Fire Combustion Quotes

Part of me wanted to run away from him screaming, Fire! A more reckless part was tempted to see how close I could get without... combusting.

Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle would be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.

Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.

Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong naming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition ; there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.

She could be a fire hazard. Maybe we should remove her from the ship before she spontaneously combusts.

We are all fuel. We are born, and we burn, some of us more quickly than others. There are different kinds of combustion. But not to burn, never to catch fire at all, that would be the sad life, wouldn’t it?

Success is not due to spontaneous combustion. You have to set yourself on fire.

Wars do not combust without warning. They begin as little fires over the horizon. Wars approach. A wise man watches for the smoke, and prepares to vacate the neighborhood just like Ayrs and Jocasta. My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched.

He wasn’t steaming anymore, but the incident on the ice bridge had really freaked Jason out. Leo hadn’t seemed to realize that he had smoke coming out his ears and flames dancing through his hair. If Leo started spontaneously combusting every time he got excited, they were going to have a tough time taking him anywhere. Jason imagined trying to get food at a restaurant. I’ll have a cheeseburger and—Ahhh! My friend’s on fire! Get me a bucket!

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion; you must set yourself on fire.

This is not planet Earth as we found it. This is a new place—a fire planet we have made, with an atmosphere more conducive to combustion than at any time in the past 3 million years.

On a dry day fire is set to this combustible refuse, which sweeps over the field, leaving it bare and clean, and ready for the hoes. The earth is loosened about the roots of the old stubble, and in process of time another crop springs up from the last year’s seed. It is the same the year following; but the third year the seed has exhausted its strength, and the field must be ploughed and planted again. The second year the cane is sweeter and yields more than the first, and the third year more than the second.

Had they both become unwilling participants in some sort of mad scientist’s chemistry experiment to combine Man A with Woman B to see how quickly they’d combust?

...somewhere forest fires rage and somewhere else something moves beneath dark waters and somewhere blood appears in the hallway of the home of some old couple who aren’t bleeding and somewhere someone else spontaneously self-combusts and somehow all the mysteries of this world as I know it offer me comfort and I don’t know beans about heaven and hell and somehow all that stuff is no longer an issue and at the moment I’m a sixteen-foot-tall five-hundred-and-forty-eight-pound man inside this six-foot body and all i can feel is the pressure all I can feel is the pressure and the need for release.

Mastery begins when formal education ends. Find the topic that sets your heart on fire. Then combust.

Just imagine how you’ll feel when we’re home,” he whispers. “I can’t wait to get you home.” “It will be your fault if I combust here on the seventy-sixth floor,” I mutter through gritted teeth. “Oh, Anastasia. We’d find a way to put the fire out,” he says, grinning salaciously at me.

We all have scars. Some are visible. Some aren’t. In the end, they represent the fact that you’re stronger now than whatever tried to hurt you. For you, it just means that you’re stronger than the fire.

Reason is imprisoned here, and passions run wild. Like the fires of the prairie, once lighted, they are at the mercy of every wind, and must burn, till they have consumed all that is combustible within their remorseless grasp.

I have spoken in tongues of fire. I have torn whole towns in two for love. I have courted insanity, crouching in the gap between what this moment feels like (smoldering fire fanned into the most logical flames) and how it looks to other people (the psychotic break of spontaneous combustion). I can feel the sensation of being called CRAZY when you feel WOUNDED and DESPERATE.

The existence of birds demonstrated that heavier-than-air flight was physically possible and prompted efforts to build flying machines. Yet the first functioning airplanes did not flap their wings. The jury is out on whether machine intelligence will be like flight, which humans achieved through an artificial mechanism, or like combustion, which we initially mastered by copying naturally occurring fires.

