Electricity
Hello there. Sorry I neglected you yesterday. It was an arduous day and the power went out briefly for no apparent reason. Today’s wisdom comes from Songs of The Doomed from a piece titled Electricity. Hunter studied electricity starting in the mid ’50s at Scott Air Force Base. He was being trained in an all-night advanced intelligence electronics class that made electricity something he loved and respected for the rest of his life. The first thing he learned was the stance. The Air Force made the students practice it every day so that it would come naturally if they were confronted with a bolt of voltage. Hunter said that it must be practiced if you work with electricity, just as holding your breath must you work underwater:
Lock one hand behind your back before you touch anything full of dissatisfied voltage—even a failed light bulb—because you will almost certainly die soon if you don’t.
Electricity is neutral. It doesn’t want to kill you, but it will if you give it a chance. Electricity wants to go home and to find a quick way to get there—and it will.
Hunter studied electricity like any young boy studies a superhero. You see it in his writing spanning all the decades of his work. I still have the card on the TV that says “ANIMALS, WHORES AND DIALOGUE…” Those were the things he would write about to get himself out of a writer’s block… In the winter of 2002, he added “ELECTRICITY” to the list.
Your friend,
Anita Thompson
