Last Updated on March 20, 2008
Once upon a time there was a world without fire; darkness was upon the face of civilization; silence was upon a village, subdued, left to the solace of singular thoughts, for storytellers of eras bygone had lost the enchantment of wide-eyed boys who gasped with exploding imaginations as the village sage writhed with tales of courage and conquest, of flickering flames and bursts of stardust sparks as tongues spewed tales of untold gold, goblins and golden maidens; but without the flickering flames at the center of the village, the stories once told became silent; darkness revealed only shadows, with no faces half-hidden or half-revealed. For it is the half-revealed face which makes mysterious the half-hidden face; and it is the half-hidden face which makes one pause with a shiver up the spine, and the sigh of safety to see the half-revealed face.
Shadows without light reveal only darkness; bright and overwhelming light without shadows blinds the imagination; and so God created the fire, the campfire, the bonfire, the village center, where the storyteller sage would spin his tales of wonder and bring enchantment into the dormant lives of toil, of daily farming, coaxing the soil to bring fourth sustenance for the day. Fire — the fireplace by which we read, still retains the mystery and places us into a momentary trance; turning a page, we look up and see the quiet glow, a crackle, a burst, and for a moment we pause as we are drawn into the mystery of the sage storyteller who once told of a tale, long ago, when…