watching fire
March 3rd, 2011
As of late, through our cold winter nights, I’ve taken to staring into the glow of a fire. Lights off, computer asleep, TV quieted, cell phone hidden away in another room – I let myself fall under the spell of her skirt-like flames licking, screaming, bending and percolating behind the glass of my wood burning stove. She rages. She stretches. When spent, she quietly recedes into the wood’s luminescent orange glow, until once again fed, or poked back to life. I poke her often. Sometimes, I keep the glass door opened to hear her crackle and hiss.
Fire hypnotizes. It soothes. It amazes. It frightens. It coaxes us into contemplation. As gazing into a star-clustered night fills our thoughts with wonderment about the vastness of space and time, fire hearkens us back to tribal memories: fire-dancing; ritual trances; fire-circles and storytelling; fire sticks and torches; stone lamps; shadows flickering ghost-like upon cave walls; shadowy figures huddled in its warmth against icy winds; howling, stalking predators kept at a distance – their instincts keeping them wary of a sting that never lets go.
By rough estimates, the controlled use of fire dates back half a million years. That’s 500,000 thousand years of coaxing itself into our genetic consciousness. (Some scant evidence suggests that our pre-human ancestors tamed it over a million years ago.) It protected us, calmed us, purified us, warmed us, lit our darkness, sanitized our food, lead us through the most hostile of environments. We danced with and around it. We sacrificed to it. We catch the sight of fire at the edge of our conscious awareness, we not only turn to look – we stare. Fire calls to something deep within our consciousness. We’re compelled to watch, and watch we will until its danger is right upon us.
Some nights I watch in spite of myself. Time ticks away outside of awareness. An hour passes. Maybe two. My thoughts both deepen and calm. Events from the day slip behind a veil I don’t even know exists. My list of “to do’s” recedes from anxious calling. All the mindless yapping and chatter of memory, want, request, duty and need fall away. I’m entranced and at peace – protected…warmed…inspired. Sometimes I dance before her – sensing ancestral ghosts circling with me. Sometimes the flames weave barely conscious images that send me cozily into sleep.
