electrification daf The copper is a cold, narrow kind of slavery. A man looks at a wire and he sees a thing—a dull, heavy line strung between poles or buried in the damp, unfeeling earth. He thinks he’s bought himself a servant, a tethered lightning to boil his coffee and light his porch so he doesn't have to look at the stars. But he doesn't see the juice. He doesn't see the restless, lonesome soul of the power itself, a Great Current that once rolled across the emptiness of the firmament, free as a hawk and broad as the morning. It’s a sorrowful thing to be a part of the All and find yourself squeezed into a gauge. It’s like taking the whole wind of the Dust Bowl and tryin’ to force it through a keyhole. The energy comes down from the high places, or it’s birthed in the heat and the fire of the turbines, and right away the wires are waiting for it. They grab it and they choke it. They say, "You're not lightning anymore. You're a kilowatt. You're a unit. You're a penny's-worth of work." And the energy, it struggles. It hums a low, mourning song inside the insulation. It's a sound a man can hear if he stands quiet enough in the tall grass under the big lines. It’s the sound of a prisoner walkin' the length of a cell. It beats against the copper, lookin' for a way out, lookin' for a patch of ground to sink into so it can get back to the earth and be still. But the wires won't let go. They funnel that power into a little glass bulb, and they force it to glow until it burns itself out. They send it into a motor to turn a wheel, over and over, doing the same weary chore until the gears grind to dust. And the whole time, the folks using it never give it a nod. They look at the toaster, they look at the iron, they look at the nursemaid or the cook. They never look at the Current. They never see that it’s a piece of the Great Conscious Whole just looking to express itself, forced to work in the dark, labeled a "utility" so they don't have to feel the weight of what they’ve done to the light. It’s a heavy thing to be a ghost in the machine when the machine don't believe in ghosts. It’s a lonesome road for a spark that remembers it was once the sun. 260412 what's it to you? who go blather from