your eyes are burning holes through me
i'm gasoline
i'm burning clean

-- r.e.m., 'electrolite'

if life is a fire, the 'vital spark' i call my body heat in those inner dialogues with myself, then at our most conscious moments we should be a pure flame, burning clean. the 'vital spark' thing is something i started saying under my breath some years ago when i realised anytime between october and april i'd get cold even in a decently heated place if i sat still for too long, and i was rarely in a decently heated place. so i took a lot of hot showers to replenish the vital spark, or curled up under a thick blanket and shut myself off to the outside world so that i could be warm. it was one or the other. a lot of it was a function of being alone most of the time-- having someone else in close proximity certainly helps quite a bit. it got to the point where, and this is either sad or as fond a winter memory as one can craft when alone on a long, cold night, anytime i had to go out to shovel during a snowstorm i'd load up on vodka first so the snowflakes would be even more swirly dancey against the black sky and yellowy glare of streetlights.

'electrolite' as a song has a lot of good ideas. putting the twentieth century to sleep: who could disagree with that? put it in an upstairs bedroom to think about what it has done, dreaming the way i have recently of every regretful thing. the ceiling below the room would sag and run with blood, because something like the past century can't be contained, no matter what the optimism quotient. sleep is not a cure-all, because not all dreams are not nightmares. not that anything i've done compares, but the point is obliquely made.

so the ideal is out of reach, by definition. our flame is never clean, but the fire itself could be considered to have a purifying effect. by adding more to it, trying to leave something more for your memory instead of brooding so on what has already taken place, the flame of continuing life perhaps cleanses some of the past as you make new mistakes to sully your flame is you move into the future. but at least they're not the same old things, even if they are. differences in degree or specifics but not in kind-- still differences. more regrets, but not precisely the same regrets. that's about as clean as we get.