On the Tip of a Candlewick

Astronomer by Candlelight, Gerrit Dou, late 1650s

At university, I am not allowed to have candles in my room. I can have a pack of cigarettes and the lighter that comes with it, but I cannot have the candle that sustains the flame. Naturally, I decided to go and buy one. I tucked it in my bag and entered it into my room with a boastful countenance, yet not too obvious one. To possess something one should not possess, to hide it from the stare of others, to get it out in the open when there is always the suspense of someone catching you with “blood on your hands,” that is one of the many intimate pleasures one may aspire to experience. 

I wish I could light a whole fire in my room, but I must be satisfied with a tiny droplet of it. In theory, I can have fire in my room, I just need to accidentally drop the candle on my bed sheets. Alas, the consequences…

Coming from the notion of the tiny drop and the ocean, I wonder, what is fire? If I break it into millions of tiny pieces, what will I get? I can imagine parting the ocean - drop by drop, until there is nothing left but a dry hole. It is easy to think that with each sip of a glass of water, the water gets less and less. But with fire? I can light a candle with another candle, and I will have two lit candles. The flame of each candle will not be half of the first one. In fact, by giving light to another candle, I will get more light as a whole, which is the opposite of what I will get if I pour half of the water in one glass into another, and that half I split in a third glass, and so on, and so on. 

I bought a scented candle. It smells like a rose, yet upon sniffing it, I wish I had bought a regular one. Fire has no smell. The things that fire burns let out their smell. The smell of fire, as we like to think of it, is the smell of burning wood, wax, flesh, or garment. Yet we get such smells only when they are in contact with fire. Better would be to say this is the smell of fire when it touches wood, wax, flesh, a garment. 

I find it only logical that if I try smelling my little flame, albeit unsuccessfully, I must engage the other senses as well. I close the window, so I do not get disturbed by the noises of the outside, and then lean with one ear towards the flame. As anticipated, nothing. Fire is as quiet as a mouse. And then I think again. All those videos of prerecorded “twelve hours of relaxing crackling fire sounds” are actually not twelve hours of fire sounds but twelve hours of fire burning wood sounds. The smell of fire is the smell of wood burning. The sound of fire is the sound of wood burning. 

To touch it. It burns my skin. But does that mean I have touched the flame? It feels like it only burned me, as I never seem to be able to hold it. I cannot take it and move it somewhere else. I cannot take fire by itself, I cannot move it, push it, caress it. I can only transfer it from one place to another if it is already burning something else. So, how does fire feel - hard, soft, sticky, smooth? Maybe slippery, but a new type of slippery, not the greasy one. Featherly? I like this one. Fire is slippery like a falling feather. Taste it? I shall leave this for when my courage, or my folly, for the lack of the former, takes hold in the decision-making.

What do I see when I look at my little flame? I see it is neither yellow, nor red, nor orange. It is a reddish-orange of a yellow hue. Or something of that sort. Does it even matter? Fire has the color of fire. 

Something I can see for sure is that fire dances with the air. Whether it is a passionate tango or a tender waltz, fire and air are always in each other’s arms. It can sometimes look as if the flame stands still, but if you look closer, you will notice its little trembling, I assume with joy, as fire cannot be cold. Fire always moves. And if you want, you can choreograph the next dance. I never know how much is too much when I blow towards the flame. Oftentimes, it is too much and I have to light the candle again. Some practice is required so you can learn how to move the flame in the proper direction, with the right speed, so as not to put it out. 

Fire seems to always have been fire. This flame on the top of my candlewick is the same flame that a caveman discovered some million years ago. I assume the air back then was somewhat different from what we breathe in today, and yet our air sustains fire; their air sustained fire. Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe, just like every other creature, fire adapted to the changes of its many times. Fire is the same because it looks the same. But is it?

Fire is a method actor. If it is a campfire in the woods, it is eerie; if it is in the fireplace, it is cozy, hypnotizing, mysterious even. If it is devouring a house, it is dangerous and frightening. If a whole room is lit by the fire of a hundred small candles, it is romantic. If you light a candle in a church, you light a promise of salvation. With the change of the state of fire, man changes his state of mind.

I often wonder what it would be like if I were born a couple of hundred years ago. I try to imagine how I would look and be like, though my medical record so far shows that I would not have survived my first year, but that is another topic. I question whether I would be thinking about the same things I think now, whether I would know what I know now. I highly doubt I would be able to recognize myself from the past if I were presented only with the contents of my inner world without the assurance of my outer appearance. And yet I also think there will be something of my, let’s say, seventeenth-century version of me that is the same in all the other versions of me in all the other episodes of time. I assume I would be reading in all of the times I exist, as I know that it was not me who chose to read, but rather it was the reading that chose me as one of its many keepers. But reading then would be so much different from how I do it now. 

Now I have unlimited electricity. I can read whenever I decide. When I follow my body’s rhythm, it naturally leads me to wake up with the rise of the sun and pushes my eyelids down with the fall of the night. When my predecessors discovered fire, they also discovered that they could stretch the day to the point that it could never end. One small candle lit on my desk at night prolongs the time for reading, the time for writing, drawing, doing, thinking. One single candle creates an intimate space for one’s soul to thrive, for one’s mind to expand. And though light cannot help one see darkness, it can make one see in the dark. 

To read in the light of a candle is to participate in an act saturated with a myriad of sensations. One much more easily jumps in the book, as even the flame has directed its gaze only on the words on the page. There is a loss of focus when one turns the electric light on to brighten the whole room. When one subconsciously knows one can turn off the lights whenever one wishes, one's mind seems to become lazy with the task in front of it. Only when the last candle is almost gone, then one understands what it means to be pressed by time. There are only so many pages one can read and only so many thoughts one can write down until the flame dies out and darkness swiftly invades the space. Then what is left is the memory of something that had just happened. One is brutally banished from the realms he was just occupying. All images of the story escape through the window. And one can only pray to remember the unwritten thoughts the next day when the sun rises again. 

It is easier to recognize or create beauty when one is often exposed to it. It is easier to search for the little details when one uses one’s mind as a magnifying glass. Or the opposite - one who lives on top of a hill knows how to look at the big picture. 

One who knows the power of the little flame knows the power of the all-encompassing fire. They know when a new idea comes, as they know a spark is needed to light a fire. They know how to discern a good idea from a bad one, as the good ideas keep burning. And they also know how to nurture an idea, how to raise it to become, if not life-changing, then at least interesting, as they understand that fire needs air to survive. One who knows fire knows how to keep ideas alive - they find them a shelter so the wind does not blow them away, but they always leave a window open so new air can come in and nourish them. When one knows fire, one knows life - how to create and support it. And how to destroy it.