The Burning

I entered one of our storage buildings last week. It used to be a bunk house for the extra hand that was needed around the farm during hay season, or maybe during calving. Anyway, today it is a storage shed. I know if I spend the time to go thru some of the many boxes scattered around the room that I could get rid of most of what is in there. So I begin.

Along one wall is box after box of Evelyn's things. Time capsules of her high schools years. Well, I can't deal with any of these, Evelyn has to go thru them and decide to keep or toss. And so it went, me circling, opening, peeking, and eventually putting everything back in a little more organized manner.. Until I found a couple of boxes that were in pretty bad shape.

One contained stuffed animals, which will clean up and go to good will.
The other contained paperback books. They had gotten wet, were warped and moldy, a real mess. As I hauled them outside, I thought, I'll just burn the box with the weeds and leaves. So I built a little bonfire.

Now I looked thru the books, mysteries, romance, adventure, nothing worth getting upset over - and they truly were trashed. However, that did not make watching them burn any easier.

My mind flashed back to every story I have ever read or movie seen about book burning over the ages.

First I was hit with waves of sadness. Books do not want to be burned. They hold themselves tight, refusing to let the fire touch their words. Ever so slowly they begin to succumb to the heat, curling up at the ends, getting black and charred around the edges. They do not want to burn. I was not prepared to witness this slow death. I wanted to rush in and rescue them, apologize for lighting the match. What was I thinking?!?!

Instead, I forced myself to stir the fire, breaking open the books, letting the fire get deeper into the words. Entire pages were lifted into the heat-fueled breeze, trying to escape the destruction. Even blackened I could still read the words on the pages, the type was refusing to be obliterated from sight. It looked as if the words had been pressed into those charred remains. Books do not want to be burned.

As I stirred the final embers, creating the last of the flames to consume the last of the pages, I was not prepared for the final feeling that engulfed me.

Freedom. A lightness and freedom surrounded me.

No one had to read these stories anymore. No one had to fill their brain with more words, and images, and thoughts, that were not their own. No more stories, real or imagined.

Was that the "fever" that took over as book burning consumed a nation? No more words, images, thoughts, that are not your own? I was consumed by the freedom of it for days. I did not want to read anything. Or watch tv. I just wanted to witness life first hand. To create my own words, images, thoughts. And it felt good. This book burning freedom.
It felt too good, and I didn't know how to share this feeling because somehow I thought that I shouldn't feel good about it.

So here I am, giving you the words, images and thoughts that are not your own, but are mine.

And it feels good.

And it feels right.