As I stared at my mother’s crate sliding into the hole, I had the idea that I would be collecting light bulbs from then on. As soon as I got home, I decided to reorganize my premises in a way suitable for this purpose. I cataloged the non-essentials and photographed them one by one. Then I put them up for sale online at a bargain price, keeping only what was necessary for survival: a toilet, a bed, and a refrigerator. Day by day things started disappearing and the space became spacious. So spacious that the rent I paid became more justifiable than before. I was relieved by this thought, and from that moment on I never felt nostalgic for the time when walking meant changing one’s path to avoid hitting something. How much energy I have wasted in my life, I thought, when for the first time I felt free and perhaps even smarter than others. However, the spaciousness was only a temporary phase: over time I repopulated the spaces as it suited my passion. I would repopulate them in a smarter way: I would repopulate them and leave them empty. And I already felt great that I could enjoy the fitness, even if it was far from the goal. It seems to me that sometimes people want to set a goal and achieve it a little later, and that’s why they thrash around like fish on rocks. I opened the fridge, took a bite of celery and looked around the rooms of the house. I would start with the living room, which is also the kitchen, because it offered more options than the others, and then continue with the bathroom, the bedroom, and finally my mother’s bedroom. Perhaps not everyone realizes that light bulbs are characterized by a huge variety of shapes, colors, power and luminosity. Round, long, flat, white, yellow, red, incandescent, halogen, fluorescent, neon tube fluorescent, magnetic induction and so on. After a series of painstaking searches, I ordered five hundred bulbs and none were the same. While I was waiting for the order, I called the electrician Vinicius and asked him for a quote to install five hundred electrical outlets, cables, circuits and switches. He replied that it would cost me a lot of money, but I finally convinced him to give me a discount to buy in stock. And anyway, by selling non-essential things, I scraped together a decent nest egg, which was starting to become a considerable sum to the twenty-one thousand euros inherited from my good mother. I spare no expense when it comes to what I love.
When my wife returned from a business trip to Milan the following month to find the house emptied of everything and the walls covered in electrical patches and light switches, she didn’t take it well. Long story short, he divorced me and moved out on his own. I’ve never liked moves for the effort they require; in my wife’s case it wasn’t dramatic – there was almost nothing left to carry – I was relieved to know that in the overall grief of the separation I had spared her at least that strain. Before he left, he opened the fridge, grabbed a head of celery and walked out the door, biting furiously at it. The breakup isn’t pretty, but our relationship, like a light bulb at the end, was already flickering from before; so I accepted this fact as something that had been known for a long time and was just waiting to happen.
When you have one goal in life, it’s hard to see everything else. My now ex-wife defined this intention of mine with the term: obsession. It’s a word I don’t like because of the negative psychological implications it has. In any case, I will be forgiven for this digression into my private life, which has little to do with my progress in light bulbs.
The ceilings of the rooms were covered tube neons, each interspersed with two 230V halogens, but I’ll avoid the details because not everyone knows the technical terms of the discipline. The walls of the living room ceased to be white and hazy and brightened into an iridescent, pearly sky, zigzag in the curves of the clouds, full of unexpected reflections and impressive, on a mythological level, like the back of a glass dragon. I try to describe emotions in words. Waking up was exciting because even dreams seemed dull compared to my bright home. The immense light erased all the edges of things and I learned to fall asleep without darkness.
But it wasn’t enough. I felt like there was still space for me to fill. So I bought another five hundred, thousand, fifteen hundred bulbs. From every retailer, online and offline. From Sweden, Japan, India, Uruguay. I got my hands on some rare memorabilia at flea markets; bulbs that belonged to famous people, bulbs with gold filaments instead of tungsten. In the shape of a wild hare and a Flemish cathedral. When I ran out of room for electrical connections in the walls and ceiling, I continued to collect unlit bulbs. My mother’s room was the last, as it was the least used and I filled it to the point where it was no longer possible to enter without risk. All the rarest pieces from the collection are there, but I’m afraid I’ll never see them again unless it means breaking a few light bulbs and ending up in the ER. As for the other rooms, I left some air that allowed me at least a minimal movement maneuver. I got to the point where I could only move by shuffling my feet and slowly. Moving from one room to another took so much time and effort that days flew by trying to get to the fridge; I spent hours, maybe days, just going to the bathroom and also carefully lifting the sheets. Getting to bed required new attention and great caution in movement. But I would never, for anything in the world, give up that feeling of falling into sleep caressed by the coolness of the off light bulbs and the warmth of the on ones. I would never again be able to fall asleep without listening to the soft tinkling of that mutual touch. Moving around a house full of light bulbs is not stressful how to move around a furnished house: furniture must be bypassed, but light bulbs let you pass in any direction while moving slowly without having to change trajectory. Sometimes I thought, yes, sometimes the thought crept into my mind: what would happen if I threw myself at that alternation of glass and tungsten, I thought and thought, what would happen if I disturbed the glass dragon by he stepped on top of it and stained it with the blood of my flesh torn by his sharp scales. Sometimes I wondered if all the mercury vapor contained in thousands of light bulbs would be enough to cause poisoning. I do not deny, with a little shame, that I have indulged in these curious follies from time to time. But apart from these impertinent thoughts, I never thrashed about like a fish on rocks. Apart from these fascinating suggestions, I continued to move cautiously, slowly, not daring to risk any more sudden movement.
Emmanuel Massa