Controlled Burn

burning in water, drowning in flame

It’s the middle of the desert summer. We drove back from Palm Springs after a week in Philly and everything was yellow - the desert landscape usually reflects a soft brown. Maybe greens in pockets, even as the weather gets warmer. This time of year, it’s a bright yellow that looks like it radiates heat. The dashboard reads 110 degrees, 112. We are in it now - but here, we always are.

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We watch the sun set from inside the house. The sky turns a bright yellow like the grass before it fades into an orange, then pink, then deep purple to black. The sky’s yellow haze was so alarming last week that I looked up local fires to see where the closest one was - nothing big in the area, but there are spots of controlled or uncontrolled burn all over California at various times of the year.

I thought about when we drove through Yosemite and saw smoke coming out of the valley floor. We wondered if we needed to report it, only to realize it was the first time we were close enough to see a controlled burn in action. At first it’s hard to grasp - a burn without clear boundaries, smoke in an already hot summer, fire within the heart of a suffocating valley. But it’s a perspective shift when you realize maybe once in a while, we’re meant to burn it down.

“Our kind of people never used the plow, they never used to grub up the ground, they never used to sow anything except tobacco. All they used to do was to burn the brush, so that some good things will grow up. They do not set fire for nothing, it is for something that they set fire for.”¹

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Hot yoga in the summer is not for the faint of heart. In class the other week we raised the studio temperature to 103. That level of heat made 98 outside after class feel refreshing. Only women attended the class - we were a room of ecstatic energy.

When I’m hot, I sweat out of every pore on my body.

It drops into my eyes from my forehead and trying to wipe the sweat away with an arm only introduces more sweat onto my face, into my eyes, into my mouth. Some days it tastes putrid and toxic, like vomit. I want to spit onto my mat.

The moisture causes skin to peel off of my feet in little ribbons. My feet have permanently changed shape and dexterity from years of practice and the callouses continue to grow, then shed, then grow back, especially in the summer. My raw feet step in puddles of sweat and leave footprints on the floor of the studio. I’m dry by the time I get to my car with only salt remaining on my skin.

“Discipline allows for freedom,” my teacher says. I succumb to the sweat and the snot and the fire.

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We were walking back to my sister’s house from the bar without AC and decided if each of us would be a satanist, an anarchist or a nihilist like in the song.

“Satanist,” I said, and Anna agreed for herself. “Though I could be really good at caring about nothing,” she said. I used to aspire to be a nihilist, or had nihilistic feelings when I was younger that I didn’t realize were a legitimate school of thought. It seems like a rite of passage to learn the word as a teenager and want to take it on. A strong belief that nothing matters, nothing has meaning… a paradox in and of itself. Or maybe when I was younger, it felt safer to stray from meaning, to stay away from the potential that our actions have a greater significance or effect, a greater meaning, than I wanted responsibility for.

We talked about nihilism’s role in the formation of punk, which is what I associate nihilism with the most. The short songs with simple lyrics, spitting at the band on stage and the band spitting back. Raw energy trying to find its home and typically landing on the audience. Punk was all a display of rejecting current norms and expectations, which is a tenant of nihilism, but we forget punk also replaces the old meaning with something new and potentially better: advocacy, fights for equality, fierce individuality.

I think that’s the point. It might make it (life) feel more manageable to heavily reject the old meaning. If we’re able to claim that none of it matters, it’s that much easier when the time comes to burn it all down.

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I went to the local astrologist to glean insights on my soul’s trajectory and why I don’t associate with being a Pisces despite being a Pisces Sun and Rising. I associate most with my Moon sign - Aries. Naturally, a fire sign. I blame my hair. Or thank it.

I learned that the Sun was directly on the horizon as I entered this world. I learned about my 4 year Saturn return and its ripple effects. I learned about my natural gifts and the potential battles ahead of me from my predetermined destiny. How I can choose to walk through it all… when to fan the flames. When to squelch them.

We talked about the Temperance card in tarot, the one that falls out of the deck at my feet and always wants to show up when I’m not ready to hear her messages to calm down. A card that brings in the energy of the Sun but also a card of alchemy and finding the exactly perfect balance. A card asking me to step away from extremes, which is hard to do when I live in an extreme environment. Especially when I’m a fiery person, which my birth chart showed again and again.

It’s summer in the desert. The extremes are what make the alchemy possible and allow for our transformations to occur. There is a reason, a something, to set the fire for. When we burn it all down, the meaning isn’t found in the ashes. It was in the flames.

Love and light,
Lily

P.S. it’s snake season

1. Consultant from the Karuk tribe, from Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians (compiled and edited by Thomas C. Blackburn and Kat Anderson)