childhood | Inappropriate Footwear

flaming-june

I was raised in a lands-end suburb that bordered on a children’s paradise of ponds and gullies and hills. Men took to those hills from time-to-time, built basic shelters, shat in the earth, and burnt food in stone-bound hollows. So as we kids roamed the goat tracks and stream beds we’d occasionally come across those blackened rocks, and breathe in the acrid scents of ash and loneliness. The marks of habitation, the shades of rough men with dark purpose. Or no purpose.

In those days (and hopefully still) Dads taught kids to criss-cross kindling atop tightly balled paper, to touch a flame to three different points, to wake the orange cinders with gentle breaths. And something would draw us back to those sites of burning hidden below the bus routes and parks. We’d shed our schoolbags as we entered the clearing, and imitated our ancestors crouched poses about the dark circle. One of us tears up a leaflet advertising a furniture sale, another breaks twigs, twists their wet strands, drops them in a small pyramid over the grayscale pictures of outdoor furniture and sun-umbrellas. The last holds one of three stolen matches over their worn-edged matchbox, rocking gently, eyes on the growing pile of kindling. There is ritual in the architecture of a fire, an act which might once have determined survival in lands our bodies were not evolved to inhabit.

We urchins exchange glances, there’s a nervousness around those moments before ignition. The last piece of wood is lowered, and two of us wriggle back a little, allowing the fire-starter space. Three matches, the first skips over the worn strike-pad, not a spark. The box is flipped, the match rotated, anxious fingers scrabble under watchful eyes. Another flick, the sound is rough but still no flash or flare. We other two ache to take up the task, our empathy is false, we feel frustration. Then a quicker flick and the match head is engulfed in a glow, and we are drawn to the scent of sulphur, the dance of the tiny flame. Cupped hands, scooped forms, the burning wooden sliver is lowered towards the curled newsprint.

Fire beckons something inside of me, something buried deep. Like seeing a pair of eyes in the dark, or listening to the first seconds of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’. As I age I am coached to modify my behaviours, to bury some of my ideas and feelings under layers named ‘civilised’, and ‘mindful’, and ‘Health and Safety’. I am taught, both directly and indirectly, that we are not like other animals, that we should hold ourselves above the wolves, the bison, the apes. Fire reminds me of the lie of this. It excites me, the thrill of fear beneath the joy of feeling the warmth against the cold, watching the shadows dart about the walls. In its glow I am reminded the idea of safety is dependent on fear. And I think I am far more capable if I learn to handle dangers rather than avoid them. What sense is there in being alive, if I never really feel it anymore?

The sun is lowering in the sky as we dip lower, prodding at the low flames, blowing, wafting. The paper burns away quickly, the wet twigs smoulder a little, but the last flame ascends as smoke, and the matchbox is drawn up. The strike-pad is torn away, the box becomes part of the combustible stack. Impatience overpowers empathy and the next player draws up the tools of ignition. The next match is struck.

I find fire is a great conversational companion. It allows the eyes a distraction without demanding their attention. And it is sensuous. The shift of light defines us loosely, our form sketched rather than photographed. And we are allowed to be defined by the imagination as much as by reality. A meeting under flame is three times as likely to lead to intimacy. Probably. Some of my most evocative memories of the past are centred on bon-fired beaches, or fire pois, or a candle-lit stairway leading to a low couch, a bottle of wine, a hope for intimacy.

Us three young boys (at this age society has separated us from the girls, the horse riders, the hair-plaiters, the more capable minds), we work again with blowing and coaxing and wishing. We sacrifice a homework assignment drawn hurriedly from a leather satchel. The blue-printed questionnaire holds a long flame and our mouths form ‘O’s’ of wonder, and we pause for a second in the stretched yellow flickering. Then the paper is dropped and we shift twigs. And two of them catch, and white smoke begins to curl, lit up by the few spears of sunshine that penetrate the bush canopy.

Sometimes it is a radiant fire on a cooling beach, the lightest of winds drawing the smoke away from you (for now). Someone picks at a guitar, or speaks words, ‘Once, a long time ago…’, and our minds are released to travel on a voyage, to draw the characters, the situations, the Gods and beasts and heroes. And beyond the reach of the flames there is room for the imagination to plant stories, and monsters, and mythology.

Other times there is just you alone, over a flame in an old pan, holding a photo, or an agreement, or a letter of rejection. You can delete an email, or the last contact from a lover, or the image of an unholy prophet. But how much more cathartic is it to hold a thick sheaf of paper above a flame, lowering just a little further, feeling the heat of the smoke curling over your knuckles. Then the thrill as the flame runs along the edge, leaving a blackening shadow.

The embers pulse gently, the three of us talk of a great journey for the next day, on bikes into the hills. Maybe the horsey girls will be there. One of us begins to stand, tucking the last match and slice of box into a pocket. Another of us sprinkles soil over the embers, hands hovering over the gentle warmth. Then the three of us shoulder bags and move up the hill. None of us can resist a last backward glance at the pit. A brief silence gives way again to plans and schemes and nudges and laughter.

