Self-consuming fire

Last night, the temperature dipped into the 30s for the first time this season -- a lovely, chilly fall night -- so we fired up the fire-pit table on our back porch. I pulled a chair close and sat there, watching the fire, for a long time.

I've always loved fire -- its warmth, the crackling, the musky smell of smoke, the mesmerizing effect of watching the flames. Somehow it quiets my soul. But until now (a period when I'm thinking a lot about anger), I never paid attention to how fire consumes itself.

We put a medium-sized log in the fire pit and before long, it was engulfed in flame. Awhile after that, its shape began to change. It got smaller and smaller until -- of course -- it was only a bed of glowing-red embers. And the flames were gone.

This is nothing new, the metaphor of anger as fire. But somehow I never really "got" it until now. I watched that little fire do its work of destruction and I couldn't help but think of my anger, consuming everything that feeds it. Leaving nothing but a cold pile of ashes. And afterwards, the inevitable clean-up.

Even worse, fire tends to spring up again. And again. It finds new fuel. Exhausted firemen in California put out one wildfire, only to have another spring up nearby.

What's the answer? How to prevent fire, or anger, from breaking out? I don't quite know yet.

That's why I keep folding these paper cranes, day after day. Almost at 500, by the way ... halfway to senbazuru.