You know, I saw it once. It’s something to be afraid of. All darkness, hushed sounds and breathless eyes that seem wider without light. At first it’s terrifying; you believe without electricity we’d be absolutely no where, believe you feel it on your hands and knees, that it’s a place in your head made of real things, like air, or its absence. But then you realize you could call out to blast the silence; make it your own. And then you’re sure there’s a definition of living, that it’s these moments when you can shatter something as pure and innocent as darkness. These moments, and no others.
I know where we’d be without electricity. I’ve been there. It’s a beach at midnight. I remember staring at the lake, and thinking I should call it god. Thinking that, and of a book I read once; a girl who’s hair fell down her back like smoke. I’m sure that’s what this water was, some liquid form of smoke they’ll manufacture one day and sell as jewels. I walked until I couldn’t anymore, and then I swam, forgetting to make note of that moment when the tips of my toes could no longer grasp solid ground. I swam out so far I couldn't see the beach anymore. I wanted nothing to do with light, or the objects that reflect it. I dove beneath the water again and again, hiding myself from the moon, trying to disappear my skin. I wanted to be surrounded and swallowed up. To be owned by the wonder I felt, the astonishment that something like a lake existed, and that I could master it. I could have screamed if I wanted, and stolen back the silence from this night. But I think it’s indecent to scream until you’ve disappeared, and I think that screaming is the only beautiful thing I’ve ever done.
See, screaming is the sound of destruction, the sensuous equivalent to a murder. It should be used only as a person is coming undone, and it should be the only witness. And so I screamed. It was sounds echoing off sounds echoing off a moment that can’t be recreated; a moment that one would call god later, or his absence. A moment that suffocates, like lake water, or smoke. Moments like these are rarely adjectives though later I think I’ll call my own beautiful. I’ll probably forget that it was a living thing, an animal or just many breaths of air, that this time spent in a lake devoid of the electric shouldn’t be contained within a memory but breathed up to sustain me through all my well-lit years, through currents and wires and waves.
You know what a moment like that does to a girl, don’t you? It breaks her apart. See but only when I’ve been divided can I believe I was ever whole. Only after screams that untie the knots within me can I forget all the disparities; the spaces like insults between my ribs, thirty separate teeth, 206 lonely bones. For a moment, right after throwing breathes and shadows out into the sky it’s possible to forget I’m made up of parts. Possible to believe I’m only a voice, a pretty little sound becoming a satellite; becoming some star my grandchildren can point to one day, and say my name. Have you had a moment like this? A moment when all you are is a voice that will last forever, as the only ugly light cast upon a planet of darkness?
I know where we’d be without electricity. We’d be in the middle of lakes trying to drown our skin beneath the water, trying to contain a living moment in our minds. We’d become silhouettes, gaping holes in the world, living lights that stretch and shout instead of shining. We’d cease to be solid; abandon our bodies for the shapes our voices traced in the sky.
I’m trying to say I’ve felt it: heaven. I’m trying to tell you I swam out too far one night, I screamed to loud, and held my breath too long. I’m saying that I think God is a language written somewhere above dark lakes, that stars are shouts reflected off each other. I think paradise is a scream, an exaltation, a moment of pure emotion or darkness. I think we’d be here without electricity; exulted and pure and feeling until we could take it no longer.
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