The TV, computer, cable, lights…everything turns off with an electronic “zzwhoomp,” the collective powering down of our one bedroom apartment. I go to the window to see if the lights are off across the street, but those fancy condos have once again one-upped us (am I really surprised by that?) and the balcony dinner party on the third floor across the way continues uninterrupted.
I know we have candles somewhere, and I reach blindly toward the bookcase, my fingers relearning the shapes of familiar objects. This is a book, these are seashells…aha! Tealights. Why are they called that, anyway? I thought tea was taken in the afternoon; unless you like to consume your crumpets and petits fours in a dungeon, candlelight seems unnecessary.
None of this is helping me see any better, but that’s how my mind works –- whenever I’ve just set it to some mundane but necessary task, suddenly it skips merrily under the barrier and wanders afield until I’m forced to corral it again and complete my mission. Which just now happens to be finding a lighter. Or matches. Or a flint stone. The apartment and I seem to have shifted to some parallel dimension when the power went out; who knows what these dark shapes might turn out to be.
I grope further along the shelf until my fingers close on what feels like a small wooden owl. In the new dimension, at least this has remained the same. Now, if I just twist off his head like so…yes. The dusty scent of old marijuana wafts up to meet my nose, prompting a smile before I liberate my lighter from its avian cage. Flick the Bic once, twice…it’s almost disappointing to see that nothing is different.
I assemble my motley crew of candles –- mostly tealights from the IKEA million-pack I bought years ago, but a few Hanukkah candles I liberated from my old job as well — on the coffee table, and soon it’s glowing like someone’s hearth would in a proper house.
The room is now at least partially illuminated, and I grasp about for a new purpose. The light is too feeble to read by, and yet it seems to imply some sort of romantic and writerly activity should be taking place, à la Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë or, you know…one of them.
After staring blankly into the flames for at least thirty minutes, I remember that we have a battery operated radio somewhere in the kitchen. I fish it out from behind a dusty coffee maker and tune it to the AM traffic station. Power outages west of Arbutus and north of Broadway, bla bla…I fall asleep on the couch, bathed in the glow of the guttering candles.
