In Which Much Is Revealed

Not for the first time, I'm rethinking my decision to purchase a desktop to replace my much beloved and sorely missed laptop. At the time, it seemed like a prudent decision and for the most part, I have been pleased with my choice. However, there are certain nights, nights such as this one whereupon I regret my decision. I regret that I cannot sit out on the porch of my apartment, illuminated only by the warm glow of a laptop monitor and the small cherry of a wood-tipped cigar and write in the proper form and fashion, the tradition, if you will, of Hemingway and Alger, a tradition and a mystique that has long since faded from the world. Simply put, we're all nerds now, without the style and sophistication of those who came before us. We play at profundity, but cannot hope to understand it, because we've had it good for so very, very long.

I don't know what it was that spoiled us, exactly. The obvious culprit is the march of technology; it just makes everything so fucking simple now, doesn't it? At least it does until the power goes out, as it did tonight, before I sat down to type this post. That was an amusing moment. The television blinked off first, with a strange pop that made me worry, for a fleeting moment, that something had exploded in an electrical fire, which I guess is like a normal fire, only worse because it can electrocute you while you burn to death, or something. Also, I guess you can't extinguish electrical fires? They sound like pretty bad ass motherfucking fires, is the point that I'm trying to make here.

So the power goes out, lights, television, Xbox, everything. Hmm, I think to myself. No problem. I'm a backpacker and a hiker. I've got flashlights like you wouldn't believe. I have all kinds of pocket knives and multi-tools and survival gear. I've got dried food and enough water on hand at this very moment to live for, fuck, I don't know, three weeks? Maybe more, if this power outage signals the collapse of society and my roommate doesn't make it back to further deplete my supplies.

When the power goes out, it's a man's job to find light. That's always the first step, at least, that's what I think the first step is, given my eduction of disaster movies and disaster novels and disaster entertainment. Do I actually know for certain that light is the most important thing? Well, I've never actually read an official document on the subject, if that's what you're asking. But it's pretty fucking hard to do anything of importance without being able to see, so I'll go find the flashlights. I've got, like, six of them and at least two of them aren't merely storing dead batters, as seems to be the tendency for most flashlights.

But how am I going to find the flashlight? It's fucking dark! There's no lights on. I know the flashlight is in a backpack and I know the rough location of said pack, somewhere under a pile of books near my desk. Thinking quickly, I whip out my cell phone and flip it open, because of course, it still works and provides a handy light source . . . and then I have my little moment of zen, my revelation about my entire generation.

We can't imagine a world without our toys and our lights and our gadgets and our gizmos. We can't imagine what it was like to write a fucking novel by hand, or on a typewriter, where every single time you misspell the word "typewriter" or "word" or whatever the fuck, it means starting over on that page, or getting out the white out or whatever. I mean, shit, I type pretty well, I think? But I still backspace like crazy, whether to correct the clumsiness of fingers moving too fast for my brain to keep up or to correct a half-formed thought that led to nothing but a blank end. How did they do it, before? I can't imagine, since I live in a world where I can't find my little survival kit without pulling out my cell phone to light my way.

Was I telling a story about laptops, before? I think I was.

The point is, before I sat down to type this long and mostly pointless thing, I had a very good thing going out on the porch. The night was warm, but not so warm as to be unpleasant; such a thing won't happen until the advent of June, whereupon the desert reminds us all that fuck yes, you live in one of the highest and driest regions on the face of the earth. Have you ever stood out under the silver glow of a full moon and sweated your ass off? Lied awake in bed and rolled around, trying to get cool, wondering how much shit you'd get in if you snuck off into the apartment center's pool and slept in the water, just because it's too goddamn hot at night to be comfortable? Those nights are coming, they're always coming, like a grim inversion of the looming winter that I suppose must plague the majority of the world.

But that was not this night. On this night, the air is warm and comfortable, so smooth that you don't even really feel it. It's still and calm and serene, and it's the closest any night can ever come to being perfect and when you have a night like that, the urge is very great to sit out and revel in it, and of course, such revelries bring with them the desire to capture the moment, in some small way, to remind yourself that these moments exist and you didn't just imagine it.

How very unfortunate for me, that I cannot sit out in the moment and capture it as it happens, that it must be as it is now, a memory even before it happened. I'm not saying I regret my decision or even that I wish I had a typewriter instead of a keyboard. I'm just saying I wonder why the writers of yesterday seemed like badassess compared to us. I'm asking what happens to the tools of the trade, the whiskey, the cigar, the masculinity that used to accompany this profession? Did we ruin it? Or was it one of those things that was a product of its time, unable to cope with the vagaries of a changing world?

I can't say for sure that it's my fault, but it sure feels like it is.