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coffee and artificial light
Sunday, February 12 2012
I drank nearly a quart of coffee today, which seemed to help lift my mood from the funk it had been in yesterday. I used this pharmaceutical energy to undertake a couple neglected project: making it so the electrical outlet beneath the seedlings growing in the south-facing window of the dining room is no longer controlled by a switch (one that is all-too-often switched off). I had plans of performing an experiment to see if a conventional 15 watt CF bulb could improve the growth of my tomato seedlings (which, having grown up in winter light, are starting to look a bit spindly). The experiment would, of course, have a control, a tomato plant not being subject to artificial light. But in order to get any of this to work, I would need a few utility lamps with clamp bases.
So that was how I ended up in town, walking around in that weirdly empathic, hyperaware state that one gets into when one is jacked-up on stimulants, though of course in my case today the stimulant wasn't anythingb more powerful than coffee (to which I am no longer addicted). In this state, humans in a crowded retail environment such as Home Depot or ShopRite seem cartoonish and simple. It's easy to think of them as automata, but (oddly) this feeling combines with an unexpected concern for their well-being. I may have mentioned this in the past, but from my perspective it's as if I am viewing people via the camera bolted to the front of a space probe. The colors seem hypersaturated and unnatural, which isn't surprising, given that my observations are taking place in a retail establishment. But I never think of this when I am not jacked up on a stimulant.
Back at the house, I set up a lamp directly over six of my tomato seedlings. I plugged the lamp into a timer so that it would shine from 2:00AM to 6:00AM. Four hours in addition to the existing four or so hours of direct midwinter sun seemed enough to simulate mid-Spring conditions.
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