The bar: modern day\u2019s answer to a philosophical need.\u00c2\u00a0 Plans are plotted, relationships dissected, futures thwarted, pasts forgotten, and friends made, met, or lost.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s this one bar, on a back road behind a back road, in a town that has no business calling itself a city, but does, she and I met for a drink.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t tell you much about her.\u00c2\u00a0 Won\u2019t tell you her name.\u00c2\u00a0 I can say she was blonde, but that will only make you think things about her that aren\u2019t necessarily true.\u00c2\u00a0 Stereotypes are often forged and broken at bars.\u00c2\u00a0 I can tell you she got a beer I\u2019d never heard of that a little too bitter for my tastes.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t quite midnight when we got there.\u00c2\u00a0 We were neither lovers nor long-time friends, but we\u2019d met some time before.\u00c2\u00a0 There were things to discuss, philosophical things, involving creativity and history and architecture and circuses, and ocean-dwelling creatures big and small.\u00c2\u00a0 We talked about blood, real and fake.\u00c2\u00a0 We talked about prisons and schools and banks and crabapple trees, which I still don\u2019t believe exist.<\/p>\n
(As an aside, I also don\u2019t believe in snow anymore, despite having lived through blizzards and nor\u2019easters, despite having built snow forts and snowmen, despite waving my arms to make snow angels, and despite the absolute existence of hot chocolate.)<\/p>\n
We probably had one drink too many, but there\u2019s nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n
This was the type of bar that had tables out front, and an area cordoned off from the rest of the street.\u00c2\u00a0 This was a place that faced three-story row houses with balconies.\u00c2\u00a0 People watched us from those balconies, protected by their own silhouettes.<\/p>\n
A crowd gathered outside.\u00c2\u00a0 A man in unnecessary spectacles read from a small black book.\u00c2\u00a0 He probably thought he looked the part.\u00c2\u00a0 He had the beard.\u00c2\u00a0 He read loudly, though he stumbled on a few words, and introduced the first of the acts we were to see.\u00c2\u00a0 At first, I thought he was a mere mad poet, one of a type often found outside such establishments.\u00c2\u00a0 But when he finally stepped out of our way so we could pass, there was the girl with the fire.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not an everyday thing, girls with fire.<\/p>\n
She held balls of fire on the end of yard-long chains, and with these balls of fire she began to dance.\u00c2\u00a0 She swung the flames.\u00c2\u00a0 Spun with them.\u00c2\u00a0 Blazed trails through the midnight.<\/p>\n
(As an aside, I\u2019ve seen girls dance with many a thing in my time, and in many a place, but never before with flames in the middle of a back road in front of a dive bar.)<\/p>\n
The only singing was the swoosh of flames as she twirled them about her.\u00c2\u00a0 Up, over, all around, and briefly I wondered if perhaps it was the flames guiding her movement.<\/p>\n
And then, as suddenly as it had started, it was over, the flames were doused, the girl barely bowed and instead retreated to the very corner of the bar\u2019s cordoned off section of sidewalk.<\/p>\n
The girl with whom I had shared drinks looked at me.\u00c2\u00a0 I asked, \u201cAre you ready?\u201d\u00c2\u00a0 She was, and we left.\u00c2\u00a0 On the way, bar and fire behind us, I asked, \u201cWhat kind of future do you think a girl\u2019s got in fire twirling?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEasy,\u201d she answered.\u00c2\u00a0 \u201cShe can become an accountant or a lawyer or a salesman, maybe a nurse, maybe a singer in a band.\u00c2\u00a0 A girl who twirls fire, she can be anything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The bar: modern day\u2019s answer to a philosophical need.\u00c2\u00a0 Plans are plotted, relationships dissected, futures thwarted, pasts forgotten, and friends made, met, or lost. There\u2019s […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,6,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}