easter campfires

If you read this sad little column (put a bird on it ,Portlandia) and you skip the comments section, well, you really are missing the best in life. Those of us who thrive here in the blogosphere, or who once-thrived and now make guest appearances due to interlopers such as facebook stealing our thunder which wasn't so much thunder as rumbling in the distance, grumbling, more like it -- there remains a "campfire-ness" about us, around which we tell our timeless and irreverent stories, dropping in and out of topic and tantrum, past and present.

Ken Kesey said it would be like this. I saw him once in Ashland, learned at his feet. I signed up to learn about writing, which, some 60K in hindsight, cannot be so much taught as chased after and subdued (ruined). What I learned is that Kesey was a great storyteller, a great liar -- as I am, as any fiction writer is -- and when he referred to the internet as a campfire, I couldn't imagine the psychosocial detachedment that would make it seem so.

I know campfires like the back of my hand: the stink of old charcoal and of bootleather left too close to the campfire to dry. I own camping implements in triplicate. I love sleeping beyond the lights of the city, in campgrounds of likeminded souls who want to be alone, together. Except for those who bring radios. I hate them.

So, on this Easter Day, as I celebrate a passe faith with coconut anglefood cake, ham and chocolate bunnies, I am grateful for campfires, and for those who sit around them with me, wherever you are.