A fire is infinite form. It is a destroyer and yet it is born before us, from spark and breath. Flames to hold back the beasts, extinguish the shadows, summon the Gods. It is to be respected, and anything which allows reminds us to be humble is to be treasured. Humanity isn’t at its best when it ranks itself above all else.

When I was young I thought life would be complete if I had a beard like Grizzly Adams, a car like the one in Smoky and the Bandit, and a girlfriend like Michele or Dale in my class. I always knew the girls at school were always better than the ones in the films, they were real. But I still held on to my signed photo of Wilma Deering from Buck Rogers. Just in case.

When I was young I made a pop-up Valentine’s Day card for the most beautiful, funny and athletic girl in my class, but she never received it. I remember looking at the pink ink running down my hand as I stood in the rain, three doors down from her house, trying to summon the courage to ring her doorbell. I’ve still got the card, I think it’s important to remember how big those small moments can feel. And my Mum found it hidden in my wardrobe and stuck it to the photo-board at my 21st birthday party.

When I was a boy I understood that people died. I remembered the sight of my Grandfather’s chair when he was no longer around to sit in it, and laugh loudly, and hand me giant tins of oysters. He died in his sleep, and I presumed that was the way I would go, not riding my BMX off the skateboard bowl, or running down the train tunnels as the train entered the far end, or being put in a ‘sleeper hold’ until I passed out. Years later people tell me that I’ve grown to be a little like him, and that makes me swallow, and blush, and feel proud.

When I read the comics I found at garage sales, I thought that Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Specs and Joy Buzzers would be and work exactly as advertised. Some adults feel the same way about international trade agreements, capitalism and world heavyweight boxing matches.

When I was young I thought that selling the life-size picture of Boba Fett I drew (with 18 felt-tip pens) to Kelvin for a can of coke and a go on his bike, was a sure-sign of my artistic future. Then I took art with Ms Manthell. She inadvertently taught me that the power of art was no longer in the hand of the artist, and never to trust an art teacher that didn’t like Kate Bush.

When I was nine my main rival for smartest kid in class was Kieran Bleach. It didn’t matter that she was a girl, it did matter that she beat me in spelling tests. She went to a girls school when we turned eleven, and I missed my nemesis. And learnt the word nemesis. A year later a ‘Fijian prince’ joined my class. It didn’t matter that his skin was a different colour, or that he had an accent (ok, maybe the accent was a bit fun), and eventually it didn’t matter that he was a prince. It did matter that he was funny, and fast, and had the biggest smile. It’s the truly important things that matter when you’re a kid.

When my Dad told me he went to school with the Six Million Dollar Man, and beat him in running races on school sports day (pre Bionics, obviously), I kind-of believed him. I also believed in George Lucas. My Dad never let me down.

I believed with great certainty in my own form of god, and in reincarnation. I can’t pinpoint the moment that being reborn in another form no longer made sense, but god lost his/her/its hold as I was drawing Wonder Woman in art class. I’m still not sure about Wonder Woman.

When I was young I sometimes wondered if the whole world existed to contribute to the story of just one boy or girl – that child was the star, everyone else was just ‘extras’. I wondered if I was the star, or just another player. Then I wondered if I had enough coins for a k-bar. Philosophy is transient when you’re eight years old, sugar is forever.

When I was maybe eight or nine years old I had my first dream in which I realised I was in a dream, and as such I had the power to do ANYTHING I WANTED, without getting in trouble. So I splashed in lots and lots of muddy puddles, then woke up clean.

When I was at school, and girls were almost as much a mystery as now, I loved and feared the furtive communications network of note-passing in class. As I aged, email or texts had a little of this power, but you don’t have a chain of giggling friends passing your email to you, threatening to read it. And email doesn’t smell like a freshly torn piece of maths-book paper.

I read about other lands, other countries, but at times they seemed so impossible, so far away. I thought that there was a good chance that New Zealand was the extent of the world, and that perhaps when people boarded a plane “they” simply gassed them all, and the people dreamt they went to far off lands. “They” didn’t figure very much in my childhood. In those days all burglars wore masks, all cowboys wore hats, and all policemen had moustaches. Then one day a girl who had always teased me, upset me, and called me square-head… she kissed me. All bets were off.

When I was young, I valued the idea of valour, I wanted a code of honour, I loved the idea of chivalry. I believed that most adults had my best interests at heart, and that the ones that didn’t were cautionary figures; at worst cartoon villains – scary, weird, but not capable of true evil. I had no idea how fortunate I was that this belief lasted my entire childhood.

One of the most important and telling things about my younger years was that I believed I could be or achieve anything. There was no such thing as probabilities, possibilities or impossibilities. Any objective could be realised with a mix of imagination and time. Imagination was more powerful than adults, film-reviewers and physics. A childish idea of Time was the key though, it could negate all barriers, if I didn’t achieve something today that didn’t make it impossible or unlikely, it just meant I might have to wait until tomorrow, or until I was ‘old enough’, or until a blue moon. When I was young a week was like a year, unless next week was Christmas, in which it was forever.

I’m at a different stage of young now, I think (hope?) that youth is a spectrum rather than an on/off state. I’m still in the lower end, just up from the BMX loving, shy-around-girls section, and hope I always will be.