Bonfire

Thoughts are ghostly things until they get spoken. Ghostly energies. Fueled by what? Desire. Displeasure. Rage or laughter. The need to counsel. Give advice. See this? This is earth. That big round beautiful ball of marbled blue and white it’s where we live, it’s what gave us life. And it’s going. Which is to say we’re going. It’s not going. It will continue to go. Continue to spin. Continue to orbit. Spit fire and lava. Twinkle its little light back at the stars. Bothersome, finding words to burn and heat the air and put light in somebody’s head, enough light to create a motion, a movement, action. It’s that feeling of empowerment that language brings. That towering figure of Prospero on a cliff by the sea watching the storm he created. Which results in a series of moral actions. And which turns out to be a hilarious fantasy. The vanity of language is also a shelter. A refuge for when the void becomes a little too visible, a little too lucid, clara como el tequila. The inutility of it has a certain attraction. Like Meret Oppenheim’s fur teacup. The perfect foil. The moment the glory of someone’s rhetoric has lifted you into the sky you realize it’s useless. The ghostliness of thoughts become the splendor of unrealities. Metaphors. Spaceship earth. A soup of antonyms. Cynicism & faith. Certainty & doubt. Absurdity & reason. Speech & silence.

Next time I write something I’ll begin with a good idea and then blow it up with a stick of language. Then when the words come falling down they’ll make a new sentence with the same idea. But would it be the same idea? Wouldn’t be an entirely different idea? What am I thinking. When the words come toppling down they’ll break into smaller chunks of idea. When ideas break apart they create other ideas. And when the ideas are arranged in neat rows on top of one another they become walls. And these walls are called dogma. And if a succession of walls are joined and create cells this is called prison. For which there are guards and exercise yards. Though some might call it grammar. And some might call it a song. For which there are melodies and vibrations and large emotions which morph into flags and speeches. And the speeches are sometimes luminous and long and sometimes sticks of language become a bonfire. The darkness is pushed back and the riot of the ocean blends with the voice of someone singing. 

What is it about a big fire on a beach that makes people so convivial and happy? It can get cold on a beach at night and the fire is hot to warm depending on where you stand. And let’s say you’ve got a bottle of beer in your hand. And friends surrounding you and the fire. And the ocean laughing softly every time it curls up and crashes down on the sand and flows up and comes to a slow hesitant stop then recedes in a long seductive whisper. You an hear the mingling of water and sand and the tiny granules rubbing together giving the ocean’s receding whisper a certain sparkle. And it feels pagan. The air is electric with it, and blue and gold. Pagan rites are romantic because they’re elemental and enacted in the world of nature before they get snatched by a religion and given mannerisms and tones that obscure the bright metals and fires beneath. Somewhere between the lacquered pews of a church or the mosaic patterns of a mosque or the raked sand of a Zen monastery is the immediacy of experience laced with invitations of incense. But none of it glorious as a bonfire on a beach at night spits hot to the skin & warm in the blood. 

That expression, “warms the cockles of the heart,” what is that? I always picture a heart encrusted in barnacles. Cockles makes me think of barnacles. The heart makes me think it’s a ship. It’s a full-rigged ship sailing emotionally, assuming emotion is an ocean, or oceans, emotions are oceans in which the heart pumps blood from the ballast and keeps moving ahead with a maiden at the bow. Those figureheads were put there not to entertain the sailors but to coax the favor of the sea gods, pleased to gaze upward from their lair in the deep to see a big-bosomed female looming overhead. And they were heavy, superfluous pounds of oak or elm. Cockles are mollusks with ribbed shells. It’s a matter of etymological confusion: cochleae cordis means ventricles of the heart in Latin. Cochleae morphed into cockle. And thereby lies a clam.