDOWN. Without television, with the "forced reading of books" and meditation, they went apeshit. Even the Stallone's mother-in-law tore the New Age mom apart. I'm leaving out tons of great details (of a show I never even saw) but the point is fascinating.
The only real difference between the New Age family and the Stallones was the relative diameter of their comfort level. The Stallones probably sound more like the rest of us than the other family, and I can certainly empathize, but let's not mince words - they were addicts. Addicted to meat, to television, to video games, pop culture, and worse, to a regimented routine. They had been taken over by The Corporation™, whose vested interest is always to reduce a human's comfort level to almost zero, where Their Product can offer the only salve.
I'm not saying my family is any better, either the one I grew up in, or the one I helped create. God knows when the internet or the satellite goes down, my righteous indignation, fury, and eventual jonesing approaches a methadone level. But I would like to widen my comfort level to a plush strip where anything could be possible.
In "My Dinner With Andre," a movie I actually saw, Andre Gregory talks about the professor who decided to walk a different way to class every day for twenty years so he wouldn't fall into a torpor; he would always be conscious and never the "walking dead." I wonder if there's any way my family can do that, even in small doses: no coffee for a week, TV only in Spanish for a week, fully immerse oneself in the ocean every day for a week, eat no meat for a month.
There is a problem. You can decide "I'm not starting my car for a week" or something fairly revolutionary, but it's just not feasible if you have a job. Almost none of it is. A job exhausts the mind and spirit to the point where one's comfort level not only becomes thin and inflexible, it's comforting how thin and inflexible it really is. The less pejorative phrase would be your "simple pleasures," a beer, a scotch, a crappy TV show, a delivered pizza.
The only questions I have begun to ask are these: are your simple pleasures killing you? And, god forbid, if the month-long power outage comes, can you survive it? Would you even know where to start?
Certain friends of mine would be fine, even excel, in the new world order: Bud, Lars and Annie spring to mind. I would hope my little family is flexible enough to expand our comfort level to something outrageous, and though I'm not sure what exercise we can do in the meantime (no hot water for a week? no internet? suggestions?), it'd be captivating to see what happens.
I still have peccadilloes. I will never do Vonage (or any VoIP) because it means when the cable goes, the phone goes. I keep our cable modem and satellite TV separate, so one always works. I'm planning a camp-in-home setup in case LA gets hit with the dreaded 8.5. And I have a stash of painkillers, creams, Afrin, and my beloved Celexa. I'm fine with a wide comfort zone, but my drugs are NON-NEGOTIABLE. Just point me in the direction of the home dook game, and I'll walk there.
One of my simple pleasures everyday is reading your blog. The crappy tv I would rather live without. I want to see your work thrive on television. Best of luck to you this development season!
andre braugher?
andre gregory.
funny.
(will actually comment tomorrow...)
Oh my god, what a brain fart. I fixed it before too many people saw it. Wallace Shawn and Andre Braugher would be awesome, though.
I can't believe you're writing about this b/c I was so freaking out last night after watching the History channel with this show on the Mayan Doomsday Prophecy. Did anybody see that??? Their calendar has predicted all this crazy stuff that actually happened- for example, that 9/11/01 the world would change. And then, the day that we invaded Afghanistan was predicted as a "get even day". Anyway, their calendar is very specific that Doomsday is 12/21/12. Some people were saying that we were all going to die, but most were saying that the world will totally change. Maybe that's the day we run out of oil? Maybe it will be an environmental disaster that changes everyone's lives on the whole planet.
Needless to say, I was up half the night with all these different scenarios in my head.Can we talk about something else now?
Our electricity was out for about twelve hours last friday night and Saturday morning due to a wicked lightning storm. One thing that it reminded me was that our comfort level sometimes also includes a wall of isolationism. The TV and AC keeps families inside so they rarely communicate with their neighbors. With the AC not working, everyone was outside talking with each other, helping clean up limbs, etc. It was great. The same thing happened after Hurricane Floyd. When we were without electricity for days, I had meals in neighbors' houses that I had never been in before. I don't know what my point is, but I thought it was an interesting idea.
When I saw you guys back in May, you may recall that I was getting ready to move into a new house. When I moved in, I was currently using VoIP, which meant (as you pointed out) that my phone, internet, and cable all came from a single company. So of course I made sure that they were here at 8 am of my first day in this house to get me installed. Turned out that the cable line feeding this house was defective, and to repair it meant installing a whole new underground conduit. And this is a bizarrely huge property (with a swimming pool no less) despite being in the middle of Brookline. So it was not a trivial issue. Long story short: it took A MONTH to get my cable repaired and reconnected.
The phone was what drove me bananas more than anything. I'm not a huge cell phone user, so I carry a blackberry instead which isn't great for long conversations (in my opinion). I immediately caved in and hooked up a land line (but it took three days for Verizon to get the new phone service hooked up). Those first three days were really surreal - it was as if I was in some weird culture shock having moved into this huge house with limited communication with the outside world. When in fact, I just moved a block from my old apartment. After the phone got connected I calmed down a little, but a month without TV or internet (well, except for the email coming to the bberry) was a huge adjustment. I mean, honestly, how am I supposed to function during the day not knowing if Coral is winning on the new season of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge?
