We saw shadows we'd never seen before.

That morning, i had to go get my blood taken for some labwork. Nothing too serious: thyroid levels, blood sugar. So, had to skip coffee and breakfast. Ended up taking a cab because of my amazing procrastination and self-sabotage abilities.

Leaving the doctor's office, passed some dripping divers returning their rented scuba equipment ('beautiful day out there today– just beautiful diving'). Walked up to the flower shop for a couple extra hours of work and a co-worker's birthday party (a few presents, lots of smiles & hugging, a strawberry cupcake). Waiting to use the restroom in the grocery store, i watch a lime-green balloon bump listlessly against the ceiling lights, floating sideways and sadly.
Later, leaving work, a friend offers to drive me to pick up my bike from the shop. As we get into the van, i say aloud, 'i can not get this song out of my head!!' She counters with her own current mental musical repeater: "The Passenger" by Iggy Pop. Apparently it always reminds her of me because a) i lent her that CD and b) she knows that i love to "passenge". She adorably acts out the way it always makes her want to bob her head back and forth, and then reaches out to turn on the radio. It takes us a second to believe what we hear coming through the speakers: it's... "The Passenger", by Iggy Pop. We drive in stunned silence for a time.

It's hot out, and the bike shop has a huge fan on, going full blast. It's aimed right at a suspended bicycle wheel that has fliers hanging down from it; this contraption spins and flaps wildly as we wait in line. Back out in the bright-hot parking lot with the bike, i hear someone yell down from his balcony to an unseen someone, 'hey- you guys got power down there?'

Aw, that's too bad, i think. That guy's power went out. And on such a hot day.

April drops me off at home and leaves to deliver flowers to a new mother at a hospital farther North. When i enter my building, even though it's not yet 4:00 in the afternoon, the walls skulk silently in darkness.

Hm.

i skip a pitch-black stairwell in the hopes that another one might have some backup lights on. Up in the hallway, people are poking their heads out of front doors. i get inside my apartment and finally realize that this is a power outage. And that the guy i heard in the bike shop parking lot (only a few blocks away) was cluing me in on that a lot sooner. It's probably just a few blocks wide, i think, and probably just because of the heat.
But then my telephone rings and it all becomes clear: the power is out from an hour North to an hour South of here, and clear across the entire state Eastward: from the ocean all the way to Arizona. Damn. Not small potatoes, this. Not likely to be fixed anytime soon. And Nat is far away– up on campus to see a show later in the evening. i begin to imagine the traffic jams and the anxiety building up in the world outside of my apartment.

While Nat waits to hear if his show will be cancelled (it was), i call my mom in a neighboring state to get more news. A later call to my sister proves to be the goldmine: a power company employee in Yuma, Arizona messed up while performing a routine part-replacement. Bigtime.

As night falls, candles begin to flicker in apartments across the courtyard. Everyone seems hushed, but there is still a buzzing of suppressed excitement. A call to my best friend reveals more weirdness; she'd woken up that morning to filthy brown water all over her apartment: the upstairs neighbor's water heater had busted during the night and leaked slowly through the floor, all night long. Her pantry items were ruined, not to mention a lot of towels. And i found out from Nat, later, that he'd witnessed a car crash earlier that morning, while walking to the bus stop. Seems like a bizarre day was just in the cards.

There were bonfires, and glowsticks, and firecrackers, and we waited in line at the store for a half an hour to buy ice, only to have it gone by the time we got to the front door. Back upstairs, we ate cold pizza (damn electric stove!) and watched Return to Oz with our laptop's remaining battery power. The moonlight was so bright; if you didn't blink it began to seem positively daylit outside. Everything looked different in this new, complete dark– contours nudged your mind and nothing was familiar. It was all so eerily beautiful.

The power came back on at 1:30 a.m. Nat claims he woke me up to share the news, but i have no recollection. The next day, i noticed that everyone turned on their lights just a little bit earlier than usual in those dim early evening hours... i think they were all nervous about another night of, well– night.
However, others of us decided to make this a monthly blackout, a monthly slowdown, a monthly quieting: on the second Thursday of each month, it's power off and lights out. Good thing we've always been well-stocked in candles.

truth is stranger than fiction.

Yesterday evening, my boss gave me a ride home because i had a metric ton of paperwork to do for the shop (i am the new accountant, apparently). In addition, i had 2 bags of groceries and a delicate little pot of climbing jasmine. Just call me Pack Mule. i headed for the elevator (normally i take the stairs), super excited to get to my apartment and put all the stuff down, tired after a long day of prepping flowers. Glancing down the hallway, i can see that a girl, also laden down with packages, is heading towards the elevator with me. Great, i think antisocially as i step inside. Commence awkward silence.

i hit the #2 button, and she shuffled in and asks me to hit #3. After a minute of painfully slow ascent–our elevator has always been a little hinky–she blurts, "oh my gosh that smells good...!" and i realize that i'm still holding the jasmine. "yeah!" i say. "i got it for like five bucks at Trader Joe's! They sure know how to get me." And she laughs, while i silently berate myself for over-combating my painful shyness.

