1
" This week
in live current
events: your eyes.
All power can be
dangerous:
Direct
or alternating,
you, socket to me.
Plugged in and the grid
is humming,
this electricity,
molecule-deep desire:
particular friction, a charge
strong enough to stop
a heart
or start it
again; volt, re-volt--
I shudder, I stutter, I start
to life. I've got my ion
you, copper-top,
so watch how you
conduct yourself.
Here's today's
newsflash: a battery of rolling
blackouts in California, sudden,
like lightning kisses:
sudden, whitehot
darkness and you're
here, fumbling for
that small switch
with an urgent surge
strong enough to kill
lesser machines.
Static makes hair raise,
makes things cling,
makes things rise like
a gathering storm
charging outside
our darkened house
and here I am:
tempest, pouring out
mouthfulls
of tsunami on the ground,
I've got that rain-soaked kite,
that drenched key.
You know what it's for,
circuit-breaker, you know
how to kiss until it's hertz. "
― Daphne Gottlieb , Why Things Burn
2
" The children around our house have a saying that everything is either true, not true, or one of Mother's delusions. Now, I don't know about the true things or the not-true things, because there seem to be so many of them, but I do know about Mother's delusions, and they're solid. They range from the conviction that the waffle iron, unless watched, is going to strangle the toaster, to the delusion that electricity pours out of an empty socket onto your head, and nothing is going to change any one of them.
The very nicest thing about being a writer is that you can afford to indulge yourself endlessly with oddness, and nobody can really do anything about it, as long as you keep writing and kind of using it up, as it were. I am, this morning, endeavoring to persuade you to join me in my deluded world; it is a happy, irrational, rich world, full of fairies and ghosts and free electricity and dragons, and a world beyond all others fun to walk around in. All you have to do---and watch this carefully please--is keep writing. As long as you write it away regularly, nothing can really hurt you. "
― Shirley Jackson , Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings
3
" Mister Geoffrey, my experiment shows that the dynamo and the bulb are both working properly," I said. " So why won't the radio play?" " I don't know," he said. " Try connecting them here." He was pointing toward a socket on the radio labeled " AC," and when I shoved the wires inside, the radio came to life. We shouted with excitement. As I pedaled the bicycle, I could hear the great Billy Kaunda playing his happy music on Radio Two, and that made Geoffrey start to dance." Keep pedaling," he said. " That's it, just keep pedaling." " Hey, I want to dance, too." " You'll have to wait your turn." Without realizing it, I'd just discovered the difference between alternating and direct current. Of course, I wouldn't know what this meant until much later.After a few minutes of pedaling this upside-down bike by hand, my arm grew tired and the radio slowly died. So I began thinking, " What can do the pedaling for us so Geoffrey and I can dance? "
