JOY ALONG THE WAY: BRINGING TOGETHER OF ALL SENSES TO START A FIRE

I don't remember who showed my sister, Lou, and me how to make a fire on a sunshiny day with the glass lens removed from a flashlight. I'm sure it wasn't any of the adults in the family for we had frequent conferences about being careful with fire. The house, barn, chicken house and other assorted buildings were all wooden, old and dry and out of the reach of any fire department. But, someone did show us. Probably some school classmates.

In those innocent days, carrying a removed flashlight lens in one's pocket might be likened to carrying a gun or knife today. Not that one intended to kill with it, but to mischievously start a fire in the remote rural territories, for fun or experiment, could easily lead to disaster.

Being instructed in this manner of fire starting introduced me to the word, focus. "You've got to hold the glass so that the sun's rays strike it, right here, on the same spot all the time so that the collected condensed heat will be hot enough to burn whatever you focus it on," we were told.

Fascination with that word, focus, and what one could achieve with it has held up for me all these years.

There are so many distractions in the world today it is really hard to bring all one's senses and mental faculties together and hold them there long enough to "start a fire." Someone has said more eloquently, "be all there at all times."

I've always been amazed by students who have to have music or TV on when they are studying. When I remark about it, pointing out their attention to the study isn't focused because of the sound, I'm told by such students that quiet has a sound too. My amazement grows more pronounced.

So, the art of focusing is different for different people. For me, it works something like this: Suppose I want to drive a nail into some wooden place so that it doesn't bend in any direction but goes straight "home" to where I propose to send it. I do not want any telephones ringing to make me mis-hit the head of the nail or disrupt my rhythm. I don't want anything baking in the oven I have to keep my mind on. I want this right amount of light on the nail head, the right size and heft of the hammer, my spectacles to be clean. All this to drive a nail, you laugh. Yes, that's my definition of focus: to drive nail. To the carpenter it might be different.

Now, let me propose a quasi-dichotomy. Suppose one wants to be distracted, say on a beautiful spring day when leaves are uncurling, birds are singing, viburnum is spilling its perfume, can one be focused on distraction?

Am I tearing down my premise? I think Thoreau went out for a walk to have his attention focused on a number of things, laying himself open to stimuli when he says, This is such a delicate evening when the whole body is one sense and imbibes delight through every pore ... as I walk along the stony shore of the pond (Walden) ... the bull frogs trumps to usher in the night and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind over the waters ... and poplar leaves almost take my breath away ...'

Edna St. Vincent Millay says, O', world, I cannot hold thee close enough ... thy winds, thy wide gray skies, thy mists ... thy woods all but cry with color ... here such a peace is ... my soul is all but out of me ...'

Were not Thoreau and Millay focusing on being distracted? Being all there to bring all elements together to ignite a fire of prose and poetry? My thesis seems to hold up.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.