For the Love of Light
For years during the long, dark evenings of winter, I have lit the main room of my house (the 10x12 ³one-room cabin² with its stove, sink, writing desk, couch, and bedroom loft) with four kerosene lamps and one little, glass, oil lamp. I huddle under three lamps at my work space and keep another lit over the stove in the far corner of the room. I carry a lamp with me through the semi-dark when I move from one spot to another.
But this year, fed up with the dimness of these winter evenings, I went on a binge. I wanted a glory of light in the house, light behind me as well as in front of me, light always there even when my back was turned. And so I lit candles, and lo! the light shone brightly and the entire room came alive with the bright breath of living fire. The soft, cheerful candlelight was as joyful as a babyıs laugh; the gentle flames swayed slightly and flickered with life. The palpable essence of fire as light added a presence to the house that no electric light, bright and practical as it is, could ever produce. So I had light and its side-effect bonus of atmosphere, but it didn't last long. Candles are too expensive to use for light; such exorbitance is way beyond my means.
Too enchanted with the effects, however, to give them up, I called on the tradition of Christmas giving and told all my family and friends this December that what I really wanted for Christmas was candles.
And so I got candles for Christmas, dozens of candles - thin tapers, little votives, tall fat candles and short fat ones, cheap candles and expensive, scented ones, hand-dipped candles of dense, subtle colors and commercial candles of almost transparent white, green, red, and blue. As I opened package after package of candles, exclaiming each time, ³Yes! More candles!² my family began to discreetly roll their eyes, suspicious of my enthusiasm. But they are those who live with electric lights. They donıt understand.
The whole idea of using candles as a primary source of light was so odd they had to warn me about it, too. My son told me he had read somewhere that candles were a major cause of air pollution in the house. I said that seemed of little concern in the face of kerosene lamps and wood-burning stoves. He agreed with that and added with a hastily suppressed smirk that my house was so drafty candle pollution wouldnıt make any difference, anyway. Several people warned me of the danger of fire, which is true: catsı tails brushing across the open flames easily catch fire.
I have used my Christmas candles exactly as I had planned extravagantly, for brilliant soft light. Every night I light the four kerosene lamps and the one oil lamp, then add to that, seven taper candles, two votives, and one long-burning fat candle. I go through more than a dozen candles a week. At this rate, Iıll burn up all my Christmas candles long before winter is over. But it doesnıt matter. I have loved the house in full candle-light, and when I return to the dim shadows of the four kerosene lamps and one oil lamp, my memory of the candlelit beauty of my house will keep a residual glow there for many months to come.
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