The most likely victim of spontaneous human combustion is a solitary woman, 75 percent of all known cases of SHC are women. I tell her that some people believe that arsonist poltergeists are to blame, that the spirits of firestarters roam the cities setting souls on fire.

even a scientist can’t help thinking of the Periodic Table as a zoo of one-of-a-kind animals conceived by Dr. Seuss. How else could we believe that sodium is a poisonous, reactive metal that you can cut with a butter-knife, while pure chlorine is a smelly, deadly gas, yet when added together make sodium chloride, a harmless, biologically essential compound better known as table salt? Or how about hydrogen and oxygen? One is an explosive gas, and the other promotes violent combustion, yet the two combined make liquid water, which puts out fires.

Wars do not combust without warning. They begin as little fires over the horizon. Wars approach. A wise man watches for the smoke, and prepares to vacate the neighborhood, just like Ayrs and Jocasta. My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched.

Today, if nothing else, at least I can incinerate these humans with fire from their internal combustion engines and appease your spirit with their screams.

I didn't have a choice." "Are you saying...What are you saying?" Is he...could he be talking about me? He runs a hand through his hair. I've never seen him this emotional before. He's always so controlled, so sure of himself. "I'm saying you're what I want, Emma. I'm saying I'm in love with you." He steps forward and lifts his hand to my cheek, blazing a line of fire with his fingertips as they trace down to my mouth. "How do you think it would make me feel to see you with Grom?" he whispers. "Like someone ripped my heart out and put it through Rachel's meat grinder, that's how. Probably worse. It would probably kill me. Emma, please don't cry." I throw my hands in the air. "Don't cry? Are you serious? Why did you come here, Galen? Did you think it would make me feel better to know that you do love me, but that it still won't work out? That I still have to mate with Grom for the greater good? Don't you tell me not to cry, Galen! I...c...c...can't h...h...help-" The waterworks soak me. Galen looks at me, hands by his side, helpless as a trapped crab. I'm bordering on hyperventilation, and pretty soon I'll start hiccupping. This is too much. His expression is so severe, it looks like he's in physical pain. "Emma," he breathes. "Emma, does this mean you feel the same way? Do you care for me at all?" I laugh, but it sounds sharper than I intended, because of a hiccup. "What does it matter how I feel, Galen? I think we pretty much covered why. No need to rehash things, right?" "It matters, Emma." He grabs my hand and pulls me to him again. "Tell me right now. Do you care for me?" "If you can't tell that I'm stupid in love with you, Galen, then you aren't a very good ambassador for the hum-" His mouth covers mine, cutting me off. This kiss isn't gentle like the first one. It's definitely not sweet. It's rough, demanding, searching. And disorienting. There's not a part of me that isn't melting against Galen, not a part that isn't combusting with his fevered touch. I accidentally moan into his lips. He takes it for his cue to lift me off my feet, to pull me up to his height for more leverage. I take his groan for my cue to kiss him harder. He ignores his cell phone ringing in his pocket. I ignore the rest of the universe. Even when headlights approach, I'm willing to overlook their intrusion and keep kissing. But, prince that he is, Galen is a little more refined than me at this moment. He gently pries his lips from mine and sets me down. His smile is both intoxicated and intoxicating. "We still need to talk." "Right," I say, but I'm shaking my head. He laughs. "I didn't come all the way to Atlantic City to make you cry." "I'm not crying." I lean into him again. He doesn't refuse my lips, but he doesn't do them justice either, planting a measly little kiss on them before stepping back.

As night deepened all he could see was the shifting line of fire, like some malfunction in the wiring of the world itself, as if the very night had combusted and was creeping incrementally toward him.

Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition; there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.

dioxide. Result? Fire. I will credit my father for two things: he could conjure a spontaneous combustion whenever he needed a convenient sign from God.” She shook her head. “Boy, did we go through the pistachios.

The stirring up of conflict is a Luciferian virtue in the true sense of the word. Conflict engenders fire, the fire of affects and emotions, and like every other fire it has two aspects, that of combustion and that of creating light. On the one hand, emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth brings everything into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities to ashes (omnes superfluitates comburit). But on the other hand, emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion.

