Keep the candles burning
Thu 09 July 2009
Deborah de Groot, Communications
But they may ask “Who needs a candle these days? A candle is a thing of the past”.
But you know, and you must remind them.
They must always remember to light a candle.
They must leave it burning, as you do, on the desk near the window, amid stationery and stationary clutter.
Though really, it is the flame that matters, burning brightly in memory, burning brilliantly in anticipation of the day to come.
Your day.
For truly, the suffragettes (for that is the term of endearment or scorn which the Daily Mail decreed on January 10, 1906), would be disappointed in, or perhaps proud of, a middle-aged woman who had deferred, until mid-February 2007, the benefit of their feminism.
Too late, but better late than never.
It is grey every evening when she sits at her desk by the window, after the pulls and the push of domestic doings have settled, and stares at the candle, freshly lit.
Watches a languid ribbon of smoke twist its eerie dance toward a glass ceiling.
It meanders like the slow seduction of words, like a feather quill of nostalgia or the flourish of cobalt ink on parchment, parchment the softness of calico white.
It weaves dreamy streams of surrealist thought that permeate time, alighting on Dali prints that dance upon the wall to the ticking of a clock.
You look up from the desk, across to where your clock, perched on a wooden shelf, is chirping, ruffled in this country, where cuckoos are “Koels,” nestled as though tired from its voyage.
You had cobbled to the edge of the Black Forest market place the day you bought your clock, when it had caged your attention with its twitter, swaying you to split it from the flock.
"Danke,” the guttural gent said as you handed over 10 euros and 50 cents for a timepiece promoted as genuine but suspiciously fake.
His accent is thick, and you are reminded of black and white images.
That tabloid day, a Tuesday it was, was falling to night too quickly.
Hurry through the alleys, find a hostel, search for the luxury of a bunk with threadbare sheets, pearl yourself in oyster warmth.
The blonde girl on duty (was her name Gretel?) takes a photograph for her wall.
Are you still there, you and your clock, stiff and smiling in a plastic frame above the office counter, in a foreign country, under a freckled sky, a starry night?
You may ask “Was it such a night as this that stirred van Gogh? Such a starry night, gazing down upon post impressionist art? Did Roger Fry have any qualms coining that exact phrase? Did he even discuss it? With his Bloomsbury Group? With Virginia?”.
Virginia.
Yes, tomorrow you will visit Virginia Woolf, as you will visit Paula Gunn Allen, visit Adrienne Rich.
Will peruse their personal essays and pursue their female thoughts.
You will collect the stationery from the desk with the candle, climb into the car (devoid now of car seats and infant paraphernalia) and drive along ribbons of road which, if you were an alien looking down from those starry skies, would appear as trails of multiple metal machines, sliming like snails towards a juicy academic garden of university boxes.
But you will not ask “Are they treasure boxes?”.
You will not ask “Are they Pandora’s boxes?”.
No.
As you drive through suburbia, you will remember Gwen Harwood, who was stifled, and you will admit that university holds the key to open both of these boxes.
You will recall the voices of the fifties fathers, who had boomed to their babies “Is not the greatest of all human achievement the successful raising of children?”.
And you will sigh.
And you will know that the boxes are gifts.
Presents, for the present.
The car will come to a halt in front of a library of knowledge and privilege and fought-for equality and you will sit, with your backpack and your aspirations, and sigh.
And collect, thoughts, stationery, grades.
A stream of fresh girls may babble past, all tight fitting jeans and even white teeth (all the better to eat you with), sending text messages.
They may debate with each other and others over the need for books at all, as postcards herald “Who needs text books, Google It”.
And you, an antique child, with your sensible shoes, will remember the women of history, the women who shout soundlessly in protest and pleasure that things have changed.
Today’s girl has a room of her own, but is she aware?
Does she hear that ticking clock?
Does she light a flame?
A sharp breeze flutters the corner of a page on the desk near the window, a doily moth flutters in.
You shiver, and the candle sputters and flickers.
The wayward moth tussles in vain, her reflection monstrous on the wall.
Nocturnal breeze ebbs and you lean against the window sill, appraising the still life outside.
Outside, where neon lights puncture the night and march the road, count houses, stand sentinel to those personal pleasure domes.
“How peaceful is the night world!”
Memories are wrapped or revealed at whim.
But wait, could that be Emmeline Pankhurst?
You lean out further.
Christabel?
You strain to see.
Is it her, with a candle hot and beckoning through the glass of time?
No, it is just the woman next door, wearing a jumper the colour of blood, gathering her children and juggling her career in perfect balance.
The stars survey (as they always have), and Don McLean croons of Vincent in the dusk.
The elegy mourns and celebrates, and evening settles.
Front doors close, capturing clatter and cushioning living creatures until tomorrow.
A dog barks.
Youngsters listen to words on televisions, on ipods, on YouTube.
Hear words full of echoes, memories and associations.
They type more words on computers, tap tap tapping the clap trap of life, unaware that candles and computers have merged.
So, they may ask, “Who needs a candle these days?”.
And you must remind them.
There is a candle burning in your room, on the desk, near the window.
A candle already half melted and seeking oxygen from outside.
A candle trying to express itself strongly, yet quietly, before all the wax melts away.
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