The Body of Candlelight: Smack Dab in the Imagination by Dia Calhoun
In December, the Golden Hour is candlelight.
If you had to do more than flick a switch to create light, would this change you? Flicking a switch makes a sound. Often, I barely pause as I do that. I hear a sound, certainly, just as I hear the hiss of a match being struck. In both cases, I use my fingers. But after flicking the switch, I walk on. But after lighting a match, more must happen before there is light.
While I hold the match in my fingers, my arm and body lean toward a candle wick. I watch while the flame is transferred, taking care it doesn’t burn too fast down the shaft and burn my fingers. Then, the candle lit, the golden light glowing, I step back. This process of creating light involves my entire body and focus. It would be even more complicated and embodied if I were lighting a fire outside—sensing the wind direction on my skin.
And what about the reverse—flicking a light switch off verses blowing out a candle? Here comes the body again—this time inhaling, bending toward the light, then exhaling—the sound of the breath. Then the body steps back.
Certainly, this process would take more time, and candlelight is difficult to read by. Would I appreciate the light more? We writers like to think of our work as candles or lights that may bring illumination to others. And we do indeed write books and stories and poems with our whole bodies, senses, and selves. There is the sound of keys, or of a pencil on paper. Such a long, concentrated process is needed to create not necessarily a golden hour—no, nothing that grand—but, if we are persistent and lucky, one golden moment in the darkness.
Happy Winter Solstice. May you and your imagination be instruments to bring more light into the world.
While I hold the match in my fingers, my arm and body lean toward a candle wick. I watch while the flame is transferred, taking care it doesn’t burn too fast down the shaft and burn my fingers. Then, the candle lit, the golden light glowing, I step back. This process of creating light involves my entire body and focus. It would be even more complicated and embodied if I were lighting a fire outside—sensing the wind direction on my skin.
And what about the reverse—flicking a light switch off verses blowing out a candle? Here comes the body again—this time inhaling, bending toward the light, then exhaling—the sound of the breath. Then the body steps back.
Certainly, this process would take more time, and candlelight is difficult to read by. Would I appreciate the light more? We writers like to think of our work as candles or lights that may bring illumination to others. And we do indeed write books and stories and poems with our whole bodies, senses, and selves. There is the sound of keys, or of a pencil on paper. Such a long, concentrated process is needed to create not necessarily a golden hour—no, nothing that grand—but, if we are persistent and lucky, one golden moment in the darkness.
Happy Winter Solstice. May you and your imagination be instruments to bring more light into the world.
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