Susan Baker,' she says to me, 'I hope you never light a fire with coal-oil. Or leave oily rags lying around, Susan. They have been known to cause spontaneous combustion in less than an hour. How would you like to stand and watch this house burn down, Susan, knowing it was your fault?' Well, Miss Dew dear, I had my laugh on her over that. It was that very night she set her curtains on fire and the yells of her are ringing in my ears yet.

Uber was impossible without the smartphone, which itself was enabled by GPS, which was enabled by satellites, which were enabled by rockets, which were enabled by combustion techniques, which were enabled by language and fire.

His hands remained braced on the frame above me. Hot and wet, he kissed a path down my neck that set off sparks deep in my core. My vision turned hazy, a heavy heartbeat pounding between my legs. I was a combustible ball of fire burning hotter every second.

He took the final drag of the cigarette, blew out the smoke, and threw the butt in the air. It cascaded over the gravel drive and landed, softly, in the bushes. The dry, arid desert bushes of Malibu. On a morning plagued by Santa Ana winds. In a land of scrub brush. In a town under constant threat of combustion. In an area of the country where a tiny spark could destroy acres. In a region that yearns to burn. And so, with the very best of intentions, Mick Riva walked away, having no idea he had just set fire to 28150 Cliffside Drive.

THERE HAS BEEN A SILENT DIVORCE IN THE CHURCH, SPEAKING generally, between the Word and the Spirit. When there is a divorce, sometimes the children stay with the mother, sometimes with the father. In this divorce you have those on the Word side and those on the Spirit side. What is the difference? Those on the Word side stress earnestly contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, expository preaching, sound theology, rediscovering the doctrines of the Reformation—justification by faith, sovereignty of God. Until we get back to the Word, the honor of God’s name will not be restored. What is wrong with this emphasis? Nothing. It is exactly right, in my opinion. Those on the Spirit side stress getting back to the Book of Acts, signs, wonders, and miracles, gifts of the Holy Spirit—with places being shaken at prayer meetings, get in Peter’s shadow and you are healed, lie to the Holy Spirit and you are struck dead. Until we recover the power of the Spirit, the honor of God’s name will not be restored. What is wrong with this emphasis? Nothing. It is exactly right, in my opinion. The problem is, neither will learn from the other. But if these two would come together, the simultaneous combination would mean spontaneous combustion. And if Smith Wigglesworth’s prophecy got it right, the world will be turned upside down again.

He walked against the florid banners of the fire. And the fire did not bite his flesh but caressed and engulfed him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he, too, was all appearance, that someone else was dreaming him.

It was while I was seated in an easy-chair in the street the following evening, smoking, watching the combustion of this structure, that something was suddenly born in me, something out of Hell, and I smiled a smile that never man smiled. And I said: 'I will burn: I will return to London...

No one could ever 'be' a libidinal materialist. This is a 'doctrine' that can only be suffered as an abomination, a jangling of the nerves, a combustion of articulate reason, and a nauseating rage of thought. It is a hyperlepsy of the central nervous-system, ruining the body's adaptative reginmes, and consuming its reserves in rhytmic convulsions that are not only futile, but devastating. Schopenhauer already knew that thought is medically disastrous, Nietzsche demonstrated it. An aged philosopher is either a monster of stamina or a charlatan. How long does it take to be wasted by a fire-storm?

Every now and then I am impressed with the thinking of the non-Indian. I was in Cleveland last year and got to talking with a non-Indian about American history. He said that he was really sorry about what had happened to Indians, but that there was a good reason for it. The continent had to be developed and he felt that Indians had stood in the way, and thus had had to be removed. “After all,” he remarked, “what did you do with the land when you had it?” I didn’t understand him until later when I discovered that the Cuyahoga River running through Cleveland is inflammable. So many combustible pollutants are dumped into the river that the inhabitants have to take special precautions during the summer to avoid setting it on fire. After reviewing the argument of my non-Indian friend I decided that he was probably correct. Whites had made better use of the land. How many Indians could have thought of creating an inflammable river?

