Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Evening by candlelight

Some powercuts are better than others. The ones that occur immediately after an earthquake aren't much fun, and tend to escalate the tension already caused by the pesky ground shaking. The best kind are ones that happen for other reasons, while I am testing candles. Everything dims to lovely mood lighting.

When we had one a couple of weeks ago, it was shortly after I had blown the candles out when they had finished their test burn for the day. So I had to scramble around in the dark to find the matches and light them again. Then I proceded to plug in the vodem to the laptop to find out why the power had gone out.

It went out again on Friday (yet again, another shake free powercut), while I was testing some new candles. So this time I decided to take a more relaxed approach, and shun all technology more sophisticated than a torch. There is something very soothing about candlelight, and it is much better appreciated without any electric lights on.

As I sat there writing out this blog post – with a pen, on a piece of paper – I realised how all too often I forget to appreciate the simple things in life. Then an hour after it went out, it came back on as suddenly it went out, and everything whirred back into life. The whole experience was a great reminder that sometimes, technology just isn't that important, and powercuts aren't always a bad thing.

3 comments:

  1. I agree, its quite nice having it simple for a while.

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  2. I've lived without electricity several times, for months, and I'll no doubt do it again sometime. It returns me to part of myself and way of life I absolutely love!

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  3. A lovely, mindful post Rose :)

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