I. What is a little fire but destabilization?
Even neutrinos—those mad confederated
waves, hybrid muon, tau, and pure electron,
oscillating, that shock through everything
material, through light, heat, paper,
through Toby, the bull African elephant
of the Cincinnati Zoo, through Virginia
Woolf’s ashes, through the sun’s
own core—the neutrinos themselves
would amount to nothing if it weren’t
for those aberrant manifestations that
momentarily hold mass and then let
it go, those reckless, impulsive
lottery winners who buy the store and
give away all the Barbie dolls to thieves
and musicians just because they
can, once more nearly penniless, happy,
going back to the 7-11 and buying a new
ticket. Of the safe, respectable, constant
neutrinos, no fire then, for sure, no star stew,
no combustion, just a cool, interminable
equilibrium, silence, a sure baseline.
II. Where have you secreted your pyromania?
Funny, it’s play with matches, so that
in your backyard, piling leaves
and sticks, near your father’s picket
fence, fire becomes a game of light
and color, an improvised smokiness,
a music of tinder cracking. Forget
Prometheus. Forget witchcraft.
Forget the physics of accelerated decay
and released energy. It’s a matter
of blowing into the roots of fire,
letting the fire recover, burn hotter,
and then blowing again, until the fire
itself takes over, and you can rest
from the dizziness, watch the flames
lick the panels of wood, and climb.
III. Is every fire a political act?
The slowest fires, the coolest ones,
burn the most completely. Isn’t that
the political theory of the prescribed
burn: selectively and coolly to scorch
the underbrush, ideally in thirteen
year cycles, to manage balance?
O Healthy Forest Initiative! Give
me an ignition spit and pail, a drum
of Chevron-Texaco refined combustive,
and a box of matches! Light aflame
the Patriot Act, the Economic Stimulus
Packages of 2001 and 2003, the Federal
Communications Commission mandates,
the National Defense Policy papers,
the game plans of the RNC and DNC,
but let no flames burn any books, for every
word is healthy, fire-proof in the Library
of Congress. But why not a little healthy burn
of Microsoft, Time-Warner, Disney,
and Fox? of ADM, HP, IBM, GE, and
McD? of universities and their colleges
of education, business, communication,
and hospitality management and their
departments of English? of gated
communities? of retirement accounts, stock
portfolios, and cash-on-hand? of SUVs and
bridges? of medical prescriptions and
research and development offices? of
Halliburton and Bechtel and their vaults?
of the blueprints to everything?
IV. Why should you prevent forest fires?
The speed of fire is a simple equation,
a curve a good 11th-grade student
could express. But more exact is
the equation to cheat an insurance
company, to win back an investment
with a little vengeance. Think of
Mickey Rourke warning William Hurt
against arson in Body Heat, and
of course, Hurt burns everything
and murders Richard Crenna. Or
rather, think of the film itself
of Body Heat, burning itself up,
cracking and fading, three hundred years
from now, or think of the DVD itself
of Body Heat, unloosening its digital
coding, the binary relations ashened,
one thousand years from now. It is
the vanity of self-immolation that
I can’t stand, the shower of the accelerant
over the body, the striking of the match,
and then the poof of holiness:
the concentration and silence against
the flesh as it drips in tiny globes
of flame. That way is one answer,
to burn away the self, cleansing
the corruption, to do something. Too
much burning for God, for money,
for love, unless you are the Elvis,
American-sainted, draped in your Phoenix
cape, red-sequined and diamond-studded,
and you turn your back to your audience,
raise your arms, and behind you, you
can hear women faint from the heat.