Sunday, December 4, 2011

Fire of Life

by Jeffe Kennedy

Big shout-out to sister Word-Whore Marcella Burnard for her nomination from the RT Book Reviews team in Futuristic Romance for her really wonderful novel ENEMY GAMES. If you haven't read it, you really should. It's really excellent hard-core sci-fi, chock full of battles with fascinating alien life forms.

And now, for this week's regularly scheduled topic:

I cheerfully admit to being a fire girl.

No - not the pyro kind, or even the fire-bug kind. I'm not the one always adding more logs to the campfire and stirring up the sparks with a big stick. Talk to my sister-in-law about that.

I'm the sun girl. Fire sign, fire ascendant, born at dawn, which gives me all sorts of fiery guardians. There's a joke among my family and friends that sunshine follows me around. David, especially, laughs about it, because we'll go on vacation and inevitably people will say, "wow, you guys got lucky with the weather - it was pouring rain until yesterday."

Ahem.

Fire has its drawbacks. I tend to run hot and impatient. I don't always like to wait for things to follow their due course. Days of rain have their place. Cloudy days are part of life. I try to remember not to burn it all away.

But fire - ah, fire is also life. It's what warms us in the cold vastness of space. Prometheus wrested it from the gods and that spark elevated us from animals hiding in caves to a proud and bold civilization that pushes back the boundaries of that vast, cold universe.

Today is a snowy day in the high desert of New Mexico. A fire burns cheerfully in our adobe fireplace, bringing light and warmth and that smug, cozy feeling of being tucked inside, safe from the ravages of nature.

11 comments:

  1. Hee...yup. The fire is the life, especially for sun girls. ;-)

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  2. I also love the fire - best defense against a dark cold morning.

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  3. I can see you as a sun girl! Definitely. I'm more a Fall/Winter but I don't manage to bring the weather with me. Excellent post, enjoyed it!

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  4. ~Waves to sister sun girl, Laura~

    So true, Kerry!

    I love fall, Veronica, but largely for the light. Hee.

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  5. Sun Girl!

    ~crosses arms over eyes and retreats into shadows~

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  6. Fire is Will. Used appropriately, fire transforms things - it is the agent of change bent on burning away the old to make way for the new. It's one of the things you do for others, Jeffe - help cut to the heart of an issue quickly, cleanly, without a lot of smoke or drama. (A friend I know is also a fire girl, but she's big into drama - we call her a conflama.) So there ya go. And thank you so much for the RT final love. That final took me by surprise.

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  7. ~follows KAK with laser beam of light~

    Ah, Marcella - what a lovely thing to say to me. I can see that, that I cut away the smoke and drama. You totally deserve the final - Enemy Games is a terrific book that should receive all kinds of notice and love.

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  8. Way to go, Marcella! I'm rooting for you to win.

    I love your take on fire, Jeffe. To me, fire is fascinating and scary. Like tornadoes. I love looking at both, but their destructiveness scares the bejeezus out of me. But that's probably because I'm Earth.

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  9. If you're earth, B.E., then you should be afraid of nothing! But what a fascinating observation.

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  10. LOL, I admit to knowing almost nothing about the signs. And if Earths are scared of nothing, I can't be a very good Earth.

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  11. well, what moves earth? water can wear at it, wind carve it over time. otherwise, earth moves only herself - and when she does, it's a grand and terrible thing.

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