quiet storm

I have what is often referred to as a morbid curiosity. It is that twisted part of myself that inspired me to take the long way home on this past Saturday afternoon. A full figured plume of smoke in the sky beckoned me forward, like a kid intrigued by ant hill carnage. As the iPod shuffled through it's requisite music history lesson, I voyaged turn after turn until I found myself on a familiar roadway witnessing what appeared to be a controlled burn in the local prairie.

I snapped a few pictures and went on my way, determined to expound upon my thoughts on fire as a powerful metaphor to our everyday realities. Fire, is after all a lover of passion and the reason for most one night stands. I have sat beside many a roaring campfire, stoked by its glow and brought to meandering contemplation due to it's seeming understanding of my fiery soul. I think of the healing nature of fire, as it burns away what is no longer necessary, even when we're merely speaking of the aged gristle on an outdoor grill. A theoretical controlled burn can keep us moving forward in our journeys in a continued positive direction, if we let it, whether this might mean burning down those structures in our life that no longer have meaning or letting those hurts scarify us as lightweight reminders of where we've been.

But the story seems not to end there. From every effect we can garner a resulting chain of events that helped shape it. Somewhere between that afternoon and nightfall, weather conditions and possible human failure would ultimately allow for the horrific, so-dubbed apocalyptic accident on nearby interstate 75.

Everything has it's consequences. Most of these we can never predict.

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