The chimney always made me pay. I don’t know what Burt was talking about, but I’m glad he enjoyed cleaning them.
After the rooftop brushing, the partially-evicted wood stove insert grudgingly let me sit in the gallery. Shop Vacs suck, except when you need ‘em to. This one just filled the air with noise and dust, occasionally lasering in on an unimportant brick with a shriek of air, some distant industrialized cousin of a lamprey.
(And then a wheel would fall off, earning the unit a savage kick. The echoes in the house only laugh. Nice. Kick it harder, champ. )
I’d take the brush on the stick, hoist it above my head with both hands, shoulders cramped in the firebox, and scrub. Creosote - tiny black flakes, shiny, stubborn, resentment from last winter, so many unresolved words or chemicals that built up unseen, ready to burn a life down with an ordinary spark - rained down on my knit beanie.
How are you, fireplace?
I’m fine.
I feel this is a rather long way to answer the same question. Poor Bill got a monologue about philosophy and theology the other day when he asked how I was. (I think I avoided the Bevis and Butthead quotes…. “Or, something…”)
With a face full of metaphorical soot: Happy Wednesday.
I’m wiping my face, and then scrunching it up, “puzzling till my puzzler is sore.” (The Grinch is never out of season.)
Flamekeepers
Yes, yes, I’m grimed from the world, but isn’t everyone? Well, perhaps it’s where and what you look for. An activist pal sees injustice everywhere, but I see everyone carrying crosses. We drop them with a clatter, and point fingers.
Ayyy, I’m sufferin’ here!
I keep hearing the clatter. Is it growing? Is there more of the dropping?
Have you ever toyed with a flashlight on a sunny day? An abstract critique of the plastic is possible.
Have you ever dropped a flashlight in the frigid wilderness when the blackness swallows mountains? Oh, the scramble for the spark…
I used to look at Light (kindness, truth, dedication to Right, honesty, salvation) as a salt, a seasoning, something to keep a soul or two afloat, a flashlight on a sunny day.
Used to.
On Caring
Ah ha! To the beacons! There’s a certain joy in beginning, the invigorating strike of the match. Resolve smells like sulfur.
Now the world will have light.
And then the world does what it does, and spits back our efforts in a cloud of dirt and smoke and fire and poison. We slump over in our towers. Ouch.
Napkin? It’ll wipe the soot off.
I was talking to a buddy the other day about writing. We craft, do our best, and then get “constructive criticism” on it.
Try again, buddy.
(The validity of the feedback is irrelevant. Soot is soot. Sure, we can always improve, and we banish standards at the cost of beauty…but it’s still darn tricky to stay standing sometimes.)
Hasn’t this happened to you? No, no, not just my writing pals - anyone who does anything we care deeply about.
Perhaps a sooty face is an integral part of being a lighthouse keeper.
How - Part 1
Practically speaking, I’m curious at the separation of work and self. My writing is a work, but I’m the thing that generates work. I could steal every last dime from Elon Musk, and he’d be a billionaire in short order again. He’s the wellspring, not his work.
What about the rest of us? Well, I guess there’s always potential. I’m hardly wealthy, but I can use my bank statement to learn better habits, changing not only my current money, but my ability to generate future money.
In other words: I might not be rich now, but I have the potential to become rich. And also, my bank statement is separate from my potential - any critique of that isn’t a limit or judgement on future ability.
How - Part 2
That’s well and good for sunny times when creative expression is paramount, and the biggest problem is finding a good EDM soundtrack for a YouTube video of a watermelon drop off a tower.
But now? Maybe the question is the same.
Folks, I’m genuinely concerned at the clouds gathering. How long can we keep aiming down? Is it time for Nietzsche’s madman to light his lantern in the morning?
(I hope I’m wrong.)
How do we keep those beacons burning with faces full of soot? (And our metaphors mixed?…Yikes.) How do we keep caring? It’s an increasingly pressing question.
Dig this clip. It seems to have something in it. Sure, it’s about Jesus, but come on, man, if that’s not your jam, big picture.
And then….
What do you make of that?
Back in the Gallery
Once upon a time, I hired some buddies to show me how to clean the chimney. Some high school friends walked in, and crawled right into the filth.
(The only thing worse than having creosote fall on your head is watching it happen to your buddy. Then you’re just soft. There doesn’t seem any way around hard work.)
Huh - come to think of it, one of the fellows called his music project The Light House Keeper.
Off to think some more.
Keep shining.
Josh