What (people aside) would you save if your house burnt down?
As Cocteau once answered to this exact same question: “The Fire”.
Today’s Question by the reader : Alain
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I would save my dog,is a friend who cant talk…
Fire represents the creativity and passion that all intellectual and emotional beings have!
Great answer :)
Robin and Marci, I love both your answers – yes, perhaps the fire can save us and we can start anew! Serendipity (one of my favourite words!)
Laudy
Everything dear to me, I hold in memory and heart. I would have to save myself!…*
P.S. I don’t sleep naked either, just incase there is a fire!!*
dear paulo, if i was in such an unpleasant situation of seeing my house into flames, i would try to “save” my memories. I believe that everything in our lives has a certain reason for beeing done and it helps us to make the step which will get us closer to our dreams. Even the burning of my house has to teach me something, to help me getting stronger or help me to appreciate the moments i had in there. so i come to agree with Robin and say that this will be my opportunity to start anew!!
Clever answer Robin.
i hope it will never get on fire…. but i would save only my family and if i have any pets at home,,,, anythig else any material issue wouldnt matter to me in a bad moment!!!
Once again i love this short answer that says volumes. . .
Paulo i would have to agree with you. . .but am also contemplating, perhaps we do not save the fire, but rather the fire saves us?. . .Jai Ma. . .
Hiya Paul,
I’ve never seen Forrest Gump either!
But I do recommend both Pratchett and Golding to read. Pratchett especially, lots of wisdom and humour there and real humaity even among the monsters. Will try to keep my balance, ta!
Thelma, I’d go for the plants because as living beings who can’t run, they need to escape and me to help them. Clothes and shoes, nah, all can be replaced. I never sleep naked in case I sleep walk (have done so and I sometimes check for mud on my feet in the morning!) so I’d be decent to walk out without sending people away blushing!!
Dear Viv, what if you could go back again … take some clothes and shoes as well….?
Dear Paul from Austria, I think no … cat would just sit there and expect us to save her!! She would have sensed it and ran away taking her … kittens with her..;]
Have a nice evening all of you.
LOVE,
Thelma
And to answer the question literally, I’d take my dog and my two cats, assuming the rest of the family had already gotten out. I’d also take my memory stick and my photos.
if I could go back in again, I’d take my plants too!
Hi Paul,
I got the play on words, certainly. But it wasn’t as well phrased as it might have been. But I was thinking of the question asked in Masquerade by Terry Pratchett; “What would you take out of a burning building?” which was used as a way of assessing character. The “hero” who was considered simple in the Forrest gump way, answered, The fire.
And fire doesn’t need saving unless like the people in Golding’s The Inheritors it can’t be easily recreated.
So despite understanding the play on words, I still don’t feel it makes sense.
cheers,
Viv
Mr. Coelho, thank you for this forum to participate in, I am an advid fan. If my house burnt down there would be nothing for me to save, it would be my opportunity to start anew.
Oh ok Thank you Viv!!! Now it makes sense!!!
So, if I do spontaneously combust, the fire is the important thing – just save the fire within…let the rest go (with a grin)!
Makes me think of the legend of the Phoenix. Isn’t this what the Phoenix bird does – save the fire and let the rest burn?
Again, how poignant! And another connection I hadn’t made until this very moment, not until reading your answer to this question, dear Paulo. I am about to get another tattoo. Already took the artwork to the artist for work-up, and he’s already called to tell me it’s ready. Just waiting now for my income tax return, as it is a rather big investment for me. I know I’ve talked about tattoos on this blog before. My tattoos – this will be my third – are not merely artwork or body “adornment” to me. Each marks a monumental turning point in my life, like a sign-post planted at a road-fork in my spiritual journey. They are a little like talismans, a little like ceremonies or private initiations. They are a lot like turning the soul – my soul – in-side out at a certain point in time, to reveal visually, its manifestation at that stage in its evolution. This tattoo, the one I am about to get, is of a Phoenix, catching fire and ascending from its own ashes. As the legend says, this is a rare event, an occasion that comes along once in only so many hundreds or thousands of years. I drew the bird up myself – a composite of numerous illustrations I’d seen of the Phoenician Phoenix, the Russian Firebird, the Chinese FengHuang, the Egyptian Bennu, the Persian Simurgh. The image is deeply meaningful to me, and at this particular moment in my life, seems to encapsulate and convey the very essence of who I am, or perhaps more accurately, what I am becoming.
