A Day of Recovery and Requiem for a Fire.
It's the end of the weekend after a ten day work week. Yesterday was tiring but fun -- sending out Christmas cards before going gaming for the evening. Today was laundry followed by dinner at Ricci. The Holidays are quickly approaching, and I'm already tired of Christmas carols. Top it all off with a cold, dark night. There was only one solution. The Bruins, a Fireplace, and H.P.Lovecraft.
Turn down the lights, pop on the Bruins game, and fire up the fireplace. Now, inside the 128 belt, wood is scarce, but junk mail isn't. So we like to keep the fires burning with mounds of Christmas catalog(ue)s, Boston Globes, and credit card offers. It's easier than figuring out which alternate Thursday is recycling day.
The B's won, defeating the hated Maple Leafs and their traitorous Hal Gill in a very fiercely fought game. Alex Auld won his first game as a Bruins goalie making several awesome saves to maintain a 2-1 game after going down early on a weak shot. Interestingly, he's won his first game in all four teams he has played for now. I can't even name all the other goalies the Bruins have used this season -- Manny Fernandez, injured. Tuuka Rask, still in and struggling, and a few others I think.
The game over, it was time for the real relaxing part of the night -- curled up on the hardwood floor, a few feet from the fireplace so that one side of me is scorching and the other is freezing (we keep the thermostat down pretty low) , curled up with a good book, reading by the flickering firelight. Just like when I was growing up in Chicopee (though we had wood back then, and not so much junk mail, and Shadow usually kept my back warm as well) or cold evenings in Cohassett, when I take fireplace duty, watching the roaring bonfire in the 10' hearth burn down to embers as the building creaks with each onshore breeze.
There is nothing like the feeling of a fireplace. From a cold, grey, heartless space, the remains of a once great tree are carefully placed, and ever so slowly the light and energy form a single match spreads through the paper, then crackling kindling curls and smokes as it lights like wooden matches. The real wood then begins to steam, and maybe singe before rough edges blacken and burst into tiny teeth of fire. The smell of smoke slips into the room, with the first hints of warmth. This is that true test of a fire, that moment where the wood will catch or smoulder away. Was the fire built well enough to enocurage the flame long enough to drag the oils out of the hardwood, or is the wood too wet to sustain the meager fire?
It catches! And soon it spreads across the logs and the flicker of hope quickly becomes a blaze, at once life giving and destructive. Soon, it is difficult to see the actual logs -- hidden in a sheath of undulating orange, yellow, and red flames hovering over the wood, not always touching, but ever consuming. The entire room changes as the light from the fire casts its quavering, ruddy glow, creating new shadows, tinting everything and sucking air along the floor to feed its hunger. The wood, tan and brown, turns black as soot builds up, then that luminous red that only wood and superheated metal can reach, the colors themselves dancing along the wood as the intensity of the fire and the air fuelling it shifts. Pockets of air and water deep within expand and force their wa out, popping audibly while sending out a shower of short-lived natural fireworks and a geyser of colored flame.
Toss in a few handfuls of crumpled newspaper and everything shifts -- a few seconds of darkness as the flames are blocked from view, followed by a bit of steam rising from what was something very dry, then a sudden burst of light and heat as the entire hearth is filled with bright yellow flames shot with greens, blues, or purples from the colored inks. The room is bathed in daylight for a few seconds before the paper is consumed and you are left with a crumpled, crumbling mass of black sheets with red lines of fire running about the edges. A strong fire creates enough draft that the light paper is carried into the flue, still glowing. And after all the sound and fury, the fire below remains untouched and unhindered by such a fleeting event.
But everything must end at some point. Without more wood, or paper, or love, the fire slowly consumes what it can reach. As the logs are eaten away --their very solidity transformed into heat, light, and steam -- they shrink, shiver, and settle into new positions. Each tremor reveals more fuel to the hungry flames, and a new burst of light and heat claims its moment. Enough wood is consumed eventually that the log can no longer support its overhanging end, and the log splits in two without warning. A shower of ash burst from the fallen wood, and the entire fire rearranges itself, its dynamic nature unhindered.
Slowly, even the fire itself must fade into nothing, just as the wood slowly crumbles into nothing. Logs, once looking like a hellish, living black-streaked red granite slowly cool and fade to more black than red. What was once a continuous caophony of pops and creaks of escaping steam and gas becomes more noticeable as the eruptions from within become less and less frequent. Flames separate and shrink, seemingly folding within themelves, as the dance of the flickering spirits on the walls fade to nothing. The room darkens, as does the energy and heat from the hearth. The last tongue of flame fades away, the log is already mostly black, but the embers beneath the grate still glow bright red, insulating themselves from the cold as they slowly consume what little fuel is left in the ashes. The angry red darkens and fades, changing too naturally to pure black. As the log cools, the faintest echos of snapping in the interior, a sound like the breaking of glass muffled through cloth, can be heard as the shrinking log finds new stresses placed upon it. Then any light, any hope of a new flame struggling out of the once roaring fire ceases. The fire is out. What was black slowly turns grey, coating the walls of the hearth, the logs, the grate, and an inch of fine grey snow beneath. Only this ash and a slowly cooling hearth remain to prove a fire was ever built and enjoyed. It's quickly getitng cool, and it's already dark. The damper is closed, sending a final shower of soot into the ashes, the doors closed, the book and wine put away for another night, and the thoughtful, slightly awed keeper of the flames begins his pensive plodding to bed...
