Sun

 Today I woke up curious about energy. Someone once pointed out to me firewood, logs, are potential energy, carbon, that is useful when burned, creating heat. Trapped life, potential heat. Stasis. I don't have the words to explore these concepts.. is it essential to have the words? I felt the sun on my face while pouring the hot coffee grounds into the compost. The heat of both came from the same source. The heat of the coffee grounds coming from the water heater, the water heater connected to a power grid, the power station, what? Towers of sizzling wires and spirals and cords and poles, metal fortress at the edge of town? And that power station, where is the burning of fossil fuels, and fossil fuels, carbon trapped in the heart of the earth once organic life compressed into a sludge. Millions of years of sun gifted life turned over in the enormous compost pile of the earth? I started texting someone these thoughts, Danny, because he had been in physics and chemistry classes and liked these things. I just wanted more words to explore these concepts. I'm not looking for answers... I'm looking for exploration. Tools to unlock. Feeling the heat of the sun on my face, knowing every motion on this earth sources it's movement from this source. There's a plant in my bathroom slowly dying. It can't go outside because the cold. I should put it near a window. Do humans need sun? Like, if we had all our needs met me but existed Inside (a word indicating separation from the sun I suppose) what would happen? Would we flake away? Melt away? Become hardened, softened?
The sun comes through the window in increments. The cat soaks it up. What kind of exchange is this? A softening?
When I was going hard for Lent a few years back Tyler had told me how the premise of the 40-days of fasting was a Babylonian pagan commemoration of a sun-god. 40 days for the 40 years he was alive it is said. A 40-year-god is fascinating but I understand the sun-worship element. Religion, faith? Collective worship, sacrifice around the elements, came from agrarian cultures I was told. A fact devoid of a named source, so perhaps made up. Why don't we worship the sun anymore? Deities as well have been extracted and converted from their original source into something else. The source of all things is the sun, but from that source comes all the lore. And the lore is so much more interesting. Nick pointed out once the Bible is just a series of recommendations around agriculture. More of a guide to growing that extends to a guide to living. I truly only love the mustard seed quote, which was reiterated by Peeter and made into a theme at one point. "If you have faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it would move. Nothing would be impossible." Matthew 17:20
My gaze moves over to the tapered candles on the dining room table, almost spend, their frail black wicks emerging from the white. What is wax? Is it oil? The roses in the vase, do their leaves still photosynthesize? The bulb inside the lamp, a careful unwavering flame, is it the light of the sun? A replication? An abomination? Is a bulb or a candle or the firewood a false god, having the ability to defy the night, the darkness, the Inside? The sun does not feel for us.. yet we feel for it. We pull at the strands of her long hair, forever braiding the alchemy of her light into something of use. We fight and fuck by her command. We form relationships completely one-sided and honestly who fucking cares. Why not? Us, the humming surface alive, competing for her attention. Even in our depths, acting as potential fuel, flares in the Kuwaiti oil fields. Volcanoes? Are volcanoes an exception? Does the earth produce it's own heat devoid of organic life, devoid of the suns contribution. Finding plot-holes in my own curiosity... other gods emerge, which is to indicate separation. Magma, as a source of the earth's hearth - Fuel, trapped carbon? As a source of the sun's hearth. 
As I type my hands are losing circulation. Yesterday they turned yellow with brief exposure to the winter. What was  doing that required exposure? I'm an indoor cat. I don't like being cold. I was walking around the property of a house I was cat-sitting for and holding my journal. I know I have to remember to move, to curate circulation, to be exposed. Practice exposure. Get acclimated. I have not risen to the challenge yet this winter. Will I become a husk? Or a blob? The heating unit in my apartment exhales its white nose, keeping me soft. Trapped energy converted into circulation. I don't have the words for it, but it doesn't matter.

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