We were equal in the dark

The stories are still around, even three years down the line. It happened at four in the afternoon, just as the stock exchange markets were winding up for the day. The computer screens fizzled all at once. The traffic lights went dead. The subways came to a standstill. Elevators stopped between floors. Air conditioners kicked off. Bank vaults thudded shut. The hospital life-support machines kicked into emergency overdrive.

The great August blackout of 2003 was a spell-binding experience, a deep sense of temporary terror that was soon replaced by a strange togetherness, when one of the national electricity grids fell and at least 50 million people along the eastern seaboard of Canada and the United States went powerless.

In New York, people poured out into the streets, eerily recalling that September day when the streets were no longer safe. As it slowly dawned that it wasn't another terrorist attack, shirt collars began to loosen and people began to wonder about the mundane simplicities, like how in the world they might get home. No trains. No ferry services. Gridlock in midtown. Cell-phone service was out. Cash machines weren't working. The petrol pumps were dead. Even hotel rooms were locked shut and the plastic card keys used for security no longer opened them up.

There might have been a rush on candles and flashlights, but for the fact that most of the shops had cash registers that wouldn't open up anymore.

It is remarkable how quickly we forget how much we rely on the bells and whistles of what passes for ordinary life. That penthouse apartment 50 stories in the air is a long walk upwards. That fancy computer program isn't worth a shit without a current travelling through the wires. That brand new stereo system doesn't stack up against an ordinary flute. Times Square without traffic lights is not a pretty sight. In a matter of seconds, New York was just another stack of concrete.

Yet every now and then life makes up for its banalities with a dose of pure oxygen.

I hopped on a bicycle and went out into a city that I had never really seen before. It was that hour of the evening when life without electricity was finally being accepted. Things were raw, promising. The only light was from the headlights of cars. The city was transformed into an extraordinary series of arcing shadows. The streets were crowded. Impromptu parties were taking place on fire escapes. Hey, babycakes, come on up! Tourists cosied up against one another in the lobbies of hotels. Citizens got out and directed traffic. Ice-cream vendors slashed prices. Bars were packed and lit with candlelight. People were finally talking to their neighbours. They shared water cannisters, batteries, stories. For a while nobody seemed to want the lights turned back on again: things were more equal in the dark.

There were, of course, reports from the deep end. Some minor looting took place in Brooklyn, and a total of five deaths were directly attributable to the blackout -- two from carbon-monoxide poisoning, two from fires, and one, a robber who had turned off his flashlight as he stepped across a roof. Yet there was no sense -- as there had been 25 years before, when there was another major blackout -- that the city would explode in riots. It remained calm. Most people waited out the storm. The blackout passed and life was normal again.

Many have recently theorised that the blackout was a test to check the preparation of the United States against a terrorist attack on the nation's electrical grid: electricity as a weapon of mass destruction. The power outages over the following few weeks in England and Italy, both of which were the biggest US allies in the "war on terror", gave additional ammunition to those who argued that the US power-loss was an intentional act of the government.

Certainly the current otiose moral stupour of the Bush administration is a blackout in its own sense, but only a few maverick conspiracy theorists might give any credence to the idea of an orchestrated blackout.

The thought comes to mind that, if it were true -- if they really were testing the system – that Bush and Co would be much better served putting an outage upon themselves. Certainly that would cure a lot of problems.

Back on the streets, I cycled and watched and cycled in darknesss. The city seemed to have defied the need for electricity, even momentarily.

On Lexington Avenue and 97th Street, an old man had set up a telescope at 97th Street, showing a group of children the heavens – Look! he shouted, look, isn't it amazing? Some of the children had never seen stars over New York before and they stood, quiet, together, amazed. Look at what? whispered one of the children. Look at the goddamn stars! replied the old man.

There was a collective gasp and a laugh, and then a young boy went to the telescope, looked inside, adjusted it, peered again, gazed beyond the darkness: it was not quite a moral lesson, but it was, in some ways, a glimmer of hope.

In the meantime so many Americans wander the Lexington Avenue of their ordinary days, wondering what it is they might see up through this present darkness.