ambiance (n.): a surrounding or pervading atmosphere; environment; milieu

How does one go about lighting a room?  I’ve lived in this apartment for over two years and my bedroom is lit only by one profoundly crappy IKEA torchiere and two desk lamps, one on my desk, one on my nightstand, each of which currently holds a compact fluorescent bulb.  Combined with the fact that my window is at an oblique angle to a brick wall and only gets sun between 2:15 and 3:15PM every day, this gives my sleep-and-work space the feel of a debtor’s prison as metaphorically expressed in an artsy indie movie.

An added constraint to all this is that I have a tendency to stack piles of shit on top of all of my surfaces, precluding much in the way of table-based lamps.  Wall-mounted sconces are also out, considering I have the handyman abilities of an Ivy League-educated Jew.  (My one experiment with home repair involved replacing a door through which, in a pubescent fit of pique, I threw a three-pound pencil sharpener.  I used a flat-head screwdriver to gouge out mortises for the hinges, and when I screwed the thing into the jamb it sat comically, Pee-Wee’s-Playhousely crooked in the doorway.)

There is a ceiling lamp in my room, though it was a fairly depressing fixture when I got here, and has only become more so since the night I returned home at 3AM to discover that the frosted glass shade had, of its own accord, fallen and shattered into a kajillion pieces on the floor.  Furthermore, the bulb has since died and the (cheap) fixture doesn’t want to let go of it, so now it’s both exposed and non-functional.  (Yes, yes, that’s what she said.)

So what to do?  I’ve begun to consider the possibility of carrying a burning stick wherever I go, like a tribe of primitives who no longer know how to light a fire.  This would solve my lighting dilemma and also reduce my heating bills for this winter, but would force me to confront the unique problem of disposing of the ash heap in my Brooklyn apartment.  No matter — I’m sure there are grants available for this kind of thing.