The next thing I knew Jamie was in my lap wrapping her arms around my neck as if she planned on keeping me hostage for eternity. If that were the case, bring on the shackles babe, because no way was I going to be the one to end this epic kiss. I felt like I was on fire—like warm energy was spilling out of Jamie, washing over me and causing all my hair to stand on end. I started shaking—just a slight tremor in my hands at first, but it quickly progressed to violent, uncontrollable shivers. The energy was filling my body so full I thought I’d literally burst apart at my seams. Then, when I was ready to combust Jamie finally stilled. She pulled her face back and smiled at me with a cool expression, but I know she was affected as I was. I wasn’t the only one breathing hard and shaking. “You can keep the gum,” she said, trying to mask her feelings with a smirk. She couldn’t quite manage it though. Her eyes were bright and full of disbelief. She was as surprised as I was. She climbed off me and with a wink said, “Have fun at the dance.” And then she was gone. She walked out of the cafeteria as if that hadn’t just happened. As if she hadn’t just completely wrecked me. I had no idea if what I felt meant we were soul mates or something crazy like that, but I knew two things for certain. One: Jamie Baker wasn’t the ice queen she pretended to be. And two: I wanted her more than anything I’d ever wanted in my entire life. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be easy, but I knew deep down in my gut it would be worth it. “Game on, Ice Queen,” I muttered as I stumbled back over to Mike to rub my victory in his face. “You’re already mine. You just don’t know it yet.

I head to the bathroom. I wash my face, brush my teeth, and try to put the evening behind me. Look, it’s not hard to turn down a drunk girl, because that’s just wrong. But it was hard, for some unknown fucking reason, to turn down her. Those things she was saying. Those wicked, dirty words falling from her red lips. They torched a path up my body. They stirred something inside me. Some wish. Some want. That kiss on the street was one thing. The session on her couch was entirely another. But the cab was a whole new wrinkle. She just combusted, like a rocket of lust, firing off in every direction, jumping me, climbing me, grinding on me. I wanted it all. I wanted her. I still do.

Awakening’ is the keystone and the symbol of the whole Buddhist ascesis: to think that ‘awakening’ and ‘nothingness’ can be equivalent is an extravagance that should be obvious to everyone. Nor should the notion of ‘vanishing,’ applied in a well-known simile of nibbāna to the fire that disappears when the flame is extinguished, be a source of misconception. It has been said with justice that, in similes of this sort, one must always have in mind the general Indo-Aryan concept that indicates that the extinguishing of the fire is not its annihilation, but its return to the invisible, pure, supersensible state in which it was before it manifested itself through a combustible in a given place and in given circumstances.

You burn down an entire town, and don’t even invoke me?” an angry female voice asked from behind me. “I didn’t think you’d be interested,” I shrugged, bending back to my work. “It was a huge whopping fire!” she snorted. “I’m a fire goddess! That’s my primal function! Flaming hells, you were using thermite! Thermite!” she repeated. “How would I not be interested?” “Did no one else invoke you?” I asked, as I continued to work. “Certainly! Hundreds did! There was a fire elemental rolling around in there for a while! I showed up personally! But did my most famous lay worshipper bother to invoke me, and share the exquisite bliss of thousands of degrees of pure combustible magic? Minalan!” she pleaded. “Are you losing interest in me?” “Now, now,” I chuckled, “the truth is I was just busy. Astyral was showing off, and I had to give him my full attention. Having a pretty goddess around, making sex noises while she watched the blaze, might have been distracting.” “I don’t make sex noises!” she declared, defensively. “I . . . I just . . I’m a fire goddess, it’s what I do!” she said, nearly whining.

Perhaps our and Gaia’s greatest error was the conscious abuse of fire. Cooking meat over a wood fire may have been acceptable, but the deliberate destruction of whole ecosystems by fire merely to drive out the animals within was surely our first great sin against the living Earth. It has haunted us ever since and combustion could now be our auto da fé, and the cause of our extinction.

The Incas were right to worship the sun, Father. God is fire. Combustion is the one inarguable blessing. A tree, oil, coal, a man, a civilization, a soul. They've all got to burn sometime. The warmth made by their passing may be the salvation of others. The ultimate value of the Bible, the Constitution, or any work of literature, really, is that they all burn very well, and for a while they keep back the cold.

