The magic of candles and lamps
with a recipe for blackout hot chocolate
Every time there is a storm we have a blackout. Its the nature of living where we do. There is beauty in the loss of power that I surrender to in the same way that I surrendered to it as a kid. For at least part of my childhood I lived in a house without electricity. I used to read in bed by candlelight or the light of a hurricane lantern with the smell of wicks and wax or burning kerosene. We ate our dinners in winter accompanied by the ambient hiss of a gas lamp which cast our shadows away from us into the dark edges and hidden crevices of the room. The smells were much more vivid then. The darkness seemed to take up space and have a texture and a substance that was both comforting and terrifying, and the whole world seemed like a place that I could sink into slowly, like a long drawn out dream.
Tonight it feels that way again, as I write this in a room lit up by candles. And whereas most nights I feel dull and tired, ready to tune out to a movie or some mediocre TV, tonight I feel like working — like writing, or cutting and sewing — because of the invigorating smells that the candle lights release. And I have to ask myself, if these other forms of light are so invigorating, so sensorily stimulating, then why do we opt for electricity? Because it’s brighter, and quieter, and gives the illusion of daytime at night?
Humans have a biological reason to fear the dark. And it seems its not just the dark that we fear. Scientists have done experiments that suggest our fear response is tied to our circadian rhythms, making us more vigilant and more responsive to fear-related stimuli at night, irregardless of the presence of artificial light. It makes sense. Night time was not a good time to be alone or away from civilisation. Our reliance on sight and the loss of it at night time, made us sitting ducks for anything with teeth and more highly developed senses of smell and hearing. That’s why we tell scary stories at night or in the dark, stories about a whole host of strange creatures or unusual experiences that are designed to make us stay by the fire and not venture out alone.
Even now when humans are self-labelled ‘top predators’ the loss of visual stimuli still causes us to fear imagined things. As a kid I used to imagine that there was a crocodile under the bed and as I lay dangling my hand over the side of it, the fear would come upon me and I’d draw my hand up quickly out of reach. I used to fear the kangaroos that grazed at night time on the shed site above the house that I passed on my way up to the outdoor toilet. Would they suddenly turn carnivorous and gobble me up? A couple of years back I had a strange experience where for a good six months or more I couldn’t go out at night to shut the chooks in. As soon as I stepped into the back paddock an unaccountable fear would come upon me and the terror of it was so debilitating that I eventually sold my chooks because I couldn’t keep them safe.
Light, in all its forms, keeps us safe. We still have that attitude today, which is why we light up our shopfronts and city streets at night. That’s why the white night events are so successful — they give us an experience of being outside at night in a way that feels safe. But in keeping safe what are we missing out on? All the textures and shapes that are created by a candle flickering, or a wick receding into its oil. All the scents and colours, so varied in a flame, so lacking in the monochrome scentless flatness of an electric bulb. And who else suffers? Our outdoor lights interfere with the migratory routes of bogong moths, which is the main food of the mountain pigmy possum, which is failing to reproduce. And what about the connections between electric light and human consumption? It strikes me that we wouldn’t consume half the stuff we do if it weren’t for electricity, enabling us to consume things around the clock — entertainment, alcohol, food.
Psycholoigsts say this fear of the dark arises in children at around 3–4 years of age. I’ve witnessed it in my own kids who at two and a half seem suddenly picky about which side of the bed they sleep on, or refuse to go unaccompanied down the dark hallway when they have to go and wee. And while scientists are busy trying to figure out what fear actually is, I’m left wondering why, in that first 2–3 years of life, do we not fear the dark? What would it mean if we could reproduce that template, that feeling of ongoing reassurance — light or dark, day or night — that we experience at that age?
When the power goes out and I am left to rely on candles in the early hours of the night before sleep, I start to feel differently about the space. I feel as if the flames welcome me, connecting me with the four walls of the room in a way that daylight or electricity do not. The flames seem to say, ‘Be here, in this space, which we have created for you. We gift you both light and heat.’ And I feel as if I am fully present, and my heart is well received, and each of my cells finds release from the painful illumination of daylight or electricity, especially when the rain drums on the roof as if to lull me to sleep. And I have to wonder, have we got it all wrong trying to make our lives as easy as possible? To separate ourselves from passages of day and night, the seasons and the cycles, the reality of where we live? Do we really resent our places — we spend so much time and effort resisting the pull that they make on us — or the patterns of creation so much that we put buffers in place wherever and whenever we can? And when we are asked to surrender due to a blackout, can we allow our bodies take respite and succumb?
Here in the darkness with the flickering candles I wonder why it is so invigorating for my senses to be engaged in this way. Is it many thousands of years of conditioning, of sitting around a fire? Or is it something else? And what if all those sensory disorders that are rife now, have come about in part due to a lack of sensory input from sources such as these — light, heat, touch, shadow, scent?
I’ll leave you with those questions and a recipe for blackout hot chocolate.
blackout hot chocolate
milk
a quantity of good quality drinking chocolate like Simón Coll
cinnamon quills
cardamom pods
a vanilla bean
wait for a blackout, or make your own by flicking a switch on your power board.
take a heavy based saucepan and toast the spices in it over a gas flame until they start to emit a strong scent. add milk, non-dairy if you prefer, and vanilla and let the milk heat slowly over a low flame.
when the milk is warm add your chocolate and whisk occasionally while it melts to get a smooth consistency and a beautifully coloured brew.
by the light of a candle or multiple candles, sit and sip your hot chocolate, paying particular attention to the sounds, smells and textural qualities that the candlelight shows.
https://www.zoo.org.au/healesville/whats-on/news/lights-off-for-the-bogong-moths/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212014352
Originally published at https://apeasantskitchen.substack.com on August 8, 2022.