I've done much research on the matter, and I must say that the best authors for reading by firelight are the two most obvious -- Poe and Lovecraft. This evening, I revisited HPL's The Witch House and found it quite an enjoyable read again. It and finding the site www.arkhamist.com has brought a familiar and not easily resisted longing to me again...
Turn down the lights, pop on the Bruins game, and fire up the fireplace. Now, inside the 128 belt, wood is scarce, but junk mail isn't. So we like to keep the fires burning with mounds of Christmas catalog(ue)s, Boston Globes, and credit card offers. It's easier than figuring out which alternate Thursday is recycling day.
The B's won, defeating the hated Maple Leafs and their traitorous Hal Gill in a very fiercely fought game. Alex Auld won his first game as a Bruins goalie making several awesome saves to maintain a 2-1 game after going down early on a weak shot. Interestingly, he's won his first game in all four teams he has played for now. I can't even name all the other goalies the Bruins have used this season -- Manny Fernandez, injured. Tuuka Rask, still in and struggling, and a few others I think.
The game over, it was time for the real relaxing part of the night -- curled up on the hardwood floor, a few feet from the fireplace so that one side of me is scorching and the other is freezing (we keep the thermostat down pretty low) , curled up with a good book, reading by the flickering firelight. Just like when I was growing up in Chicopee (though we had wood back then, and not so much junk mail, and Shadow usually kept my back warm as well) or cold evenings in Cohassett, when I take fireplace duty, watching the roaring bonfire in the 10' hearth burn down to embers as the building creaks with each onshore breeze.
There is nothing like the feeling of a fireplace. From a cold, grey, heartless space, the remains of a once great tree are carefully placed, and ever so slowly the light and energy form a single match spreads through the paper, then crackling kindling curls and smokes as it lights like wooden matches. The real wood then begins to steam, and maybe singe before rough edges blacken and burst into tiny teeth of fire. The smell of smoke slips into the room, with the first hints of warmth. This is that true test of a fire, that moment where the wood will catch or smoulder away. Was the fire built well enough to enocurage the flame long enough to drag the oils out of the hardwood, or is the wood too wet to sustain the meager fire?
It catches! And soon it spreads across the logs and the flicker of hope quickly becomes a blaze, at once life giving and destructive. Soon, it is difficult to see the actual logs -- hidden in a sheath of undulating orange, yellow, and red flames hovering over the wood, not always touching, but ever consuming. The entire room changes as the light from the fire casts its quavering, ruddy glow, creating new shadows, tinting everything and sucking air along the floor to feed its hunger. The wood, tan and brown, turns black as soot builds up, then that luminous red that only wood and superheated metal can reach, the colors themselves dancing along the wood as the intensity of the fire and the air fuelling it shifts. Pockets of air and water deep within expand and force their wa out, popping audibly while sending out a shower of short-lived natural fireworks and a geyser of colored flame.
Toss in a few handfuls of crumpled newspaper and everything shifts -- a few seconds of darkness as the flames are blocked from view, followed by a bit of steam rising from what was something very dry, then a sudden burst of light and heat as the entire hearth is filled with bright yellow flames shot with greens, blues, or purples from the colored inks. The room is bathed in daylight for a few seconds before the paper is consumed and you are left with a crumpled, crumbling mass of black sheets with red lines of fire running about the edges. A strong fire creates enough draft that the light paper is carried into the flue, still glowing. And after all the sound and fury, the fire below remains untouched and unhindered by such a fleeting event.
But everything must end at some point. Without more wood, or paper, or love, the fire slowly consumes what it can reach. As the logs are eaten away --their very solidity transformed into heat, light, and steam -- they shrink, shiver, and settle into new positions. Each tremor reveals more fuel to the hungry flames, and a new burst of light and heat claims its moment. Enough wood is consumed eventually that the log can no longer support its overhanging end, and the log splits in two without warning. A shower of ash burst from the fallen wood, and the entire fire rearranges itself, its dynamic nature unhindered.
Slowly, even the fire itself must fade into nothing, just as the wood slowly crumbles into nothing. Logs, once looking like a hellish, living black-streaked red granite slowly cool and fade to more black than red. What was once a continuous caophony of pops and creaks of escaping steam and gas becomes more noticeable as the eruptions from within become less and less frequent. Flames separate and shrink, seemingly folding within themelves, as the dance of the flickering spirits on the walls fade to nothing. The room darkens, as does the energy and heat from the hearth. The last tongue of flame fades away, the log is already mostly black, but the embers beneath the grate still glow bright red, insulating themselves from the cold as they slowly consume what little fuel is left in the ashes. The angry red darkens and fades, changing too naturally to pure black. As the log cools, the faintest echos of snapping in the interior, a sound like the breaking of glass muffled through cloth, can be heard as the shrinking log finds new stresses placed upon it. Then any light, any hope of a new flame struggling out of the once roaring fire ceases. The fire is out. What was black slowly turns grey, coating the walls of the hearth, the logs, the grate, and an inch of fine grey snow beneath. Only this ash and a slowly cooling hearth remain to prove a fire was ever built and enjoyed. It's quickly getitng cool, and it's already dark. The damper is closed, sending a final shower of soot into the ashes, the doors closed, the book and wine put away for another night, and the thoughtful, slightly awed keeper of the flames begins his pensive plodding to bed...
I've done much research on the matter, and I must say that the best authors for reading by firelight are the two most obvious -- Poe and Lovecraft. This evening, I revisited HPL's The Witch House and found it quite an enjoyable read again. It and finding the site www.arkhamist.com has brought a familiar and not easily resisted longing to me again...