They’ve replicated fireworks on my drive home. On displays placed high on poles, the lights in the middle begin to heat and then the lights surrounding do the same outwardly, then retreat and repeat again: a simulated explosion. It isn’t an occasion but a constant thing, though we make of these things what we want.
A light bulb is a light bulb to prevent oxygen from reaching the light source, while explosions exist because of oxygen and mean to only last for seconds. Pretend what it was when you turned on the light was instead a little display, a tiny detonation we could watch while it fades. It isn’t making lightening but using gunpowder, and it’s very dark here but something spectacular.
Three hundred years before the light bulb it was a single violet transplant; five years ago it was fifteen minutes on the floor of this store downtown. Why do we make this about electricity, as though we’re conducting, as though it’s currents or charges. Self-immolation is what it was. We lit ourselves on fire.
And you live like this, ignited, and then one day you’re only repeating this spectacular thing, without oxygen.