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Fire

Posted on 06/01/2010 by admin

Perhaps it’s the three inches of snow outside that says ‘no grocery delivery today’ that made me think of warmth. Or maybe it was the fact that coming downstairs on a dark winter’s morning I was delighted to find the stove in the front room still burning merrily.

And I wonder about opposites.

I wonder why, when it is cold, we long for warmth and when it is warm, we long for cold.  It can be too cold, and too warm but over the course of a year it will be both. But human beings do not think over the course of a year. We have to get through the here-and-now. It is this hour, this morning, this day that concerns us.  Which is why we are always thinking of the things we don’t have whilst enjoying – or not – the things we do. As if seconds are a merry-go-round we cannot get off and we are spinning so fast we cannot quite see the view around us but we know what it should look like and we know that it is there.

And then the pressures of having to be ‘earning’ are relentless and give us little time to stop-and-stare.  But I am with W H Davies on this…if we rule our lives to that extent that we lose sight of the view and cannot stop whenever we want to, we have lost sight of living.

So the warmth of my fire, and cold of the snow when I walk the dogs, are equals.

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Children’s author, novelist, editor and poet.

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