We sit safely to the side and simply watch it flicker and paw at the sky, never quite reaching (the poor thing). We’ve tamed it, made it our own, and like all ensnared phenomena its importance has subsided. We make fire in our kitchens, in our hands, breathe it from our mouths, and some even claim to make fire in the bedroom (though I suspect that last one is simply taking the name of fire in vain).
But even now there’s something to be said for the primal urgency of fire. It may come to you as you sit by friends and lovers, trading stories and longing gazes with those who sit across the flame. You should know that tensions tend to break in those moments of brightly lit consternation and the longing gazes that are kept in check become all too obvious when brought before the blistering heat. They are exposed for what they are and though the two of you may pretend to hide, your cover has burned away.
It may come to you in naked dance around a pyre reaching high above a dark horizon, legs flailing and arms windmilling awkwardly around and around, singing to mother moon or father wolf or whomever you feel is most worthy of your prayers. There are no secrets between you and the fire. The sweat and hair upon your body glistens, shone brightly by the light of both the moon above and the great flame you have conjured. The sweat, the hair, the smell of wood and fire and skin all twirl around the heated cauldron of the flame, and in those moments there is only freedom and allure the likes of which are lost when sitting beneath electricity’s illuminated wonder.
Sometimes, sadly, it comes as the forked tongues engulf heart and home and if you’re lucky its smoke will have choked you dead before the flame itself consumes you. There is no fighting what cannot be stopped and only when its hunger is sated will it cease. At its most transcendent you feel the flame consume the body of the dearly beloved whose passage to the next life could receive no better a boost than from that which the all-consuming flame provides, transforming all that we finitely are into so little ash and crusty bone.
And imagine what it must have been like, one thousand, five thousand, ten thousand years ago, as men and women of all ages sat by that fire beneath the spotted pitch of an ancient sky that is really nothing more than the result of the greatest explosion of them all.