A summer evening. An old house—forlorn and would-be abandoned—except for the handful of those without who would inhabit such a place. An old pool, filled with cedar from trees planted through seeds carried in the wind, now shading and adding voice. A girl dives into the water—the unpristine water with its cool clear passages—and emerges smiling with eyes as dark as deep and an opposing effervescence. The sun disappears and so does the summer over-warmth, leaving the grass, the leaves, the berries, the pine, to release their exaggerated scent leaving everyone intoxicated as they inhale and exchange the particles of sweetness and expansion. The boys scramble to find wood, dragging fallen branches from the spring storms and using axes to hack into soft cedar dead wood. Their building reaches and forms a tower in the middle of a forgotten lawn, which was always more pasture than dwelling space. The noise inside the house is filled with laughter and silhouettes of conversations are framed by windows. A match is thrown into a nest of pine needles and paper and the tower of wood begins its symbiotic relationship with fire, the one it will resist for hours before turning into ash. The fire climbs the form given becoming a simple flame that takes on the scale of another world. It towers over everyone, who on hearing the sound of consumption ventured out encircling. There are no more conversations. There is no other voice, but the sound of transformation. There is no other place, but the space between the eyes of each person watching and the heat of the flame on wood, fueled by the wind. And the cedar trees stand watching, making contributions through leaves that float down in the increasing currents. And the fire responds with clouds of tiny explosions which float up in the night air. As the girl returns to the pool that no one else cares about and swims between the patterned debris, she understands the cedar trees are masters here. And she is only flickering and transient. But that is enough. As her passing through and participation acknowledges the effort it takes to transmute.
trans·mute
verb
\tran(t)s-ˈmyüt, tranz-\
: to completely change the form, appearance, or nature of (someone or something)
written in 2013
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