How a Fire Is Like A Relationship
Ask if you want to start the fire. You could like to practice. Its natural to me, and most to only start fires that you need, want, and will diligently stick to.
The first push, the effort of the spark. It used to be a great physical effort to start a fire. A mystery. That first flame that starts the fire, being ready with the materials to kindle and keep it going. You need to know what things, given the environment, it will take to start that spark and burn; it definitely takes a while to learn this with many failed attempts.
I know how I start a fire. There's consistency between the literal and the metaphoric. Those elements I will keep a secret of my own.
What to say to get the fire to ignite. What is the atmosphere of the relationship? What must be considered before we initiate the effort of trying to start anything? What components do you need to get a flame that will hold when you add more kindling?
The flame not always, but usually needs some air to get through the smoky beginning. Unless youre really smooth and know what youre doing.
Some talk to get the fire to take.
If you are inexperienced, a fire will often die at this point, and you need to start over with some new material.
Say it takes, on the first date, when the flame is small, you don't buy the person a house just as you don't start a fire with a big log. Use kindle to build something that will take on a big log. You can't start a fire by throwing a big log on a really small amount of burning kindling.
Air on the fire is sometimes necessary, but not always. Sometimes the environment helps you out just enough, or too much, and again, the flame is extinguished. Communication, calling, the news, and other competition. Especially for a small fire. You have to know just how much air you may have to add at the beginning; too much can blow out the potential or create a hot fire that just burns out too fast without tangible gestures or kindling.
The gifts must be interspersed with some communication, or you get a smoky, annoying smolder. Your fire can't have lumped-together kindling or wood. Air must pass between the fuel.
When the relationship is hot but you neglect to throw some fuel or tangible goods on the fire (talking won't keep the fire going), it turns to a bed of hot coals that needs a little more wood (a date?) and a little communication (air) to get going again.
Sometimes the fire goes out entirely, and the coals are not enough to rekindle the fire. One must begin again if he does not have another fire elsewhere. He will need to use the resources, which may begin to dwindle in the area, to support a fire.
At other times, he will move on to a new location to discover new material locations and to build a new pit and fire. He may need to find a different way of rekindling a fire if the old trick and materials won't work.
I used to like the fast fires you use as tools—the small flames to warm a drink fast, melt snow, or cook a small bit of meat—that you throw just the right amount of fast-burning, hard-earned kindling-sized gestures on; just enough heat to get the job done. But if you are looking to heat a home for a while and make a relationship that lasts and in which air finds its own way to the flame, you need to invest in big logs. Logs have a tangible earth element to them. If you build a fire on dry vegetable matter without rocks and a clay base, the fire can easily catch on many things and spread rapidly, get out of control, and destroy many things; so, if you don't have a structure to your relationship or control of the passion, you can easily use up too much fuel or money and destroy the life around you, using all your resources.
Big logs will keep a fire going and provide steady and sure heat, but it's the little kindling and twigs that you add to this, the little gifts and gestures, that really get a fire hot and blazing; the blaze is short, and getting kindling takes time; that is when the big logs will have to just keep the relationship cozy.
The more fires you start, the better you become at it. You get faster, more efficient, more in control, and more versed in knowing what elements to add at what time for the exact burn you are after. You become more versatile in how to start a reliable fire and the elements required.
Grease can also keep a fire, but you still need a wick or a touch of reality. The grease is humor, understanding, maybe. All the humor and great chemistry mean nothing if there is no financial or tangible foundation on which to keep the fire burning. You can have a lot of heat and fire with a large "wick," but you also need the communication and fun of the air and grease to support the flame.
Water on everything can make it difficult if not impossible to start a fire; magic, astrology, and the need to heal everything just douse a flame. When the environment is full of emotions, we may say the same.
It makes sense to only have ONE fire going at a time and not a smolder that will rage out of control, burning off somewhere else.
When the fire is over, it leaves nothing but ashes and potential, but it can take a long time for life to begin again.
