Earth Hour

Last night at 8:25 p.m., you could have found me digging through junk drawers and closets, gathering tea lights and large dusty candles that crackled and sparked when lit with the strike-anywhere matches that I found in the nick of time in the cat-food-and-scissor cabinet right before the clock struck 8:30, kicking off Earth Hour 2009.

I turned off my computer. I unplugged the twinkle lights in the living room and pulled the chain on the reading lamps. I did open the refrigerator a couple of times but I booed and hissed at the bulb inside. Around 9pm I peered out my window and noticed that all the way down the block, my neighborhood was shirking Earth Hour. The sight made me feel lonely, and resolute. Scott juiced some blood oranges by candlelight, divided them into glasses with a dose of vodka and we sipped these luminous drinks at the kitchen table.

At 9:04 p.m., I discovered that our bedroom lights were still on. A thin glow issued from under the door and I leapt like an avenger to snuff it out. Our apartment has only two rooms, so I'm not sure how we managed to sit in the dark for half an hour feeling righteous without knowing that the lamps were blazing in one of them.

To atone for our transgressions and perhaps subconscious aggressions toward the movement to fight global climate destabilization, we left the lights off for an extra ten minutes or so after 9:30. It's a symbol, I thought, so the actual energy we used during this hour is beside the point. We tried, we spent some time conscious of our impact on the planet, and that's what matters. Like how you are still a better person for buying someone a really bad gift.