Finding transcendence in the dark of Dorian
Much was nightmarish about Dorian: the Great Flood rains, and let-us-now-pray winds, the crashing sound that, you feared, could only be a mighty oak caving in your roof.
Yet, in the Eric Idle-ish spirit of always looking at the bright side of life, good things happened too.
Tuesday night, for the second time, a friend showed up with a chain saw to have at the large section of tree that lay on the lawn after taking out part of our porch and the neighbour’s balcony. Soon a gaggle of us were standing there — complete strangers wondering if the wood was up for grabs, a neighbour wandering by with an infant son on his shoulders, a buddy making his way back from seeing his grandchildren around the corner — brought together in a communal way in Dorian’s wake.
My experience is that the aftermath of hurricanes is often like that. Usually it seems the weather is balmy, as if even distempered gods realize there is a limit to how much people can face.
Being powerless, we then head outside where we talk to real flesh-and-blood human beings like we used to do before the screen age began turning us into solitary, closed-in creatures. Being without electricity imposes some of the old rhythms of life. At least that is how it seemed to me during the powerless post-Dorian days and nights.
The dark is humbling. When all that is visible are some stars or a slice of moon, the proper reaction, it seems to me, is awe that somehow we walk this earth. Darkness at that point seems something to embrace rather than fear. That is a good thing.
The same can be said of absolute quiet, which you only notice when it is upon you and takes your breath away. So it was when night fell during our recent nights without power, and only the occasional passing car, a far-off generator, and Nova Scotia Power crews somewhere in the distance, broke the silence. Silence seems to make the world bigger. Undistracted by the noise of modern life you listen closely, not for sound, but for its absence and, at that moment, life seems thick with possibility.
What the aftermath of this latest hurricane also reinforced for me is that time expands in the dark.
It feels authentic to eat by candlelight, to play crib, Scrabble or some game that your grandparents might have played back in the days before Angus L. Macdonald connected most of the province to an electrical grid. When you read, you have to stare hard in the lantern’s flicker. The words — I happened to be reading a Sicilian crime novel by Andrea Camilleri — seem close to perfection. You feel blessed, like a monk in medieval times.
Dorian reminded me of something else I had read: that in the days before electricity, households used to shut down soon after sundown.
That may be true. But before that happened, the other night, we went outside for a stroll in the dark.
The Nova Scotia Power folks, we knew were hard at work. Soon, and it couldn’t be soon enough, the lights would be back on. We would see the world with different eyes.