Hidden thoughts in the light of a camp fire

The thoughts sit within the mind for a long time. Not moving, not helping nor harming the process of thought but sitting and waiting. But over time they grow restless and need to be rolled over and milled out. They can not stay in there for ever. But there is no place for them in life even though those thoughts the one that sit patently in the back of the mind are indeed life. They are the connection they are the reality, if such a thing can be said to exist. We do not like these thoughts not because they are dark or evil thoughts but because they can not be ended they continue indefinitely. They can not be broken they continue on forever and without end and this bothers us because we can not get a good hold on the thought. We can not take it by its tail to pull it back to us and beat it into submission and coherence because it has no tail. We can only hope to coil the ungainly beasts of thoughts in the back of our minds and let them be. But they will not be left alone. They will not be ignored for long there voices grow louder every day that they are set aside, so we shut them out. We hide from our thoughts within the space just outside our minds. We make our minds think that they are thinking when they are not. We turn on the TV and lose our selves in the meaningless colors that come from the screen. We turn up the volume on our head sets and block the ever growing noise of our thoughts with the simple minded music that only infuriates the deep uncomfortable thoughts but that calms the rest of the mind strengthening it to contain the long coiled beast just beyond the site of our inner eye. Be brush the thoughts aside and out of view like sweeping the dust under the rug before visitors come. We are worried about our minds being cluttered in case somebody happened to stop by and say hello. But the mind always becomes cluttered. The never ending forever ignored thoughts make sure of it; always knocking things out of place and keeping to the shadows where it can not be seen and where it know that it will not be dealt with because it is the shadows that we always try to avoid.

The never ending thoughts are not something to be feared, though. they are not some dark creature from hell or worse. These thoughts like any other are simple an expression of life. Because they can not be grabbed hold of, because they can not be handles, is what makes them the greatest thoughts of all. They take the mind to places that it has never been. They are the pioneers, the adventurers, and the explorers of the mind.

Sit at a camp fire with some friends. As the stars lift into the heavens, unseen in the glare of the fire light, and the fire died a little, still alive with flame but low enough that the dancing of the hot coals is visible as a base to the dance of the flames, then the thoughts will start to uncoil. It is triggered by the feel of heat on your front side and cold on the back, and by the eyes that are transfixed of the impossible dance of flame and smoke unable to pull away no mater the heat of irritation, there is something more important in the fire. The mind relaxes and the deep hidden though finds that his not being fought anymore. The fire effects the thought as well. The heat calms its rage and makes it a peaceful beast, making its voice not the harsh cry for attention that it normally it but the gentle wispier of a lover. The thought will uncoil itself and come out of the shadows, growing in its infinite way to take up the whole of the mind. After a long time of only hearing the pop and crackle of the fire the mouth will open and part of the thought will escape into the cold night air, to enter the minds of others. It is in the form of a perfectly formulated question that is actually quite vague and distance. Then the other minds and other long buried thoughts come to the surface. The clutter of the mind it reviled and in the red light of the fire the conversation grows deep and intricate. Some times it is enough just to sit and listen other times your own thoughts must get in and make its peace. And the thoughts stretch there long cramped bodies into the cold of the night and the warmth of the fire letting themselves settle upon the new reality that is forming. Now out in the open the thought is no longer a threat, no longer the dark menacing thing that it once was. It is relaxed and at peace.

I have never felt more alive then sitting around a campfire in the dead of night with good friends and nothing but the fire to drive our thoughts and conversations.