For the first time since moving here, I’ve changed a light bulb. The bulbs in my room died out some time ago, and I’ve since used a halogen torchiere to replace it. Well, yesterday, that bulb reached the end of its life and I was left in darkness.
I put off replacing the bulbs for this long because of a particularly nasty run-in with a fly during the summer months. All I remember is after a couple hours of passively fighting with it, it eventually got trapped in the fixture that covered the bulbs and died. I could see its silhouette through the frosted glass. My bed sits under the fixture; I feared that if I were ever to remove the fixture, the fly and whatever other grotesque contents that the fixture held would fall onto my bed.
Last night, I decided that darkness is unpleasant especially when there’s homework to do, so I mounted a chair and surveyed my foe. After fiddling with the fixture, I stepped down and stripped my bed of its linens. I bundled the linens—pillows and all—and placed them on a couch elsewhere towards the front of the flat and then proceeded to remove the fixture.
Removing it was simple, albeit the screw was not obvious. Nevertheless, a few short rotations of it and the fixture was released. I was adamant about holding it level, so as to prevent any filth from desecrating my naked mattress. In that, I succeeded. I held the fixture; my arms extended—my movements slow and meticulous, as if I were transporting a bomb that could have detonated at any moment—and placed the fixture on the floor in an adjacent room.
After replacing the old, paint-stained bulbs with virgin ones, I pulled the string and there was a flicker of light. It was bright, almost alien. I welcomed it with awe.