Fire Again

I've been in a kind of limbo for the past several months, having moved from boring mind-numbing work -- which only became b. and mn. after I lost interest in it -- to retirement and the idea that I will finally do what I want to do, or at least less of what I don't want to do. Except that now that I am on the greener side of the fence I find myself wondering exactly what it is I want to do. And I feel time slipping by as I start and stop and look around.

One thing I do want to do is build fires (in the fireplace, no pyro stuff) and so I decided to just go with that. And I've gotten pretty good at it, and have spent a lot of time watching the flames, poking the logs, building it just so, figuring out the layout, learning that a bed of ash is good, and that poking a fire really does stir it up. And how some wood is better than other, and all of that. Listening to the pop and crackle, watching my lovebird buddy sit by the fire warming himself. The smell of burning wood, all of that, and have given up trying to resist it or to make rational sense of what must be a primal desire coupled with ample opportunity -- I have a nice fireplace, access to wood, and time to do this. Trying to feed my archetypal self, I presume.

One thing I have realized lately. I sometimes spend quite a bit of time poking, prodding, feeding, re-feeding, the fire until it reaches what one of my professors used to call "Critical Mass," which I also think is called "flashover," the point at which the fire gets hot enough and strong enough that it burns on its own, flaming for a long time, then simmering in embers, until it's almost all reduced to ash.

That makes a good fire.

And -- metaphor here -- I begin to think that's what I am working on. Building myself up to a critical mass, at which i won't have to keep wondering and speculating and pushing and prodding myself, a point at which the life-force (which I know is still alive in me ) will take on a life of its own, or, rather, that my life will burst into fire and carry my along to whatever it is I am seeking.

That would make a good life.