In this, the modern age, nobody seems to quite understand the gravity connoted by a reference to fire-- when someone says that they "burn" for someone, when they note that the [pyrrhic] acid running through their muscles seems like a flame, it comes across as pretense. This is so because, over time, we as people distanced ourselves from the traditionally dangerous savior. We've traded in our bonfires for gas lamps and our gas lamps for incandescent light bulbs-- we've even replaced these with colder fixtures, fluorescents and LED banks. Fear has pushed them away from the genuine article. I don't want to fall into that trap, so understand that when I make a comparison to fire, I mean it to carry the full weight of a blaze. I want you to see the mystified autumn colors and I want the heat pulsing off of it to be unignorable. I want you to feel like stepping back a few feet. I want you to close your eyes to keep them from watering.
With discomfort and awe conveyed, I'll get onto the subject on which those qualities are projected. I am, in many ways, a firebird (phoenix or what have you). I am not something mythic and glorious. I don't have stories or a ballet set to my name. However, my life consists of constant, perhaps cyclical, rebirths. Over and over again I have, midflight, begun to spiral down. Sometimes it is predictable, a matter of time, like the observation of a religious holiday or the onset of an exam. Sometimes it is unpredictable, a change in the winds that once held me aloft, a shift in perspective triggered by an unforeseen factor. I have fallen.
The bottom is rarely a loud crash or explosion of sudden impact, but rather a settling into nothingness-- like feathers finding their way to the ground on their air-cushioned slow motion paths. And there I am now, after the strike, smoldering very, very lightly. It's not terrible, but it's certainly a little uncomfortable, like your only blanket being a little too thick on a stuffy night. It's not what I'm concerned with. The way I see it, this is the way it goes:
I smolder, less a substance than a quality, on the ground-- I lie there with as much potential as is left from my previous iteration. I am an opportunistic set of ashes, awaiting the proper presence's entrance into my sphere of influence. It doesn't have to be a girl, it doesn't have to be a humongous prospect, it just has to be there and it has to interest me and pull me towards it just a little. Then, something happens. It's hard to put it past something, but that substance added to my potential, that form beyond my almost-self, ignites and erupts into a sudden and terrible blaze, and from the combination of the two my existentially impassioned, believing, ideal-driven persona is forged.
I know it sounds lovely, but I fear it. Maybe I don't quite fear the process which engenders what I consider my truer self, but I am wary of the entire cycle in which the process is involved. I don't know what I really want (or I'm afraid of letting myself know because I'm scared of the act of attempting to catch it). Simply put, right now, my greatest apprehension in regards to my tomorrow is the fire. To build again upon the rubble of my tallest towers and place myself atop such a great height is a herculean task, one taking resilience and strength. Like handling the fire our ancestors once did, it involves things to be considered both wonderful and terrible. To get caught up once more is the only thing I desire, but at the same time, I can't stand still in the shadow of its possibility. And though I believe that everyone understands to some extent this phenomenon of rising once more, aching, in the morning, it seems like I'm the only one who is feeling it as thoroughly as I am. In the same way that modern man has forsaken his fire for safer emulations of its sought-after benefits, he has shielded himself from really playing out his life with his heart at stake. I am one of those who choose the mysterious antiquity of unrememberable recollection. So for me, I choose-- or perhaps have been chosen by fire, and truly, honestly, with no pretense or overstatement, from fire I come. Maybe acknowledging that forces me to accept the next step in all this: the growth into that shining creature I must be, being born once more. I await my catalyst. (I pray it will come soon).