Then we begin to realize that we've been at floor #2 for quite a few moments and the door is not opening. i hit the DOOR OPEN button a few times; nothing happens. We smile nervously at each other and i say, "well, if we get stuck in here, at least it will smell good!" Ha ha ha ha, we each offer. Nervous laughter. But seriously. Nothing is happening. The elevator feels dead. i start pushing more buttons, DOOR OPEN, 2, 3, DOOR OPEN again... The lights are not even lighting up on them: the elevator is completely unresponsive. i am starting to get a little scared. "Oh, no. You've got to be kidding me," she says, and leans over to push one herself. Her eyes get wide and she stares at the doors uncomprehendingly. Our eyes meet. At that moment we both realize that we are stuck in the elevator. It's probably been about three minutes at this point, but it's kind of felt like forever.

She puts the shoes she's been holding (some strappy gold pumps) on the floor of the elevator and says pleadingly, "what are we gonna do?" i consider pushing the button with the firefighter's hat on it (CALL), but then decide that i'm being overdramatic.

"do you have a phone?" i reply, suddenly extremely grateful to be in there with someone else (i do not have one). Meanwhile, it is starting to sink in, that powerless and trapped feeling. My legs suddenly feel leaden and weak. We might fall three floors, my brain says to itself matter-of-factly. Shut up! i retort. Panic is creeping in at the edges, and my breathing feels wrong. She is fumbling around in her bag for her cell phone, muttering that she can't find it, she can't find it.
"Fuck!" she says. "Do you know the number for the security office, though?"

i do. Thank lucky stars for my photographic memory right now. Guess we were a good team.

"It's 272..." i wait as she dials with panicky fingers, "...0172."

She holds the phone up to her ear, eyes darting around, as i close my eyes and silently will the elevator not to fall. You'll probably just break a leg, or an arm, my brain is trying to process rationally. "Wait, is it 619 or 858?!" She has dialed the wrong area code. "Oh, it's 858..." i say, trailing off. This is like a Three Stooges routine. i begin to get used to the idea of being stuck in this tiny space with a complete stranger, one who actually might be more scared than i am. And, i am realizing how fortunate we are to be in a building with only three floors. Sweet.

Before anyone can answer the line, though, we hear the blessed ding!. We look at each other, incredulous, as the doors slowly open. i look to make sure that we are not between floors or some such ridiculousness, but we have somehow made it to floor three! i leap out, and tell her that we're at her stop. She smiles, in a daze, and hangs up the phone as she steps out of the elevator. i tell her with great relief and sarcasm that i'm taking the stairs down a level, and she says "have a good night!" i wave goodbye and we are each alone again.

Later, after my extreme case of the jitters (hello, adrenalin!) had worn off, Nat and i went to a friend's house to watch The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (bloody brilliant film, that). During Japanese food beforehand (smoky noodles, green tea, banana sushi and mochi aftewards), the conversation suddenly turned to strange afflictions such as the ability to squeeze one's phlegm out through one's tear ducts (i knew a guy once), people who bite their nails down far that they begin to actually eat their own fingers (this is true, sorry :/), and children born with no mouths (so, teeth and gums completely exposed), at which Nat and i both started, because last night i'd had a bad dream:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

in the first scene, i was staying overnight at a ramshackle hotel in some sort of grungy western ghost town, right by a railroad track where each night a train loaded with terrifying people who'd had their lips eaten off (by who or what, i didn't know) would begrudgingly tease and seduce us to their cars for gallons of potable water (for some reason our hotel had none); the man i tentatively approached held the water out to me then quickly took it away, over and over, until finally i had to be bold and grab for it, at which point he made a point of touching my hand with his– something i had not been aware that i was avoiding. He gave me a bitter smile and i broke free and ran away pell-mell with my water.