Thank god MTV replays those episodes each week.
Ian, You really need to stop writing posts that are all about ME! How did you know that I have a total meltdown when my washing machine or dishwasher is not working? And, as far as being the "walking dead" goes, I will share an embarrassing secret with you guys, since I am amongst friends. This Tuesday, while leaving my neighborhood, I sideswiped a PARKED car. The adjuster did not understand how it all happened. The truth was that I am a distracted working mom, and my mind was completely elsewhere. . . I was thinking about projects at the Insurance Job, etc. I was the driving dead. I was driving along in a coma and smashed into a parked car. I can't even make it out of my cul de sac without all hell breaking loose. WTF?????
Cris -- Do you think Coral and Evan will prevail, despite their injuries? Do you watch "the Hills"? I cannot believe that LC bailed on the Paris opportunity to shack up with Jason. What a MISTAKE!
Living in the "Big Easy" these days is a constant reminder of just how thin our comfort zone line is. It's no longer big, and it's definitely not easy. Most of this city is a total "discomfort zone." Even though we live in the "sliver by the river" or "the isle of denial" (areas that didn't flood and "seem" to be normal), we are faced everyday with the fragility of our basic services. Power goes out at least 3 times a week (every clock in our house has a different time) and water pressure is low most of the time and always seems to drop even further every time I'm all covered in soap and shampoo - not such big deals, but gigantic nuisances. The bottom line however is that we are all pretty spoiled when it comes to what we need to live comfortably, and in light of what shortages and crises we may face, now is a great time to experiment with less. BUT...the spoiled child in me simply refuses to live without A/C or internet!!
I might survive, but I would probably be just as miserable as anyone else.
My home computer died recently (it's fine now, thanks) and I suddenly realized how much I lean on the Internet for information, connection, entertainment....
But otherwise, my simple pleasures are refreshingly un-grid-dependent. I hardly ever drive or watch TV, for instance.
However, if air conditioning counts, I'm an unrepentant junkie.
As for suggestions, you could try not driving on any trips less than, say, a mile. Ride a bike or walk instead. Try it for a week and see what happens....
it's funny you mention this, because i just got back from a weeklong retreat in rural - and i mean 20 miles from nowhere - kentucky with some of my friends.
there was no driving, no tv, no internet, no cell phones, no news of any kind, food that we got from the organic farm down the unpaved road, and during the one wicked thunderstorm, we quickly lost electricity and phone.
and it was *wonderful*! so great to be unplugged, so many things to notice in the natural world, and luckily i was with dear friends that i didn't mind talking with for hours on end. it was actually dark at night! it was amazingly renewing.
what i couldn't live without - diet coke, and a landline to call my dear husband twice a day!
hey cathie! welcome home!
This latest heat wave has underscored how crazy I would go without air conditioning or at the least a powerful fan.
We've taken several vacations to far northern Lake Champlain where the cottages had no Internet access and only broadcast TV (which got one station) and once NO TV. I actually found it refreshing. We were out and about most of the time, and did a lot of reading (yay electricity for lights) in the cottage, and the kids actually played board games and cards.
But I agree... having visited a few other countries where you're damn lucky if you can get more than a lukewarm trickle of water out of a shower, I know I am indeed addicted to many creature comforts of our age. Not to mention my Internet jones. 8-O
Instead of not driving or ditching a phone, an easy and perhaps more elemental start for the aspiring homesteading urbanite would be not drinking any beer, bread or cheese you did not make. Handy, cheap and tasty and real lessons in the loss of the cycles of life as well as our interdependency on one celled organisms - both of which lessons are then transferrable to greater reality. Plus you have a dandy party stash of 25 buck kegs for the days of Mad Maxian blackout helping you convince the neighbourhood elect you to speak with the next street rather than attack it (as beerless Joe in apartment 12D would have preferred.)
Every episode of that WifeSwap show is the same. Neatfreak controlling mom switches with lazy permissive mom. I've seen it (to my horror) 3 or 4 times and it's never different.
There are many necessary luxuries (luxurious necessities?) that I could make do without--iPod, dishwasher, TV, car--but I am firmly convinced I would die without a.c. What I've been trying to do for conservation's sake is set it at as high a temperature as I can tolerate without breaking into a sweat at my desk.
Oh, and our building is indeed switching to green power for the common spaces, and other neighbors are interested for their own apartments. See what you started, Ian?
LFMD-
I have hit parked cars as well (not once but twice now). You are not alone!
Of course, I've also had to go to Driver's Improvement school, so there you go.
LFMD and Neva, I too have hit parked cars not once but twice, both times in misguided attempts to park in tight spots. The first incident cost me $1,000 to replace the "dogleg" on the other person's car (the obscure and perversely expensive little panel between the tail end of the car and the back door). The second time I just dented my own car, and since our car lives on the street, that's not necessarily a bad thing. See, I could definitely live without the car. Except, of course, when we need it. And that's the problem with the convenience of the comfort zone.