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ellenkushnerOne of the (many) things I realized I love about being in Amsterdam is that whenever you go into a café or restaurant, there are lit candles on the table. Doesn’t matter whether it’s lunchtime in one of those high-design brushed steel Dutch minimalist joints where the candle (in a clear glass holder, of course) shares the table with a single orchid, or drinks in an old basement in a canal house where the jenever is pulled from a barrel and you can’t see the candleholder anymore for the years of taper wax it’s crusted with, or a smokey corner bar with a Keno machine. You sit down, there’s a candle burning.
I mentioned this to my Amsterdam pal (former NY radio goddess Ruth Dreier, who moved there some years back to work for Radio Nederland, now does a cool indie show on radio100
http://p081.ezboard.com/finterstitialartsfrm10.showMessage?topicID=4.topic
and who actually lives in the fabled Begijnhof!
http://www.amsterdam.info/sights/begijnhof/ )
and she said, “Oh, yes; winters are dark here, and nights are long. As soon as that time hits, I start bringing out the candles, too. Everyone does.”
Even when I moved to Boston from NYC, that first winter I was appalled to notice how many fewer minutes of sunlight I got toward the end of the day, just this little ways up the coast.
It doesn’t matter how much electricity you’ve got, or what kind. There is nothing like a living flame to burn away the winter gloom.
And so you behold me now, as the sky begins to darken at 4 p.m. in Boston, sitting in my study in my comfy chair with my laptop, and across the room a candle burning on the desk. There’s another one burning downstairs, scented a little with spice, so that when I go down I don’t mind. If guests come over, I will wander through the livingroom with my matches until they are surrounded by those small, particular points of light and heat.
I mentioned this to my Amsterdam pal (former NY radio goddess Ruth Dreier, who moved there some years back to work for Radio Nederland, now does a cool indie show on radio100
http://p081.ezboard.com/finterstitialartsfrm10.showMessage?topicID=4.topic
and who actually lives in the fabled Begijnhof!
http://www.amsterdam.info/sights/begijnhof/ )
and she said, “Oh, yes; winters are dark here, and nights are long. As soon as that time hits, I start bringing out the candles, too. Everyone does.”
Even when I moved to Boston from NYC, that first winter I was appalled to notice how many fewer minutes of sunlight I got toward the end of the day, just this little ways up the coast.
It doesn’t matter how much electricity you’ve got, or what kind. There is nothing like a living flame to burn away the winter gloom.
And so you behold me now, as the sky begins to darken at 4 p.m. in Boston, sitting in my study in my comfy chair with my laptop, and across the room a candle burning on the desk. There’s another one burning downstairs, scented a little with spice, so that when I go down I don’t mind. If guests come over, I will wander through the livingroom with my matches until they are surrounded by those small, particular points of light and heat.