Right now, as I’m writing this, there’s a power shortage, which makes owning a laptop very practical. I was minding my own business, when a storm came out of nowhere and blew all of my electricity and the phoneline away. By now, they’re probably in Oz, skipping up and down the yellow brick road.Outside, it’s raining sideways and the trees, usually upright, are making brave efforts to lie along the ground.
Luckily, my stepmother is in the business of burying people. Once they’re dead, anyway. What's that? Can't see the connection? Well, you see, for this purpose, they use a whole bunch of white candles. Now, the thing is, that an average candle burns for… oh… let’s say somewhere between 10-24 hours. And you can’t very well use the same candle twice, now, can you? No, you can’t. Whoever is reclining in the coffin probably won’t mind, but their friends and relatives may not approve. Also, you can’t draw out a funeral to last for hours on end because at some point, the guest of honour will start to go stale. Therefore, they dropped off tons of candle stubs here a while back. When you light them all, it’s quite cosy. As long as you don’t think to hard about what they were really meant for, anyway.
I am also making my best efforts not to burn the house down in the process. I’m pretty sure that burning a house down is much easier than it sounds. Most things, especially accidents, are. Last week, for example, when I was going to step off the bus, I somehow misjudged the width of the bottom step (or perhaps it was the size of my foot) and landed on the concrete sidewalk with a loud thud. Easy. The driver and an old woman, who happened to be passing by, didn’t seem to realize just how completely straightforward and uncomplicated such an occurrence is. They were both very surprised. The little, old lady was even ready to accept the guilt for my unscheduled flight, thinking that she had startled me as she came wobbling down the sidewalk with her squeaky walker.
A side effect of such a power shortage, I’ve discovered, is sleepiness. Something about the candlelight makes me want to curl up in the foetal position and drift off into dreamland. Or maybe I’ll go to Oz and see what my electricity is getting up to.
Pic by Bialy-Fox for www.flickr.com
7 comments:
Good thing you don't have a boy there along with the candlelight. He might be a bit insulted if you were to curl up into fetal position and go to sleep
luckily the dog didn't give a damn, though
Choochoo, you are always so descriptive making excellent choice of words and phrases to describe life. You paint beautifully with your words.
The candles you talked about could get almost spooky if one thought about their prior use.
Savor the momentary silence, my friend. c",)
Tim - Thank you:)
Irene - actually, the electricity came back after a little over an hour, and I was running around the house, shutting the lights off. It wasn't quite the same after that, though.
This is really interesting. You are quite creative. Good work.
Thank you very much:)
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