Fire

[Van Canna]

Fire
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>She takes a deep breath only to find that she cannot breathe. The forces pressing down on her, even here are too great: too familiar, and too timeworn to be fought against.

Familiarity is what she hates more than anything. That is why she is here, alone except for the presence of the river and the trees about a mile from what she in the loosest sense of the word calls her "home"; she has walked here in the freezing, bone-numbing cold wearing a jacket she got at the Salvation Army a couple of years ago.


She has never been here before; she knew this place was here but has never seen it, has been saving it for a day she knew would come, a day just like today when she needs to see something that is not part of her everyday existence, the cold, hard, gloomy mess she lives in, the cloud cover that is her life.


Do you know what it feels like not to be beautiful, not even to be interesting at all? Do you know how it feels never to have had anybody love you, not even out of obligation, not even for a moment?

Do you know what it feels like never to have had any feeling you can remember but that of darkness and misery? You're thinking now, thinking of moods you've been in, of experiences you've been through, of how hard it all is. Your everyday struggles would mean nothing to her.

There is nothing that she can struggle against. She lives in a house, a two-story white desperately rundown house, with a "foster family" who neither needs nor wants her.

It is just a woman, a woman, and another girl; the girls refer to each other as "cousins," and she calls the woman her aunt, because neither of them is fake enough to consider this woman her mother. She does not have a mother, not one with a face and voice and personality, not one that is real.


She has nothing that is real.
To her, intelligent but seemingly apathetic, school is monotony: The same faces she has seen every day for the past twelve years, the same teachers who will never interest her, the same students who will never look at her. The same dead-end town in a dead-end world. She knows that people -- ordinary, everyday people with nice, warm lives to get them through the day and go home to at night -- would think she is repulsive, because of her lack of feeling.


She gives the impression of being cold. She is cold; she's freezing. Years and years and indeed a lifetime of being cold on the outside because of the ignorance of everything she has experienced and everyone she has met have simply turned her cold on the inside: if she weren't this way, she would not have survived.


But she is here now, and it's a struggle, but she finds that she can breathe at last -- cold, unfamiliar air -- she drinks it in with deep ragged breaths and feels it, a shock to her whole system.


She curls up at the foot of a big tree, crisp with leaves all around it, crinkly brown where once ordinary grass had grown. She feels the sun beating down on her, contradicting the fact that she is freezing, and relaxes completely.

Sitting on the gnarled roots of this big tree she clears her mind of all thought, jacket drawn comfortingly around her, safe in her own space in this unfamiliar world.
She had closed her eyes tight and when she opens them the sun and the warmth and the light are gone, and she is left with the chill and the stars and what she can only call the clearest night she has ever seen.


The cold goes right through her; it clears her, clears her of her plainness and anonymity, and restores what once might have been her to herself.

When she was very small she might have been happy. She has dim memories of it. She finds those coming back to her as she sits, feeling her heart beating and the blood flowing through her entire body, and rejoices silently in the cold the only way she knows how to -- inside her head.


If anyone happened to come up -- of course they will not since this is the most secluded spot she has ever been a part of -- but if someone were to appear they would have no idea, would see no sign that she was happy and content and in the best night of her life. The most beautiful night she has ever seen. But she is, and it is. Inside, she rejoices.


But before an hour has passed she realizes that it is impossible, that she will freeze to death out here. Already she cannot feel several parts of her body. She does not even think about going back.

This place is hers; this is her place. She reaches into her jacket pocket instead and pulls out her matches. She has a whole box of them.

She lights one and holds it barely inches from her face. The tiny spark, the little fire, the insignificant glow it produces feels like a miracle to her freezing face and hands, and she holds it as long as she can, then with a flick of her wrist sends it plunging into the river at her feet.


She repeats this process again and again; the little warmth the action produces getting her from one minute to the next. She as always been like this; she is an observer, and she lights up (so to speak) whenever she sees anything that interests her; it is the only way she has been able to get out of her clouded inner world. And it always passes. Still she stands and watches the pseudo- fire.


She knows it's no good. She knows that the rest of her body is beyond feeling now. She wants something other than the cold. A match flashes out as she sends it plunging into the river, and she stands there in the complete darkness and thinks for a long, long time. Then she pulls out her last match and tosses it into the tangle of bushes around her.


She is not disappointed; it builds up and up, and the warmth and the burn and the flames fill her up, all the empty spaces that she hadn't even known were there, because nothing had filled them for so long.


It was so perfect she almost wanted to cry. It was the first she had ever seen or felt of perfection. She sighed, and felt the river behind her and nothing, nothing but the fire ahead of her, the future a tangle, an inferno of flames; closing in fast and faster; and her mind whirled overwhelmed with the miracle of it all.


She couldn't move of think or speak for just watching. The fire was almost right in front of her face, almost on top of her, almost consuming her; and that one last moment in itself was the best revenge, was what made it all worthwhile, because in her eyes was love and fury, she was alight with life and flame, she was the cause of it all, and in that last amazing moment she was real, and she was beautiful. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Rachel Sams

[Dukie]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Van Canna:

Fire
"Do you know what it feels like not to be beautiful, not even to be interesting at all? Do you know how it feels never to have had anybody love you, not even out of obligation, not even for a moment?"

Rachel Sams

*********************************************
I thought I knew her until I read this. Now I realize how fortunate I am. Now.....

Dear Van Sensei,
My sincerest thanks to you for posting such beautiful and thought provoking writings. I absolutely love reading them. Deep thoughts...... please, keep talking.

Laura

[Van Canna]

I am glad we are getting at least one reaction, Laura.

The women's forum has gone to hell, and I am trying to generate some emotional stirrings, very much part of our M.A. growth.

I'll post some more. Thanks.

------------------
Van Canna

[LAC]

I keep coming back to this particular writing. At first I couldn't figure out why. Now that I have gotten through her pain I can see how strong she truly is. I see her strength and am drawn to it. The way she is drawn to the flame of the match.

Just sharing...
Laura