Fireside

There’s a surprising amount in common with kindling this almost childishly obstinate fire next to me and trying to have a conversation with you. I can poke at the ashes all I want, pining for the heat the flames gave me mere minutes ago, but nothing budges; A Sysphean dilemma. When I become frustrated with the recurring chill, abandoning the idea of giving up once more, I rearrange the coals and wood and grab the lighter. This time, it would work. This time would be different because I’ve thoroughly thought through exactly where it is the fire will spread and what will catch more easily than what. I’m confident now. But the lighter breaks in my hands. I discard that and grab the box of matches. The first two I strike break in half.
Adults are wrong. They say that it’s an inadequate reason for inactivity when their kid responds “Because I don’t want to”, when, in reality, it is the most compelling reason in the world. If something truly, in its very being and essence, does not want to act, it won’t. That’s what I’ve come to understand. I’m not blaming you for the difficulties that continue to occur between us, I’m really not. This is where I’m going to blame the existential. The world forbids us like it forbids the possibility of a nearby conflagration. The last flame, now small as that on a birthday candle, is dwindling. The chapter, only just begun, is ended and the book must be shut.

But why, then, do I read the chapter over? Three words from it here and there, but not actually amounting to anything significant or very telling at all! Yet my eyes scan it over until I feel I’ve gleaned just one bit more from it than I did last time. Such musings are conducted in solitude.

I look to the full bottle of water to my right and visualize gripping the plastic with an unwarranted level of violence and dousing the remaining flickering light until nothing is left but damp coal and an empty sense of accomplishment. Instead I use a few drops to wash my hands of coal dust and turn back to my book. It's saying something about Amsterdam but I'm not focusing. 

Fairytale promises, with a bright, iron clang, march like a pervasive thread of ants in and around my brain, stitching ideas almost medically into the glistening flesh. Maybe it's more like lice, rather than ants, because the insectile eggs of false perception seem to be multiplying quickly and spreading like a fire across stubbornly arid grasslands. 

This is a selfish fire, though, giving no heat and keeping all merry crackling to itself. I hate this fire because it poses in a Vogue issue of truth, with long, toned legs and this season's most sought-after shape. I occasionally catch myself lustfully fantasizing about this fire and its oh-so-easy solutions to the complexities of life. By its reasoning, televisions, Gutenberg's printing press, and instant coffee were all built in the same day Rome was. Time becomes like the bellows of a frantically moving accordion and it kills the mind to even attempt to keep up with its machinations.

What more can we expect from a day's reverie? To begin with wondering why the room is so cold and to end with how fiction romanticizes life to the point of farce within the space of an hour is to be expected of an active, paranoid mind like mine. I think I'll plug in the electric heater.