I knew there was something different about these bulbs the second I opened the box. Something about their color, when they’re cold, no electricity applied. Now, I’m used to the cheaper bulbs looking a little different. Maybe it’s illusory and they’re all pretty much the same, but to my eye they do look cheaper, just lying there, their insides less frosty, and a kind of shadow already inside, resting, as if their potential for light must be less. I actually wondered if perhaps we’d been tricked into buying previously used, burnt-out bulbs.
Then when I pulled one out I was surprised, shocked I suppose, by its heaviness. The sensation made me somewhat sick to my stomach. My wife and I have a peaceful life—we do not expect such things. “Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise,” to quote Alice Walker.
As I turned the bulb the heaviness shifted inside it. I didn’t think it contained liquid—no sensation of sloshing. But perhaps something solid, yet fluid. Sand maybe, but it felt too heavy for that. Moving it gently side to side, as if I were rocking it, brought eggs and their hidden embryos to mind, which made me feel both rude and foolish. That would not be a perception I’d share with my wife, who has long thought me a bit too much on the crude side.
Of course, Thomas Jefferson called politeness “artificial good humor,” and that’s not exactly positive, is it? Nothing artificial about my humor. The world is a funny old place. If you don’t laugh about it, you cry.
We never had children, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I don’t know why we didn’t try the cures, or the alternatives. We never really talked about it. We left all that back in the shadows and just went on with our lives.
I put that first bulb down on the table and stared at it. Careful not to break it, but definitely wanting it out of my hands. With the metal base turned away from me, and no brand name or insignia visible, it did so look like an egg.
I went back to the carton of eight. I should have noticed before—the entire carton was heavy, remarkably so. But for the time being I left the rest of the bulbs where they were. I put the carton back down and pulled up a chair, examining the packaging. “Bulbs” was the only word on the carton, in big black letters. No brand, no manufacturer’s name or address, no instructions, no copyright, no trademark, no guarantee, not even a price. You couldn’t get much more generic than that.
Iris Murdoch said truth was like brown. “Truth is so generic,” she said. But did she mean that was a good thing or a bad thing? That’s the trouble with quotes. It sounds like she thought truth was really no big deal. But what else is there?
And I didn’t want to use those bulbs, but again, what else was there? Sometimes, to quote Eleanor Roosevelt, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” I had to use them, unless I wanted to walk around in darkness, which I’d had enough of in my lifetime already. I didn’t want to make a return trip to the store. I just don’t like the lighting. All those fluorescents. They make you rush your shopping. You’ll grab anything, buy anything, just to get out of there. They illuminate people’s irrationality more than anything else.
So I screwed one of these odd bulbs into an out-of-the-way, little-used lamp we keep in the front hall. Mostly its purpose is to illuminate the coat rack if one of us needs to go out at night. But neither of us goes out much. So what if one of us looked like we’d gotten dressed in the dark? Who would care?
I wasn’t too pleased about having the bulb in my hand for the time necessary to secure it in the socket. Besides the uncanny weight of it, the glass conveyed a dead-cold feel against my palm, and there was a hard-to-describe sensation just this side of dampness as I gripped and turned it, as if the bulb were sweating on its inside surface. And the weight inside seemed to more than shift, to respond to the movement being forced upon it with some sort of intelligence. I might have told my wife, “This is no dim bulb!” if I were but moderately clever.
I noticed right away that it had an almost lubricated feel as it glided into the turns of the socket. Usually you feel a kind of scraping resistance when you screw in a bulb—cheap metal against cheap metal. Usually it snags a bit—sometimes you have to back it out and start all over. But here I felt nothing at all. I come back to Eleanor Roosevelt for my wisdom: “When life is too easy for us, we must beware.” I was practically terrified.
But once I had the bulb firmly planted and flipped the switch I was amazed. What a light did bloom! It was almost pure white, whiter than a Halogen, but cooler. You could look directly at it without too much discomfort. And although I immediately saw the shadow inside, a shape that moved, I noticed that somewhat mysterious presence diminished the illumination not one bit. In fact, it appeared to manipulate the rays, and focus them, so that they spread at a speed you could actually perceive. You could see that light creep across the details of the room, at varying rates no doubt due to the different densities of detail encountered. So, gradually, shadows were eaten, and things were revealed, so that old scars in the woodwork suddenly became remembered, the residue of stains recalled, unevenness of tile, and dirt in areas I’d thought completely clean.
Even these flaws, once seen in such startling detail, became random incidents of beauty, and the truly beautiful things—a piece of tapestry, a strip of wallpaper, a crystalline vase, a dead cousin’s photograph—became almost overwhelming to view. I stumbled out of the front hall, tears in my eyes. I can’t say I was at all embarrassed by this. For “There’s a sacredness in tears,” to quote Washington Irving.
I know now I should have taken my time with the bulbs. My wife and I have never been ones to rush into things. We’re always so careful! But I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I went around to the lights in the living room, the dining room, my study, and our bedroom, switching out those old dusty bulbs with the rather odd, somewhat weighted bulbs from that new generic carton.
As I screwed in each bulb, and turned it on, and left it on, it really was as if a fire had been lit. “Man is the only creature that dares to light a fire and live with it,” said one Henry Vandyke. The light flowed from each bulb, transforming our home, each separate stream seeking the companionship of the others, and morphing everything they touched into something beautiful and true. As these bulbs performed their magic I chased the light around our home, and I found an even braver brilliance where the edges of each separate stream met. And yes, I found myself dancing and singing to observe this, very much the idiot. “Every man plays the fool once in his life,” according to Mr. Congreve, and certainly this was my time, my time to shine, as it were. I felt as brilliant as those creatures, those embryos, inside the bulbs.
Because that’s what they were, weren’t they? I wouldn’t know what else to call them, these little creatures with their oversized heads and dangly arms, playing with this startling light as if it were their first and only plaything. I just so wanted to see their darling little faces!
So I kept easing closer to each flaming bulb, staring as long as I dared, even longer, examining their precious silhouettes, willing myself to see their delicate faces even through frosted glass. It actually seemed possible.
“John, what on earth are you doing?”
I stared at my wife. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. “No,” I said. “That’s not quite all of it. The full quotation is ‘What on earth are you doing for heaven’s sake?’”