In our home we have an unofficial, undignified, and usually haphazardly unannounced tradition: the annual blazing glory. Which is to say, we gather all the dead shrubbery and vegetation in our lawn to create a controlled fire in our quaint (read: massive monstrosity of a) garden. They’re pulled, chopped, and tossed onto the dirt to dry for a week, after which we light it up and become heathens for an hour while we madly dance around the inferno.
And by madly dance I mean my mother sits off to the side in her lawn chair and drinks coffee while the rest of us frantically grab hoses and shovels. Good times.
Somewhere in the back of our minds we realize the plume of white smoke rising up from our backyard could cause a neighbor to mistake it for a house fire and call the fire department. While this would be slightly embarrassing, and probably costly, we continue our fire dance in hopes of a better year, that the ashes of today will seep into the soil and fertilize the cherry tomatoes of tomorrow. And strawberries. And lettuce. And green onions. And… you get the picture. I’m sure this could be used very easily in an analogy about life and rebirth and growth and such. Maybe bring in some yin yang terminology about life balancing destruction. Somewhere along the lines we could probably even add a picture of an awesome phoenix. Damn I love phoenixes. They’re so cool.
But honestly, this is just about gardening delicious fruits and veggies for below the market prices. And fire. Everyone loves fire. While “pyro” may be a negative term used for rambunctious youth and overly excitable adults, I believe all humans have a little pyro inside of them that adores watching flames. The fact that in this case the fire is helpful and negligently harmful adds to the greatness of it all. All families should bond over a fire dance at some point. It crackles and dances and taunts you with light and a warm fuzzy feeling that spreads all the way to your toes and leaves you staring starry eyed at its dying embers. If fire could be made into drug form, it would be more addictive than meth. And from what the ads say that stuff has almost a 100% addiction rate. Why is there no market for packaged fire?
This has got to be one of the most off-track posts I’ve ever written.
Damn. So cool.
UPDATE: Never mind. There is a market, they’re called lighters and torches and matches. You’d think I would have realized that with my butane torch sitting on my desk waiting to be refilled. Alas, senility strikes early.
Dry Amusement 