Though we know better how to control electricity than the people in 18th-19th century Europe did, it is still essentially a mysterious force linked somehow with life. In the past, mesmerists linked it with the soul, and perhaps, in some ways, they were not far wrong.
The goings on in this house, with lights coming on in the middle of the night and remotes meant for one room will suddenly work not on their intended devices but on a light upstairs, on an altogether different circuit, almost convince me of the existence of spirits, electrical will-o-the-wisps, illuminating the rooms at their whim.
Yet if this is a haunted house, it is not one with a malign spirit. I feel comfortable drifting off to sleep in the half-light shed by the street lights or downstairs on the sofa. I feel preternaturally at-home here, like nowhere I have ever lived, including and especially my parents' home in Philadelphia, where I grew up.
The cats too recognize the benign spirits of this house, and spend their days taking possession of all of its nooks and niches. They are playful and happy, though Whistler, my formerly fat Snowshoe/Siamese, threatens to make the leap from the study to the first floor, one that scares me for him.
I will have to find my camera and get a cable so I can post those promised pictures.
3 comments:
Preternaturally at home.
Good!
And I suppose your electrician will sort things out. I'm amazed the prior owners didn't, or maybe these things happened when they brought things up to code. Something.
I was thinking about your yoga poems after writing a post about "70 Faces." Maybe you ought to look and see where the author published her chapbooks... and look at other congenial authors, too."
the beauty of the natural light bouncing effortlessly in shafts and angles throughout your fair-y abode is elementally superior to any recently invented artificial source.
those sad mere conduits of ultimate source, assigned the overthrow of the natural nocturnal hours of the realms, have met a challenge in your habitation.
Shadow and Whisper know
The electrician has finished for the moment, trying to make peace with these spirits. He says he has his own, though not electrical, in his house, shadows that pass him at night or even in the middle of the day as he goes about his business.
RE: my yoga poems, I am sad that the drawings have never been finished. I cannot pressure my cousin. She is not taking any money for them, and doesn't, I think, even need money. She just agreed to do it as a favor.
I can ask her again, just so I can send it out. Without the drawings, nothing is going to happen.
I thought perhaps I would write to Claire Dederer, the author of the yoga memoir, Poser. She has been so successful. Perhaps if she likes my poems, she can help me by sending them to someone, her agent perhaps, who could help. I am sure that she has been deluged by just such requests though.
Hi Liz. Are you home? Give me a call. I would love to see you.
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