The Flames of Life
It struck against the rough surface, and then suddenly in the darkness swallowing up my surroundings, my face lit up and started glowing. It seemed odd such a small match creating such light with merely a simple strike against a rough surface. I gazed at the small flames’ elegance for a minute while the air around it began to smell smoky and slightly warm. Then I tossed it into a set up of sticks and newspapers I had carefully arranged before. After tossing another in and coaxing the flames to flourish, I sat back down on a half log on the soft earth floor. I shivered in the cool, icy evening air of the late autumn, and rubbed my hands together in the warmth of the fire. My mind cleared of all thoughts as I sit almost in a trance staring into the elegant flames…of the red…the orange…and the blue. I lightly blew on the flames and they began to roar higher, whipping the air in anger. I took in a long breath of air…it was partially cold and partially warm from the fire, it was a strange feeling. My soul seemed to come alive as I sat in the light of the fire, beyond of which was a world of darkness. The fire reminded me of my soul…determined, full of life, and fierce; but once again as I sat I started thinking about life…how it’s so pointless, and I felt tears coming once again…but as I start to think harder, deeper into the true meaning of life it’s really these kind of moments that make it so much worth living. Being able to reflect on who you are as a person and the things that are really important to you. I felt good for once in my life. Instead of focusing on what’s wasteful in life I thought of what’s worthwhile, and of all the things I truly loved. As I gazed up at the stars I could feel my body becoming warm once again…not only from the fire but from my soul. The flames now grew taller and larger…as I watch them they seem to be reaching up to the sky, to the stars, to the heavens of mother earth. To me the fire seemed to symbolize life…it’s created, and it flourishes rising high into the air. It becomes beautiful with its many colours, as it swirls in the air reaching to the sky, cracking now and then symbolizing that not everything goes as it’s planed. Then, as elegantly as it was created, it shrinks down, back in to the red hot glowing embers in which it first began; and then slowly, its soft glow disappears into the darkness, making everything, once again, swallowed up in the darkness, leaving merely a pile of black ashes and the light smell of smoke in the air where it once flourished, whipping the air before me.
I lay still next to the burning fire staring into its deep mysterious flames. They seem to look like bright glowing waves of red stained water, beyond which is a black sheet, devouring up everything in existence leaving it in the loneliness of the dark. While the flames symbolize life…the dark symbolizes death. The two are so close in relation yet we never even realize it.

“Death is the only inescapable, unavoidable, sure thing. We are sentenced to die the day we’re born.” -Gary Mark Gilmore

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