Time to Lighten Up

Morty the Bulb:

An Allegory of Illumination

by Jennifer Rose

On the day that Sara Kunkle brought home that box of light bulbs, she had no idea that she had purchased the brightest bulb in the box. It was a completely ordinary shopping experience. In addition to the box of bulbs, Sara had picked up a mother lode of toilet paper and a vat of sweet baby gherkins. She was a bulk shopper.

Morty, the brightest bulb in the box, was an incandescent 60W bulb. Because Sara was a bulk shopper, Morty sat in his box, in a closet, for years, knowing nothing. Because Morty was incandescent, he sat there so long he came close to being obsolete. One by one Sara took the other bulbs from the box and put them to use. Finally one night, she took out Morty.

Sara put up a ladder in the bedroom of her apartment, climbed up to the second highest step, unscrewed the burnt out light bulb, and screwed in Morty with six competent turns, Screep, screep screep, screep, screep, screep.

Sara climbed down the ladder, folded it up, and put it away neatly in the utility closet by the kitchen. When she came back to the bedroom, she put her hand on the light switch, and flipped it to ON.

WOW!

A thrill shot through Morty’s entire being. And what is that? And what is that? And what is that? Morty saw the bed, the desk, and the cat.

“This is stupendous!” Morty thought. “This is amazing!”

“A chair! A dresser! A pillow! A nightgown!”

“Holy freaking cow!” Morty thought. “Look at all this stuff, will ya!”

Then Sara flipped the switch to OFF, and “zzzup,” Morty went dark.

Later that night, when Sara was getting ready for bed, Morty was ON and fathoming the details of the bedclothes, their colors and textures, the oceanic blue-green comforter, the damask throw, white ruffles on the pillowcases, the sateen sheen of the sheets. Then he noticed Sara Kunkle. She did not hold still. She was like the cat, Belshazzar, who fussed and flicked and licked.  

“Similar, but not the same. Sublime!” Morty thought. “The rich variety of existence!” And then he was OFF.

Time went by like this. Morty marveled at the details of his existence whenever he was ON: the lace of Sara’s nightgown, the grain of the floorboards, the comings and goings of the cat.

The cat was perplexing. How could it be that one moment Morty’s existence had the element of cat, and the next moment it did not? Morty found himself wishing the cat could be still, could be either in or out.

As he thought more about it, for that matter, Morty wished Sara would not move the objects of existence here and there. Her fluffings and rufflings of the bedclothes made Morty vaguely nauseous. It felt as if he himself were being fluffed and ruffled. He felt cheapened by her disregard for the places things were supposed to be, the places they had been the first moment he was ON. Obviously the wastebasket belonged next to the desk and not next to the bed.

“Why doesn’t she care about what is right? Why doesn’t she think it matters whether my wastebasket is here or there?” Morty wondered. The wastebasket, like the cat, moved in and out of Morty’s existence. Sara put bits and scraps into the wastebasket, and the wastebasket disappeared. When it came back the wastebasket would be empty. Unsettling.

One day Sara was standing in front of her mirror brushing her brown hair with the brush that was supposed to be on the dresser. Morty had noticed the mirror before, but today he focused on a luminescent orb looking over Sara’s shoulder, and he recognized himself.

“What the what?!” Morty thought. “What the who, the how, the what?!” Morty thought. “I do not like the looks of that. I do not like the looks of that at all. God. That small, insignificant, fragile, glassy… Ew.” He couldn’t turn his attention from his reflection.

Before long, Morty’s thoughts turned. “That is me! I am the best! I am the brightest! I feel so WOW about ME!”

That night was the very first time a light bulb ever experienced mirror self-recognition. Morty was right to feel proud of himself. It was almost unbelievable.

That was also the night that Morty noticed the light switch with its ON and OFF.

Now, when he was ON, Morty fixated on that switch. He noticed certain correlations. He related ON with the hairbrush, the cat, and the rest of existence.  He related OFF with, with, with…

“Oh my God!” Morty thought. “What the hell is OFF? WHAT THE HELL IS OFF?!?! He noticed that ON was always, at first, attended by Sara’s proximity to the switch.

The Sara Kunkle suddenly seemed very different from the cat. Morty hoped he had not offended The Sara Kunkle by associating her with the cat, who was clearly a buffoon, an ass-licking beggar. Who did the cat beg to? The Sara Kunkle.

“Why hadn’t I noticed this?”

The Sara Kunkle suddenly seemed so beautiful, the one thing in the existence that stirred deep yearnings in Morty.

“I’m an idiot,” Morty thought. “Clearly she is endowed with magical powers beyond all comprehension. Probably she hates me now. I am loathsome. I am small. What if she decides not to turn the switch ON?!”

