BONFIRE OF THE DANITIES

You Can’t Fire Me. I AM Fire

Before phones, we stared at the flames in our hands

by author

I didn’t hurt animals, and I only wet a negligible number of beds. I had no time for more than that…

I was too busy making fire.

My first memory of fire involves my grandfather Edgar Babin.

We were watching the glass-faced stove one evening. He pointed at the flames and said, “Don’t they look like people dancing?”

As soon as he said it, the fire looked more like people dancing than it looked like fire.

If I ever dance, I thought, I will dance like that.

Since then, I have danced, and yes, it is like that. My body becomes a wiggling, flickering thing, lovely to the eye, dangerous to pants and other cloths. Because of the heat.

I talked to a fireman one time. I’m not bragging. I’m trying to tell you what he said:

He described fire like it was a living thing.

“It breathes oxygen. It needs to eat, or it will die. It grows.”

What’s it eat?

Lots of stuff. Houses.