Embers

    Yesterday I shared my thoughts with a group of friends about anger, how I believe it's like a flame that, when not used up immediately, will seed itself into the hearts of those who kindled it and become a burning ember, hot enough to hurt its benefactor but tame enough to never go out, it will singe and crackle and deteriorate them from the inside out, and it will flare up when other emotions are fed to it, and it is very, very hard to dislodge once seeded in the human soul.

    I sometimes feel I was born with such an ember, like I was born angry, disquieted, full of an unending raging fire that drives the engine of my hate and which rarely lets me feel peace. Even now, I can feel it in my heart as it simmers and makes my chest and stomach feel hardened by heat. I can feel the constant turmoil as smoke of unease rise from it and yet never smother it as they build up inside of me, and my only outlet is that sometimes, I need to blow off steam to keep it from festering. I have kindled such a fire my entire life, I do not know what it's like to never be angry, save for a few times in my life where I felt like it might be truly gone - but not gone, just at its lowest burning point when I knew what contentment and tranquility were.

    Such is the nature of my being that I contemplate anger and rage often, I am very familiar with all manner of dark emotions, I am especially sensitive to and understanding of fear; fear drives people like nothing else, in many of our positive traits there is a shadow of fear, looming as we strive to not fail, to achieve before our short stints into the universe we call our lives run out, and the thing which we at the moment cannot possibly begin to fathom but which makes us more than the sum total of our parts diminishes forever and we become nothing but a resource to be used by the rest of the earth, recycled back into what I believe the true order of the universe. Fear has driven people insane, but it has also resulted in many achievements by mankind, it is the seed with which we might know understanding and empathy for others, it is the growing anxiety that promotes action and thought to overcome our hardships, and it is through fear that we come to know courage; true courage is to overcome a fear to accomplish a goal, to rise above it, without fear there can be no bravery, no progress, no courage, it is the darkness t our light.

    But more than fear, the shadow behind us all, behind everything we do, making stark the contrast of the light, I know anger. I am an embodiment of burning rage, I am hate incarnate, behind my fear is always the heat of anger, its dim burning light suffusing the shadows and the light, and through this smoky light and heat I have come to know fire. Fire burns and sways whimsically, fire cannot be contained, it cannot be controlled, it must be respected or tempered, but it has great potential for destruction, and it is wild, so wild that when it unleashes its true power it can devastate everything around it, it can grow and flare out so much that it cannot control itself, it no longer has direction, except to burn and consume and grow and unleash its wrath on everyone and everything in its wake, and it is so absorbed in its hot rage that it loses any cohesion or sanity, and when nothing is left, it burns out, extinguished by its own fury, defeated by its own mad consumption of everything around it, a smouldering shadow of its former self, a black smattering of embers.

    And yet those embers live, and they cannot be extinguished easily, as if fueled by some infinite supply of napalm they burn through the smoke and the blackened world the fire left behind, and they bide their time and grow, they grow into new fire and that fire continues to gain strength and momentum, and only the gods know when it will turn from its dancing whimsy into the violent display of naked rage that is pure destruction; the shadow of what I am, my personal fear, and what is always remembered about me by everyone, that I am fire and I am dangerous, I am wild and without restraint, I am capable of causing harm to everyone around me whether intentional or not, and though I dance whimsically through the air and burn with a luminous gusto, it only takes a little gasoline to turn that into an ugly and terrifying wrath. I am an ember.

    But through these musings of mine, I have perhaps discovered a different kind of ember.

    Fire is wild, perhaps that is my best definition for who I am, I am not grounded nor do I desire to be. I rail against being caged and do not stay in one place or on one subject for long, I become withered in any type of confinement, I must always seek new things, but this is not unlike the most elusive of human psychology, creativity, something so untamed and misunderstood, mysterious and whimsical, that it cannot be controlled, it cannot be bottled and stored away for later, it withers in confinement, like me, it needs to wander, it needs fuel, it needs freedom. It is also an ember.

    But it is the opposite of me; where my greatest challenge is dampening or channeling the ever-raging fire inside of me, this ember of mine is but a spark that I have difficulty kindling. At a point in my life several years past now when I was truly miserable and angry, I could kindle my spark with my own fire, anger fueled my creativity, deep-seeded, passionate hate, but now the two burn in different realms, one is diminished though still potent, and the other is but a small coal in which I am only aware of in those brief moments when I feel a warmness unlike the heat of rage. Inspiration. And inspiration is the flint on which we spark our creativity.

    Because so little is known about the creative process of humankind, I have no scientific basis for which to advise others. This is an issue of philosophy, it requires introspection on the part of the individual, but what I do know is that if anger is hard to smother, creativity is hard to kindle. It is like a wisp, a tiny blue flame burning so softly and giving off almost no light, but when it flares up to its full glory it spreads like wildfire through my entire body, motivating me to great leaps of creation and motivating me to do things such as paint or write these passionate entries. It does not burn slowly, it consumes every bit of inspiration in the soul, the world around, and then, like anger, it weakens and withers to the tiny cool ember it was before, and when it flares up again is an unknown to all, even the bearer of the tiny flame.

    These two embers are so opposite, one of destruction and the other of creation, yet they are so frighteningly alike, they coexist in my soul and effect my being in profound ways, and I can feel both of them, see them in my mind, and when the flame of creation flares inside of me I can taste its smoke on the exhale, which does not choke me like the smoke of my anger, but stimulates me to act, to create, to burn lively and dance in the light of my own ember.