So, your concept of “saving the fire” and letting the rest go strikes a chord with me right now like no other. That is precisely what I am doing, though I could not explain it to you in words if I were given the space of an entire book. The visual form is the closest simulation I can reach to the actual experience. Perhaps I’ll post a pic to share when it is done, though it won’t be soon. I was told by the artist that it will take weeks, perhaps months to complete. I thought, assumed, that it would be like the others – that I’d just run down to the studio with my art in hand and it would be done in a couple of hours. Not so this time!
My first inclination was to struggle against this declaration, to say, “No, I want it done now, and all at once – today!” But I have learned enough to know that there there is indeed a link between the physical and spiritual realm – the one mirrors the other, and vice versa. So, I just smiled and thought to myself, “It is as it should be.” the artist didn’t say that he couldn’t do it, or that it couldn’t be done. He just said that it was very complex and, to be done right, would take some time. The message I understood from this was that the process I am presently going through on a spiritual level – the process I seek to mirror in this image – is also “very complex” and will “take some time” before it is complete. If I rush it – if it could be rushed at all – the result would be less than what I’d hoped for, less than the full potential inherently promised within the experience itself.
As I sit here now in my reading chair, which is strategically positioned to give me view of this one lovely tree where hangs a bird-feeder, I see that this tree, too, is bursting into flames. Here, in the sub-tropics, Spring is already on its way. I’m not sure what kind of tree it is, but every year it is the same: the first signs of life to burst through are these flaming red leaves, delicate as fairies’ wings and deep red as the crimson that flows through our veins. Eventually they will unfold and turn green. But for now they are a tower of flame, right outside my reading-room window. To this room, only a few days ago, I added a daybed, which sits across from my reading chair – just in case I feel more like lounging than sitting bolt upright. The cover I chose for that daybed – again without thinking consciously anything at all – is a flaming orange satin quilt, all spider-webbed with equally vivid threads. When stare at it, it is like gazing into a fire. On it are white pillows, embroidered with flaming bright flowers which seem to simulate some Persian design. And yet one other, smaller pillow – also orange, silk, imprinted with the swirling feathers of some unseen bird.
Life is ever so interesting! So exquisite, as we just sit back and watch it unfold.
sorry but that doesn’t make any sense.
If you take the fire OUT of the house, the whole house will be saved.
I think the times we are going through now can be compared to “The Fire”. All of us are going to be changed by it. I’ve been comparing it The Titanic. If I was on the ship, I’d want to stay in the ball room, dancing to the music, blocking out the sirens, drinking champagne and still laughing. What is inside us carries us through. Fire breathes Faith.
In Cyprus in July, 1974, many people have ran away from the homes due to the Turkish invasion, just with their clothes they were wearing.
Many of them after many years have managed to get some old photos from their homes, their past! Their memories on paper…
For each one of us there are articles carrying with them our history and memories. I think we need them, so that we will feel in touch ..
LOVE,
Thelma
I would save my dog,is a friend who cant talk…
the fire and the passion
Your response, wich is also the Cocteau’s response, saunds to me like words pronounced by Zorba the Greek dancing on the ruins of his crashed house :)
Hi,Mr Coehlo, I’m Maya, from Bulgaria. I have read all of your books transletted in bulgarian and in italian language. I’m expecting impatient the new one, Winners stands alone. I wish you than the source of your inspiration remain already fresh and plentiful, we all need it.