Last night, Laeth sent me an epub of his latest novel,
Powerless. I haven't started reading it yet, but I know in a general way what it's about. In the author's May 5 post "
about a shift," he explained that it was inspired by a day last year when "the power went out for the entire iberian peninsula for ten hours" -- so the title most literally refers to being without electrical power, but this setting is "used to tell stories about human powerlessness against the randomness of life." Particularly, the novel focuses on "failure to communicate," with the failure of electrical communications systems mirroring failures of a more social or spiritual nature: People "can’t use their phones to call, but also can’t talk properly to the people next to them."
During my lunch break today, I was about to start reading Powerless, but I decided that I really ought to finish at least one or two of the other books I'm currently reading before starting a new one. So instead of starting Laeth's book, I continued with Remarkably Bright Creatures. On p. 75, I read this:
Cameron's phone battery blinks red, nearly drained. He digs in the bottom of his duffel for his charging cord, but it's sitting on Katie's nightstand. He can practically see it there. Left behind, leaving him literally powerless.
Katie is Cameron's former live-in girlfriend, who has just kicked him out. The issue was communication, or the lack thereof.
2 comments:
quite synchy too that Bruce made a post today about electricity.
Powerless-ness tied to an inability to communicate, and to phones specifically, would link right back to when that word appeared in my 2020 words, in which a family, or group of individuals, was described as coming to this world "powerless". The solution for this situation is what I came to call the Rose Stone, which among other things would re-establish a link or ability to communicate (specifically with the Ithil Stone) - much like the analogy of a telephone.
The name Cameron in this situation would further support this link. The name means "Bent/ Crooked Nose". The bent nose is a semitic stereotype that we have seen pop up in past symbols to point to both "Jews" and to Israel (like with Princess Vespa in Spaceballs)- though the Israel meant in the Book of Mormon and not necessarily any modern group bearing that name.
The family in question from my words that is currently powerless is that Israel in its scattered and lost form, so the Cameron name fits perfectly. As does the name on the other end of that line, Kate/ Katie.
The inability to make a phone call also brought me back to your post from several years ago featuring a character whose phone line had been cut by a mouse.
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