The Screen Phenomenon

So I am in a Dune Shack in the Province Lands here at the End of the Cape. And I am having a bit of battle, no that's too strong a word..push me/pull you...no electricity, yup, that's what we came for....yet the writing current has caught me and after months of fishing for the myriad trains of thought, I am finally pulling up fish after fish of image, word, whole paragraphs appearing before me. And urgent creature I am, I fear MY COMPUTER BATTERY will run out..which it will actually. So I am being parsimonious with how long the screen, that magic immediacy of now you think the word..aha here it is (which my creative mind now is entrained to desire)...is on.

Because I am relative, having earned it rightfully so by age, latecomer to the digital realm, I still remember the "screenless" life. TV did not come into my house until I was eleven; it had barely been invented. My parents, being wise in this at least, put limits on it; even so, I found its mythic flickering of story more safe than my family's drama. But I was also a child of nature; in this, I received that gift coming in.

So i grew up, lying on my back in the summer fields of the mid west, watching the slow, steady move of clouds. When it was all too much and it was for me much of the time, I had the great screen of the sky. Very stilling, very patient this sky screen and it was always there. That constancy was part of its healing counterpoint to never-knowing-what-I-would-get-when-I-walked-thru-the-door energy of my earlist life.

Then there was the ocean...another screen of shifting light, shadow, tide, contour, wave, froth, plume and crest. Oh how I delighted in that, never tiring to be near it, in it, playing by it. I made my mother's mornings miserable in the summer when we went, as we always did, to Rhode Island, cajoling and badgering her with desparate insistence to "get to the beach". But being an adult, getting out the house presented her with conflict...a phenomeon I now understand, being her daughter after all.

Now sitting in this little shack which is buffeted about with the sound screen of the wind as the dusk is settling into its night's nest, I am so happy for the sky and the ocean and oh by the way, did i mention, the constant dance of flame in the wood stove, another entrancing "screen". Yet as dark as it is becoming, I am frantically in front of my computer screen attempting to get this all down!

The Economy of Fire

Gaze into the fire. Observe the tongues of flame as they do their kinetic dance, moving according to some pattern of transmutation. It is natural what they do; the fire just moves and its energy is graceful, engaging...it calls us into its presence. We become quiet, that is to say, our mind quiets..our bodies, often around a fire, might just as naturally seek to move, inspired by the fire's movement.

This play of both movement and stillness is what we love about fire, why we generally just feel good in its presence...what is sometimes called " the wilderness TV" effect...the fire's rhythm and movement enables us to relax...as "something else" holds the mind's ceaseless talk, focuses it on this natural "screen".

Have you observed this experience when people are around fire together? No one feels the pressure to speak, motivated by the unconscious need to fill the social space, make small talk, as we say. If someone is quiet, we can see her across the fire and know they are with themselves and that's fine. The fire is holding the energy so we are free to engage or not....so too, the interactions between us then are more natural, more present, more honest, more spontaneous.

Consider that for most of human history before our relatively young industrialized paradigm took hold, almost all human activity took place around a fire. It is the first and central locale of culture. It is the hearth, around which the family gathered for cooking, eating; the holy place where all ceremony was enacted; where council was held; the source of light and heat; the sacred and the profane meet in the fire.

Fire is the egoless performer; its allows for freedom of expression without compromise, that is what we seek in all our "performances". Being the both the literal and symbolic source of energy, our exchanges before fire become sacred. Music, food, dance, prayer, play, discernment, all are "down to the bone" before the fire.

Having a group conflict, needing to listen more deeply in a relationship, unsure where to move next in your life, wanting to have a great party, desiring to teach a child an important lesson, don't know what to cook for dinner, wanting to deepen your practice...go to the fire, use its authentic economy of eternal flame.