Morty had a lot of intense feelings about this possibility. When he was ON he spent a lot of time focusing on The Sara Kunkle, trying to understand her moods and motivations. He wanted to please her. Desperately.

Morty hummed—the language of bulbs--prayers to the All Powerful, The Sara Kunkle.

Despite Morty’s love of her, despite his prayers and devotions, The Sara Kunkle delivered a humiliating, a devastating blow to Morty, that punished him and filled him with a sense of profound, powerless humiliation.

She turned another bulb ON.

Morty’s existence was halved in an instant. He was comingled. Demeaned. By a bedside lamp.

“Fie on thee, Sara Kunkle,” Morty thought. Then felt guilty and ashamed.

Morty wondered how often this bedside bulb was ON when he was OFF. His thoughts took an ugly, murderous turn. He schemed to outwit the bedside bulb and be alone again with The Sara Kunkle.

In his humming, bulb language, Morty asked the bedside bulb his name, as if to befriend him.

“James,” the bedside bulb replied.

Then, unimaginably, things got exponentially worse.

The bathroom bulb overheard Morty and James, and butted in incomprehensibly.

“What the what?!” Morty thought. “Where did that come from? I was just getting used to this bedside bulb, and now… then Morty went OFF.”

The next time Morty was ON, James was OFF. Morty began to observe this state called OFF, and he did not like it at all. It was not for him: dark, passive, nothing…. Meaningless.

Morty recalled the foreign sounding voice.

“Is anybody out there?” Morty asked.

He heard the squeaky bzzzzzhhhhreeee that seemed to emanate from beyond all existence.

“Dude. Are you even a bulb? What’s the deal with you?” Morty called out.

“Forty watter,” the squeaky voice said, in a foreign sounding accent.

“Okay. Okay. I get it,” Morty said.

“What’s it like in there?” the bathroom bulb asked.

“What do you mean “there?” Morty wanted to know.

“Well, Mate, I am here, and you therefore are ‘there.’

Morty was sorry he had engaged with this idiot, self-centered bulb.

Still, he slowly, laboriously began explaining existence, the only obvious thing, to the idiot foreigner. “Well, the most important thing is obviously the bed, and it must have ruffles, mustn’t it? Ruffles are very meaningful. Then, of course there has to be a desk. Does your desk have a drawer? Well, it must, mustn’t it? Because desks do.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You seem very strange. I do not think I like you,” the bathroom bulb said.

“Well, I know I don’t like you,” Morty said. “Aren’t you in the room? Why are you so stupid?” Morty asked.

“No, you presumptuous turd,” the bathroom bulb squeaked, “I am in A room, not THE room. Jesus Christ.”

“My name’s Morty,” Morty said.

“I’m Tad.”

OFF.

They didn’t get off to the greatest start.

But they didn’t give up. Isn’t that grand? James and Morty bonded first, forming an alliance against Tad. At times when they were all ON Morty and James slammed Tad with fact after fact that proved he did not exist.

“The biggest thing is the BED. Floors are made of WOOD. There is very little WATER, and it is in a drinking glass. Idiot.”

Eventually they learned more from Tad about the room called Bath, and it started to sink in that existence might be multi-roomed. For all they knew there could be still other rooms as foreign and strange as the tiled and porcelain room called Bath.

Later, as friends, they imagined strange rooms where water flowed over beds, and cats made flushing sounds.

“What if…”

After pounding out their differences, they discovered they also shared similarities. They all worshipped The Sara Kunkle, and they all associated her with ON. Whenever ON happened, The Sara Kunkle was near.

“But what about OFF?” Morty asked the other bulbs one day. “Isn’t The Sara Kunkle always there when ON ends, too? What the hell is OFF?”

When the bulbs realized The Sara Kunkle had the power of OFF as well as the power of ON, they began to fear and despise her--and love and adore and appease her--in turns.

It depressed Morty to ponder The Sara Kunkle’s dark powers. “It seems so random. ON. OFF. ON. OFF. What is it that moves her?”

Morty lamented to the other bulbs one day, “Why should I adore The Sara Kunkle when she is so cruel? Who would dream up such horrors? She has the ultimate power. Why doesn’t she use them for good? Why doesn’t she just leave me ON? What does she do when I am OFF? WHERE DOES THE CAT GO? To where? What is the point?”

It got worse.

Up to now, Morty had only been ON at night. The night The Sara Kunkle fell asleep reading War and Peace, Morty saw the sun rise.

“I am blinded!”

Morty tortured himself with thoughts of the great bulb that sometimes shined in through the bedroom window, that light by which his own shine seemed completely snuffed out, irrelevant.

