May 14, 2004: Reading by the Cold Mountain Candlelight

For one week, Tucson Electric Power Company has threaten to turn off my electricity due to back in the roaring nineties (90s), I lived with a roommate who was the biggest energy consumer. The AC was on day and night even when no one was there. I made a bad choice and put the account in my name. Today, years later, they found me out and charge me over $400 dollars. Of course, I don’t have that kind of money lying around so I have been living the past week in the dark by candlelight catching up on all my reading. There was one book I am relating to on being alone and in the dark.

Ada took a book from her bedside table and went into the upper hall and sat in the stuffed chair she had pulled from Monroe’s bedroom and situated to catch the good light from the hall window. She had spent much of the past three damp months sitting in the chair reading, a quilt wrapped around her to hold back the chill of the house even in July. (Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier)

There are some advantages of living in the dark. No one will ever bother you because they think you are not a home, I have read at least ten novels in one week which beats last year’s record of two novels, and the great entertainment I have found for myself. I found out there are things I never knew about myself that I am not willing to mention and practicing the Flashdance scene is not one of it either. In addition, your friends will find ways to entertain you.

The novel, Cold Mountain, was set back in time of the civil war. The only way they entertain themselves was conversation, song and dance. I brought me joy when my friends, Joe and Nathan, were showing me the ‘line-dancing’ dance moves they learned at a cowboy bar. Their swift movements made the candlelights flicker adding more dancing shadows. Who needs television, this was more exciting than counting the cracks on the ceiling.