Sunday Scribblings - "Fire"

I don’t like the idea of dying by fire. Not that I find any other painful way of dying the tiniest bit acceptable, but I really, REALLY hate the very thought of fire. Maybe it has to do with our less-than-admirable history of women dying, voluntarily or otherwise, on their husband’s funeral pyre, or the even more reprehensible contemporary penchant of making funeral pyres out of women - aka “dowry deaths”. Or maybe I just think it's one of the most horrible ways of dying there is. Just think of the pain that even an minor, accidental burn (while cooking, say) can cause - and tell me that burning to death isn't one of the worst ways of dying. So, when I hear the word "fire", this is always what comes to mind first.

And then, because it's not at all a pleasant topic on which to dwell, I try to think of something else to do with fire that has a happier connotation, and my mind comes up with... no, not the story of Prometheus. Nor how Early Man might have come up with the concept of fire as a cooking medium. Nor even how Mowgli set Shere Khan's tail on fire (specifically, in the animated movie "The Jungle Book"). (I'd say things are beginning to look better on the pleasant-association front, aren't they?)

But the number one pleasant memory of fire is the song by Billy Joel - "We Didnt Start The Fire" - vintage 80s stuff and a song that I loved. The tune was catchy, but what I liked best was that the lyrics were basically just a string of words linked together to sort of encapsulate history - NOT history as from Early Man onwards but the more recent events and people. (Well, the events and people were "more recent" in the 1980s. For that matter, so was I.) It just seemed so cool. Put it down to the uncool teenage years.

And now I really have run outa steam.

Note: The reason for this disjointed post was to test what would happen if I forced myself to write when I didn't feel like it even given a prompt. Plenty of famous writers have advised that the only way to break through writer's block is to force oneself to write, even if the outcome is rubbish, until the flow is back. Alas, sometimes the outcome starts out and stays rubbish, the flow isn't even worthy of being called a trickle, and the block remains unbroken - as evident from this post. If you're wondering why I've published this post, it's because I want the world (or my three readers, at any rate) to read this and know what happens when one tampers with nature. It's a harsh lesson, but it had to be taught.