Later in the dream i was in one of the topmost floors of the same hotel (except now it was all clean and pristine and white and i believe we were in Tokyo) with Nat and our friend Allison. We were unpacking and getting ready for bed when a huge earthquake struck. Our building began to rumble and shake, then sway from side to side, more and more each time. i screamed and Allison tried to console me: there, there, heather, it's just a bad earthquake. everything'll be okay.
No! i screamed, and bolted for the other room to find Nat. This is for real!
i tried to run to him, but when i got to the couch i had to grab it so i wouldn't fall over. i could see him on the other side of the room; white as a sheet, trying to use his own body to counteract the swaying, to keep the building from toppling. i joined him in this motion desperately, keening, until suddenly the building began to crack and break apart to our left and i realized that the whole top of the building was falling off. We were going to die. As the world collapsed all around us and we raced toward the ground, i looked to him and screamed at the top of my lungs over the roar and chaos and falling walls and furniture: i love you! but then i lost sight of him and as the debris whirled and screamed and weighed down all over me, i had no idea how long it would be until we hit home and then i tried to take one last deep breath (why?) but there was no air anymore, it was like being in a vacuum.
Then i woke up.

i had initially attributed them to lingering worries over the situation in Japan, but who knows? Maybe we are being told, all the time, what the future holds, only we don't yet quite have the capabilities to decipher these messages. Beats me.

Related? Unrelated?

Weird Thing Number 1: Yesterday, for the first time in probably a year (or more?), i scrubbed the kitchen floor behind the garbage can/recycling/broom&dustpan area. Yes, this may seem gross, but it was really not very dirty! The floor in my kitchen is dark slate tile, so i can never tell when it needs soap, anyway... i guess you could say i was avoiding that corner. Forever.
But yeah! On a whim, there i was, scrubbing away. It felt good, real good. My floor was fucking sparkling. Cut to two hours later, and i was making dinner (we had breakfast for dinner: omelet, fruit, muffins, tea). At the end, had a bunch of fruit scraps on the cutting board. Went to toss them into the trash, and-oops!-wouldn't you know it: 75 percent of them went tumbling over the side of the trash can, all over the wall and into a great big pile on the (fucking sparkling) floor behind it. Now, has this ever happened to me before? No. Sometimes my aim is off when i go to throw a zucchini end in there or something, but usually i undershoot and it falls where i can see it, so i pick it up. No problem. But this time they went all over the newly clean floor that i had just spent 20 minutes scrubbing back to life. Why? Seriously. Why.

Weird Thing Number 2: The day before that, Nat mentioned how funky our tea kettle was looking. It's all rusty and corroded, what gives? The only explanation i could think of was that it was a cheap-o thing ($20 or so) and we had been using it for nigh on 6 years. And, we have an electric stove right now and i am convinced that those things are pure evil. Plus, we have disgusting hard water down here at the tail end of the Colorado River, so a couple of times i have had to boil vinegar in the thing to get the crust of lime off of the inside. No big. But yeah, the teapot was looking a little haggard, i'll admit it. Trusty little thing, it has served us well! The very next morning, after i made coffee, i put the tea kettle back on the range and forgot to turn off the damn stovetop. I'm sure i'm not the first person to do this, nor was that the first time that i have made that particular mistake. (in any case, i certainly never did this when i had a gas stove, damn you evil electric ranges!!) Um, half an hour later? Yeah. i walked into the kitchen. it felt really weirdly warm, and something smelled funny. Right away i knew. Shit- the tea kettle. Turned off the stove as fast as i could, but it was too late. The kettle has been super-heated for so long that the plastic on the handle had begun to melt, from the inside, sending a screw loose, where it was practically seared to the bottom of the kettle on the inside. The whole removable whistling spout-topper thingy was melted and had fallen apart as well. Wow, i sure did a number on it this time. So guess where it went? In the trash. Now i am back to boiling water in a little pot, which is mostly annoying only for the pure fact that i have exactly three pots, two small and one medium, which i often use all at once. Now one is sort of out of the game... drat!

But the weird part about this is: Why did that happen right after Nat said something about it? Seriously! What is the phenomenon that connects these things, or is there none? Is it sort of like Murphy's Law? Or how when you know you are carrying an expensive vase, it makes you nervous, and therefore more likely to drop it? Or is it more along the lines of imbuing an object with abstract energy (just go with me here)? For instance, i used to work at a stained glass store that was located a hundred feet from the railroad tracks. All of our nice, blown-glass gift items (perfume bottles, paperweights, etc.) would sit on the shelves collecting dust, because a few times a day the whole building would rattle and send a fine sifting down. We also had plenty of other work to do besides selling objets d'art, so often they would sit in the same arrangement on their shelves for weeks at a time. Sales would slow down, but the minute you walked around and paid some attention to them, just moved them around a little bit, rearranged them, they would fly out the door! Sell like hotcakes! It was as if people had never seen these things before! i often felt like King (Queen?) Midas.

Related (and way more hilarious):

It's a small world.... after all.

