I sit in the dark smoking cigar. There are Christmas trees of crab trap boxes lit at the end of docks. A soft wind blows ringing wind chimes in match, and there are sounds of cars and dogs barking in the distance.
I wear a heavy flannel, feel the wind through it, affecting—but not cold.
It’s been a busy day. I’m close to peopled out; not in a bad way, just the way an introvert becomes after a day opposite its inclination.
When I lived here years ago, this side of the Bay was still rural. It is changing fast. Better or worse, who knows—just different, bringing the modern “different” that arrives as I guess it does almost everywhere.
I am ready to be home, to be alone in open spaces for a time; to be slow and still productive. My father-in-law spoke of his end of the year lull in work and how it’s the time of the year you see everything that needs fixed—it’s the same this time of year on farms: organizing, cleaning, fixing, making a plan so when spring comes you’re rolling, not racing, to the fields—everything ready and not a day behind the weather when it’s right.
I think of fires, wood ‘s burn in night skies and hearths even though we do not have one in our home. It’s a nice ideal on a winter cool—to have a place to rest and simply be, seeing signs in gaze upon the flame.
With all the ways and wheres the world is changing, it’s nice to find and save a few that don’t—magic and special in the way they endure and connect us to an old, living in a history rather than erasing it away.
We all make our histories living our boss but I value the ideal of saving pasts that precede and the bond that comes in place and blood by ties that connect the lineages snd histories from which we come.
Maybe that is another charm and enchantment I feel sitting before a fire: an elemental beginning that brought about men’s gatherings—a place to rest, a place to warm, silent, sharing stories, or means of other sharings. For all man’s advanced, we retain our allure and draw to fires. One sounds nice, right here, right now—but light of the cigar is my only flame.
It too has its charm, loosening mind, breathing contrails of thought and spirit as I rest in the present, musing on olds and presents far away.
It’s a beautiful night. I hope others feel it too—whether staring on flame, the light of stars, or in the quiet of mist-fall rains. A few more days, and this year is gone. Smoking, I slow, enjoying what of it remains.
I write my mood. I write my mind believing others feel it too and, reading, others will contemplate (and even write-capture) impressions of their own.