Fire

Sunday, Oct. 27, 2002 -
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

Fall has finally fallen. 'Tis chilly enough these latter evenings for a fire. This house has two fireplaces, one in the master bedroom, one in the rec room. And the studio has its own fireplace. Which remains cold as yet, since the Fiend comes into the house at nightfall, to sit before the common hearth and the glow of the TV. A few nights ago: the Fiend sits coiled at my feet, his cheek against my knee. Eventually he turns and gathers my feet into his lap, stripping them for a massage. Jer is curled on the couch beside me, his sleepy head on my thigh. The dark room is lit only by the TV and the fire. The Moondog stalks into the room, a wolf in the firelight, promptly transforming into a big puppy with big wet kisses for Jer and the Fiend. Luckily my face is out of range. On the box, AMC is featuring Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, a good movie, but also an old friend that doesn't require constant attention. We watch the fire more than the TV.

Why is a fire so mesmerizing? And how, in this era of action-packed digital spectacle, does it retain its magic? The wood has been drying for two rainless seasons, and burns hot and brilliant. When the bark is burning, the fire snaps, crackles, and pops like the Rice Krispies trio on speed. But surely it can't be the special effects, which date back to the Stone Age, that keep us entertained. Maybe it's because the magic that enthralls us is real magic. No sleight of hand, no illusions, no clairvoyant hocus pocus, no ecclesiastical mumbo-jumbo. We are witnessing true transubstantiation. Before our eyes, crude matter transmutes into radiant light, into ethereal smoke, into the invisible force of heat, into silver drifts of downy ash, into the fulgent gold of ephemeral coals. We are watching a little piece of the dismantlement of the world, which is fated to be consumed by fire, and scattered as atomized ash in the long night between the stars. We are as human as Lot's wife--how can we not watch?

Our fires have been built from the wood of an Italian stone pine that fell last spring, a tree planted by my grandmother. A tree that began life as a $3.99 table decoration. A gift from a neighbor. Florists and drug stores sell dozens of them every Christmas, their roots choked in plastic 8-inch pots wrapped in green or red foil. My grandmother untangled the knotted roots and planted the puny thing, and it survived scrawnily for a few years until its roots broke through the hardpan. Then the tree surged into a life of vigor and splendor, becoming a stately mass of thick, red-barked branches and deep green shade, overawing every living thing within the sprawl of its forty-foot radius. But I guess it had too wide of a sprawl--it tore itself in half from the weight of its own branches.

Last night, along with our fire, we watched the sixth game of the World Series. Baseball is many things that are hallowed and harmonious and picturesque, but action-packed it is not. That's not to say it's not exciting. But any sport is exciting if you're invested in one of the teams. The three of us, Jer, the Fiend and I, are not avid for either side, but I suppose Anaheim is more of a home team than San Francisco. (During the last All-Californian Series, infamous for being interrupted by an earthquake, I was rooting for the Oakland A's.) Last night we were Angel fans. Or at least we were rooting for the seventh game. Trailing 0-5, we were ready to resign our hopes, until the bottom of the seventh. Then whoosh! Thrill City. The Rally Monkey lived up to his rep.

(Since I have never been a big fan of monkeys--really, as a genus, they're almost as obnoxious as humans--it's apparent that I can never become a diehard fan of the Angels. Nevertheless, less than a minute after the game finished, I called my brother, who's a diehard Giants fan; I could not resist the opportunity to open the conversation with a chant of "Neener, neener, neener." My bro was in San Diego yesterday, and is somewhere in Mexico today. I don't know where he's going, but I know he had to wait for Hurricane Kenna to spend itself into small change. I have a phone number in Mexico City that will get a message to him, which is more than I've had on other occasions when he has departed for parts unknown. And I know he'll be where he can watch the game tonight, because he promised to call me afterwards. It ain't much, but it's something.)

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Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

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