Solstice Celebration 2004
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Dec. 22nd, 2004 | 04:09 am
mood: 
contemplative
Thanks to 
reinaness and solractwin for welcoming me (and a great many others) to their home to witness this.
"Since early this morning I have been in the living
room with my candles—
—hundreds, possibly thousands of them—
as well as rolls and rolls of angry, rattling
tinfoil and stacks of disposable pie plates...
...I've been placing candles on every flat surface available,
the foils not only protecting surfaces from dribbling wax
but serving as well to double the candle flames
via reflection.
Candles are everywhere: on the piano, on the
bookshelves, on the coffee table, on the mantelpiece,
in the fireplace, on the windowsill....
Have you ever tried to light thousands of candles? It
takes longer than you think.... I light them all, and
I can feel the room heating up....
...I can see that [my family] have rounded the corner
and can see and feel the buttery yellow pressure of
flames dancing outward from the living room door....
...the three of them enter the room, speechless,
turning in slow circles, seeing the normally dreary
living room covered with a molten living cake-icing of
white fire, all surfaces devoured in flame—
a dazzling fleeting empire of ideal light."
—Douglas Coupland, Generation X
reinaness and solractwin for welcoming me (and a great many others) to their home to witness this.In return, I offer this:What is it?
We light hundreds and hundreds of candles
and watch them till they burn out and try not to burn down the house.
It can be very meaningfull or spritual or it can be just a lot of fire.
Whatever you need.
What is it for?
For the past several years I have taken time
out of the busy holiday season to honor those people
who have been important to me in the past year.
This is not a party.
It is a gift I give to you because
you have been a part of making my life
the wonderous thing it is.
"Since early this morning I have been in the living
room with my candles—
—hundreds, possibly thousands of them—
as well as rolls and rolls of angry, rattling
tinfoil and stacks of disposable pie plates...
...I've been placing candles on every flat surface available,
the foils not only protecting surfaces from dribbling wax
but serving as well to double the candle flames
via reflection.
Candles are everywhere: on the piano, on the
bookshelves, on the coffee table, on the mantelpiece,
in the fireplace, on the windowsill....
Have you ever tried to light thousands of candles? It
takes longer than you think.... I light them all, and
I can feel the room heating up....
...I can see that [my family] have rounded the corner
and can see and feel the buttery yellow pressure of
flames dancing outward from the living room door....
...the three of them enter the room, speechless,
turning in slow circles, seeing the normally dreary
living room covered with a molten living cake-icing of
white fire, all surfaces devoured in flame—
a dazzling fleeting empire of ideal light."
—Douglas Coupland, Generation X
(no subject)
from:
sea_of_change
date: Dec. 22nd, 2004 02:10 am (UTC)
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from:
lockle
date: Dec. 22nd, 2004 03:24 am (UTC)
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from:
nobodobodon
date: Dec. 22nd, 2004 05:33 am (UTC)
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(no subject)
from:
triple_entendre
date: Dec. 22nd, 2004 07:47 am (UTC)
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from:
nosugarsadded
date: Dec. 22nd, 2004 11:19 am (UTC)
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Some answers
from:
triple_entendre
date: Dec. 22nd, 2004 03:20 pm (UTC)
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One-word explanation: chunking
Layman's explanation: figure out what a "bunch of candles" looks like. Now count how many "bunches" there are. (Visually, it's kind of like using a cookie cutter on an irregularly-shaped blob of dough.)
In practice, it takes a few small test runs to check your accuracy. The round pans held about 20 candles. I figured that out first by counting "fives" and seeing how many fives there were in several pans. The human brain is wired to count 1-5 things instantly in the visual field. You can look at a pack of predatory animals, and immediately know if there are 1,2,3,4,5 or get the fuck outta there. The tied bundles of candles tended to be about 5 candles per bundle.
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Re: Some answers
from:
triple_entendre
date: Dec. 22nd, 2004 03:24 pm (UTC)
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After counting pans and bundles, I made a third pass counting all the strays, counting by fives.
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Re: Some answers
from:
denshi
date: Dec. 24th, 2004 11:05 pm (UTC)
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Re: Some answers
from:
nosugarsadded
date: Dec. 25th, 2004 09:00 am (UTC)
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Re: Some answers
from:
triple_entendre
date: Dec. 25th, 2004 11:55 am (UTC)
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(no subject)
from:
chickenmoon
date: Dec. 22nd, 2004 09:17 pm (UTC)
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These are beautiful!
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(no subject)
from:
triple_entendre
date: Dec. 25th, 2004 12:34 pm (UTC)
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