Three examples (in ascending order):

1) A few years ago, i was at a get-together. You know the kind: my sister's co-worker was having a housewarming party. There was lots of beer, an awesome soundtrack playing loudly from the crappy boombox in the (dirty) kitchen, and tons of fashionable, hip people i didn't know. We spent most of the night in the hostess's bedroom, playing with her fat, orange cat and talking about books and music; generally hiding from everyone. As the one o'clock hour approached, suddenly a bunch of people were sitting on the floor near our little group, talking animatedly. i turned an ear over to their conversation and heard little snippets, which began to slowly fill me with a creeping dread: Have you heard from Caty recently? -Ugh, that fucking suckup. i went to culinary school with her, and she's such a snob! -Yeah, i just saw her on some stupid cable-access show, showing that shitty bakery where she works and all of those crappy cakes she makes. -Yeah, anyone here could bake a better cake than her! That bakery sucks. Their cakes are so dry and awful. -Seriously, if i wanted tasteless, rock-hard butter spread on dry bread, that's where i'd go. ::laughter, laughter::

Oh, MY god. They're talking about a woman i work with. That "shitty bakery" is where i work, for fuck's sake. Suddenly i am on the verge of a panic attack. My body is tingling, and i can barely hear what my sister or my boyfriend are talking about. i smile nervously and try to shrink away into nothingness, realizing that if Hilary or Nat hear what the people next to us are saying, the jig is up. They will say something, and i do not want that. i just want to fucking leave- like, now. So i jump up and kind of hint to them that i'm tired and have to work in the morning (at the shittiest bakery on the planet!, my mind cackles insanely), so i'm gonna get going. They seem a little startled, probably wondering why i'm suddenly itching to hie on out, but they are game. The group near us has moved on to talking about comics, or something. Outside, we unlock our bikes and get pedaling. A block away i break my silence, and they are laughing in disbelief. Why didn't you say anything?! they ask me. Ah, for the two people that arguably know me best out of anyone in the world, they don't know me at all.
The funniest part about all of this was that while our bakery was pretty widely-known as a cut above the rest (in terms of pastries, cookies, tartes, eclairs, etc.), our cakes really did suck. They were just not very good, and desperately needed (still need?) to be updated. So even though i basically agreed with these people, could i bring up the hilariousness of it all and have a laugh with them, these complete strangers? Nope. Absolutely not.

Sometimes i wish i was someone else.


2) A girl i work with right now (Apes) at the flower shop was running in the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco this past October. She invited me along, as she was driving up and knew that i missed my hometown (Berkeley, actually, but anywhere near the Bay is close enough!) and would love to get up there for a visit. So of course i accepted, to cheer her on and to visit my best friend up there. In the days before we left San Diego, we got to discussing San Francisco. i asked her if she had ever been up there, and her answer was Only once.
Apparently she was passing through with some friends years ago and her one desire was to go out to a live music show on the one night they were there. They ended up at some dive-y place, listening to a terrible band called The Vanishing. Apes said: i remember the name because my friend commented: 'God, i wish The Vanishing would just vanish!!'
So, at this point in her story i was grinning wickedly. What, what?!? Apes asked me. i shook the blush from my cheeks and offered up the nugget of truth: Hey Apes, guess what me and Nat's favorite local band was back in the day when we lived up there?
Oh my god. She looked at me with giant eyes. Heather, i'm so sorry!!
i was falling on her laughing, now. It's okay! Hey, different strokes for different folks, you know? i can understand why someone wouldn't like them, absolutely- they are very noisy and the singer was a bit of a prima donna, anyway i just think it's funny that you got to see them! i wonder if we were even at the same show...!
(they were fairly short-lived and this was back in 2001 or so, and Nat and i were so sad when they broke up and/or moved to Germany.)

3) The craziest one for me, though, happened on my first or second day of work at my last job, a French bakery (see part 1, above :P) in Oakland. It was 8:30 or so, half an hour after we'd opened, and i was high on No Sleep and New Job. We were very busy, but i was having a good time. i send a customer off with a bag full of various combinations of flour, butter, and sugar, and make eye contact with the next person in line. He comes up to the counter, a short, dark-haired man in jeans and a dress shirt. What can i get for ya? i smile and raise my eyebrows. Uhhh, excuse me, this is strange question... were you just in Paris? comes out, in a thick French accent. He looks almost shell-shocked or something. i became absolutely breathless in a matter of seconds. People nearby are kind of staring out of the corner of their eyes, and pretending not to listen to this strange exchange. Yes! i say, incredulous. We just got back a month and a half ago! We went to Europe for 2 weeks! And we were in Paris for a few days How did you know that?! He smiles at me as he pulls out his wallet. Because i live there! And i saw you, in front of the Notre Dame one day! You were with a... rather tall gentleman ::holds his hand way above his head:: Wow. i was just reeling, it was really way too weird for words. He said he was visiting the Bay Area on business, and had heard about this bakery and thought he would try it. How amazing, honestly. We just smiled and smiled at each other, as people around us shared in the moment. When he left with his pastries, weaving through the crowd towards the front door, i knew i would never see him again. But it was a great feeling, for some reason. And i never even got his name.