Burning the Burl

This morning I put a ’special’ piece of wood in the fire, as a sort of catharsis. It was a fist-sized burl of wood that looked a lot like the face from Munch’s ‘Scream.’ The eyes were made of knots, and the mouth was a fallen-out knot, an actual hole in the wood. Not a happy-looking fellow, that’s for sure. Wish I’d taken a photo of it now. I’d had it for years, up on the wall in the shed, as a form of art. But I didn’t like looking at it, at least not lately. It reminded me of a girlfriend – it might have been she that found it or gave it to me – who used to be perennially cheerful but who is going through some really tough times right now. I only see her occasionally as she lives 40 miles away in CountySeat and doesn’t use email, but I’m pretty sure she’s returned to drinking, after decades of teetotalling, and I think she’s in a bad spiral down.

I decided that burning the burl would represent declining to fall into that downward spiral of depression or discouragement. I’d also felt, in recent weeks, rather anxious about the junction of leaving a relationship and making my way alone, together with the apparent speeding up of the world’s economic troubles. While I definitely see the direction things are going, and I expect certain outcomes that might cause some to call me “doomer”, I nevertheless do not find useful the “next week it will all come unraveled” theme that R likes to focus on. (And yesterday I had an online conversation with him that ended with more of the same, so it was fresh in my mind). So the burl-burning would also represent my refusal to let the arrival of a scary future be too overwhelming for me. I keep reminding myself that 1) it might just take a lot longer than we think for things to get really bad, and 2) if everything *does* crash tomorrow, I’m in better shape, preparedness-wise, than most people – a combination of being mentally prepared as well as having actually done some physical preparations such as having stocked up on selected items. And, of course, burning the burl also counts as decluttering – one less thing to move next week!

So I made the morning fire (15 seconds of wood and paper + one match = heat, as it is most mornings, as opposed to the frustrating occasion such as I wrote about earlier, when no amount of fussing seemed to keep lit paper lit, or to transfer flame from paper to wood…) and when it was going well, I carefully propped Mr. Scream on the burning wood. He was resting directly on two pieces of burning wood, each of which had other burning wood beneath it. I sat back to watch the flames. After a while, his edges rounded and glowing, his mouth agape wider now, Mr. Scream seemed on the verge of tumbling to the floor of the stove, and I began to wonder what little change would send him over: would the mostly-burned wood under his left side break away, even though it seemed sturdy at the moment? Would the piece under his right side, also mostly burned now, with only two little spires of remaining wood holding him up, fail? That seemed likely. Would Mr. Scream simply dissolve into ashes in place? Or maybe a rush of wind from a *pop* elsewhere in the fire would blow him over before his time had come?

I began to feel the analogy to watching the world these days. The house of cards that is our economy has many similarities to my morning fire. So many factors in play at one time, only some of which are we, as observers, aware. Some relevant things we know with certainty, such as whether our firewood is wet or dry, oak or balsam, and how the different attributes of the wood make it more or less likely that this or that piece lasts longer against the flames. But so much of what is happening is unclear to us – either because the science of it is beyond our knowledge, or because it’s simply unpredictable in terms of too many forces acting on it to know for sure in what order the outcomes will happen.

Eventually, of course, Mr. Scream did fall. The cause isn’t even important (though, for the record, he broke and fell on his own, the burning underpinning logs still offering support). But it really impressed upon me again how pointless it is to obsess over the minutae and to work oneself into a tizzy being *so sure* this or that will happen by Wednesday noon. I don’t really know how to do it, but I am ready to add some positive vibes back into my view of the coming times.