I was brought up in a very open rural countryside in the middle of nowhere. There were no cell phones. If your lights went out you were lit by candlelight for a good four days before they can get to you. And so my imagination was crazy.
We say God and the imagination are one... How high that highest candle lights the dark.
The imagination is the spur of delights... all depends upon it it is the mainspring of everything now is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
When they see those fourteen lights they're looking at a miracle. And deep down they feel that whatever's going to happen there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope.
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure but from hope to hope.
It's like if you can't focus on a movie for 90 minutes without looking at your phone then don't go to the movies! You've got some issues so you should probably stay home and work on those issues and not distract everyone with lights and sounds oh my gosh the tapping on the screens it makes me crazy!
Turn up the lights. I don't want to go home in the dark.
In all honesty at that time I never saw myself as an author... I was just a Mom in a state of panic trying to enter a short story contest to win the prize money in order to keep the lights on in my home.
Unless you have been to boarding-school when you are very young it is absolutely impossible to appreciate the delights of living at home.
I'm a firm believer that lighting affects mood and twinkly lights on strings bring something magical to occasions ranging from concerts to weddings though I'm fond of using them as year-round home decor. There's a reason why they're sometimes called fairy lights. When the night is right there aren't any strings at all.