I've been completely out of touch with world news & am horrified & saddened
by the news of bushfires ravaging the Australian countryside, as described
by Josephine & others, destroying both plant & animal life (& human?), even
approaching Sydney. What is known about the causes or instigators of these
fires? *Pure pyromania, *terrorism or a profit motive of some kind? Your
various contributions have left this rather unclear; perhaps there is no
clarity as yet.
In my wild & woolly youth I had a friend who turned out to be a pyromaniac,
& I've often wondered what became of him, whether he's still indulging in
little excursions of a certain nature. A roly-poly Anglican organist music
student (an Elgar-lover of course, something that at that stage I was
incapable of understanding), resolutely jovial, with a favourite
scarlet-lined black velvet jacket & as a hobby a collection of beautiful
vintage Alvis motor cars (only one of which ever actually functioned at a
time, the others languishing in various garages around Southampton), one day
he took me on a pleasant ride through the New Forest; reclining in the Alvis
purring along the more or less deserted roads, enjoying the vistas of woods
& long stretches of scrub punctuated by small copses & populated by the
occasional straggle of ponies, I was intrigued when my friend stopped the
car near one such copse & beckoned me to follow him towards it, with an air
of barely suppressed glee that suffused his rotund visage with an even
deeper pinkness. I must admit that my curiosity as he explained his purpose
& lit the match under the brush within the confines of the small circle of
trees completely overwhelmed any scruples I may have had regarding the
immorality & danger of such an enterprise, so I stood back enjoying the
spectacle of the roaring consuming flames with him as he giggled & hopped
orgiastically around the pyre, before my innate caution & fear of
apprehension by the forces of law & order led me to drag him protesting back
to the automobile, in which we made our escape. I believe his choice of
copse was well-judged, the surrounding land being relatively bare so that a
forest fire did not, as far as I know, eventuate. We never talked about it
except for the humourous joshing that served as human intercourse in those
times (early 60s university life) of barbarous innocence. I feel sure,
though, that it was my own show of quasi-anarchist & pseudo-bohemian
unconventionality that impelled him to take me along, may even have inspired
him to break out in such a way from his presumably stifling religious
background, though he must surely have done similar things before, if on a
smaller scale. I do think that sexual repression was involved, though not to
the extent that orgasm actually occurred during the escapade. I tend to
think that he went on to become a respected member of the community
(northern) to which he returned after graduation, as a music teacher &
church organist perhaps ~ I had no further contact with him, it being an
idiosyncrasy of mine almost invariably to abandon friendships at new
junctures of my life. _Fire walk with me_ is the sub-title of David Lynch's
_Twin Peaks_ movie, it occurs to me now. This all says something about the
interaction of mainly unconscious forces, though I'm not sure exactly what.
Martin
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