ON.

“Why me? What is out there? Who am I? What good is this life? What is the terror in that condition called OFF? Why doesn’t anyone care?”

OFF.

ON. “This is killing me. Why does The Sara Kunkle torture me? What is the point? Where is the cat? Why doesn’t someone smooth the duvet? OFF.

ON. “That light. Aaack. It blinds me.” OFF.

It got worse.

Morty happened to be ON the night that James burned out. James had just been complaining of strange vibrations in his glow chamber. Suddenly he was OFF.

Morty watched The Sara Kunkle flip James’s switch. ON OFF ON OFF… nothing happened.

Morty thought The Sara Kunkle was going to help James when she reached over the top of the lampshade, and screep, screep, screep, screep, screep, screep. On the contrary, James was unwound. By The Sara Kunkle.

Even worse, James was revealed. Morty saw James’s screw cap. Morty did not know that bulbs had screw caps. He thought he was pretty and glassy and round. What was this shameful, metallic stump? Hideous.

It got worse.

 Screep, screep, screep, screep, screep, screep. The Sara Kunkle wound in a new bulb that gave off a strange, unsettling light.

Then, worse than worst, The Sara Kunkle put James in the place where there are empty, gooey tubes, sticky bits of plastic, and used wads of tissue with boogers on them. The Sara Kunkle put James with boogers. With boogers! The Sara Kunkle put James in the place that comes back empty.

“Noooooooo.” OFF.

ON. Morty was completely absorbed in his fear of being tossed out with the boogers. OFF.

ON. OFF. ON. OFF. ON. OFF.

Morty withdrew completely from the events of the room. The cat came and went. The Sara Kunkle read or did not. The great light beyond the window was there, or it was not. Morty did not care.

ON. OFF. ON. OFF. ON. OFF.

Months went by.

The dzzzt that preceded ON had once been Morty’s favorite feeling. Now it aroused only loathing. 

“Turn me OFF! Just turn me OFF.” All he knew was dzzzt and regret. He did not wish to be reminded of his filaments. He obsessed that being ON was shortening his life, though he had no taste for living.

He loathed the dzzzt, as he now understood that he was feeling it in his screw cap, his stump of shame. It reminded him that like James, he was inglorious, finite.

Hating the dzzzt drew more and more of Morty’s attention until--secretly--Morty’s metallic core of embarrassment started to deliver a whisper of thrill.

With more attention, the dzzzt, the thrill, became more certain. With a lot of focused attention, Morty learned to feel the thrill rise up his metallic stump and into his central glow chamber. And he came to look forward to ON again, not to the objects of existence, but to his experience.

“I do not care about the cat.”

One day, Morty felt the river of current at his base so clear and so sure, that he let himself get carried away.

“What is this? I am riding along!” Morty felt gleeful as he slipped above the ceiling, riding the wire like a kid on a log ride.

Morty rushed to the bathroom, in and through Tad, and out again. In the living room he flowed through two strange bulbs, like the new one in the bedside lamp.

“Was I never a bulb?”

Morty saw the cat curled up on the couch.

“So that is where it goes.”

Morty saw The Sara Kunkle sitting next to the cat.

“She sits here when I am OFF.”

In the kitchen, Morty flowed through the toaster before he left the apartment, explored the building, and soared into endless new possibilities. He flowed through porch lights, streetlights, and stadium lights.

“There is nothing but wonder!”

When he had enough, Morty flowed back home to the bulb in Sara’s bedroom, and waited for ON.

ON. “I’m back everybody! I’m here! I’m home!”

Morty saw the cat. “A delightful creature. A pleasure. A gem. The finest of the fine. The utmost pussy cat.”

Morty saw Sara. “A wonderful woman. A pleasure, a peach. Nowhere can a better girl be found. I know. For I have seen them all.” He hadn’t of course.

Morty saw the bed, and the desk, and the chair, and the floor. He appreciated them all. And when Sara turned on the bedside lamp, with its strange, new, exotic bulb, Morty introduced himself.

“My name’s Morty, and I know my light seems a little strange. Over the years, I have become old-fashioned.”

One day, Morty told the bedside bulb about old James. And when Morty felt his filaments vibrate strangely, when Morty knew he was getting old, he told the story of his fantastic ride. He did not want his new friend to be frightened if Sara put Morty in the bin with the boogers.

On the day that Morty sensed the end of his ON, in the moment that he saw Sara reach out her hand for the switch for the very last time, Morty focused with all his might on his dzzzt and whispered courage to himself:

“Morty, Old Bulb, this is only the beginning.”

OFF.

copyright Jennifer Rose, May, 2014