The Incas were right to worship the sun, Father,” the Fireman said to Father Storey. “God is fire. Combustion is the one inarguable blessing. A tree, oil, coal, a man, a civilization, a soul. They’ve all got to burn sometime. The warmth made by their passing may be the salvation of others. The ultimate value of the Bible, or the Constitution, or any work of literature, really, is that they all burn very well, and for a while they keep back the cold.

For instance, that some terrestrial body take fire in the higher regions of the air and fall to the earth, is caused by some heavenly power: again, that there be on the surface of the earth some combustible matter, is reducible to some heavenly principle. But that the burning body should alight on this matter and set fire to it, is not caused by a heavenly body, but is accidental. Consequently not all the effects of heavenly bodies result of necessity.

She said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, words, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off those explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted. If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold, and defenseless, is capable of providing that food. That's why it's important to keep your distance from people who have frigid breath. Just their presence can put out the most intense fire, with results we're familiar with. If we stay a good distance away from those people, it's easier to protect ourselves from being extinguished.

In 2008, some of the scientists who modeled the original 1983 nuclear winter scenario investigated the likely result of a theoretical regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan, a war they postulated to involve only 100 Hiroshima-scale nuclear weapons, yielding a total of only 1.5 megatons—no more than the yield of some single warheads in the U.S. and Russian arsenals. They were shocked to discover that because such an exchange would inevitably be targeted on cities filled with combustible materials, the resulting firestorms would inject massive volumes of black smoke into the upper atmosphere which would spread around the world, cooling the earth long enough and sufficiently to produce worldwide agricultural collapse. Twenty million prompt deaths from blast, fire, and radiation, Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon projected, and another billion deaths in the months that followed from mass starvation—from a mere 1.5-megaton regional nuclear war.

A combination of materials that resonate at certain frequencies combined with a large amount of magical energy and a prism as a means to infuse them. It is pretty simple in practice. I infused this weapon during the smelting process; a technique many don't think to do… Or simply are unable to execute… as you can see with the crystal above and the lenses. This is not common in Eriand. Also, white flame born from pure arcane combustion is the primary means of heating as opposed to traditional coal or wood fires.

Calvin,” she said, reverting to her standard scientific tone, “did you know pistachios are naturally flammable? It’s because of their high fat content. Normally pistachios are stored under fairly rigid conditions of humidity, temperature, and pressure, but should those conditions be altered, the pistachio’s fat-cleaving enzymes produce free fatty acids that are broken down when the seed takes in oxygen and sheds carbon dioxide. Result? Fire. I will credit my father for two things: he could conjure a spontaneous combustion whenever he needed a convenient sign from God.” She shook her head.

The Enkindled Spring This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration, Faces of people streaming across my gaze. And I, what fountain of fire am I among This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed About like a shadow buffeted in the throng Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost

Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature. On each hand the flames Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled in billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale. Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air That felt unusual weight, till on dry land He lights - if it were land that ever burned With solid, as the lake with liquid fire, And such appeared in hue as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Etna, whose combustible And fueled entrails, thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds And leave a single bottom all involved With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole Of unblessed feet.

You said you wanted to see me in this dress,” she said a bit hoarsely. “I hadn’t realized the effect would be so…” He shook his head. He took in her face, her hair, the combs. “You look like—” “A queen?” “The fire-breathing bitch-queen those bastards claim you are.” “You don’t look too bad yourself, Prince.” An understatement. He looked… she couldn’t stop staring, that’s how he looked. “Apparently,” she said, walking toward her and offering her an arm, “we both clean up well.” She gave him a sly grin as she took his elbow. “Don’t forget your cloak. You’d feel rather guilty when all those poor mortal women combust at the sight of you.” “I’d say likewise, but I think you’d enjoy seeing men bursting into flames as you strutted by.” She winked at him, and his chuckle echoed through her bones and blood.

With a loud whoosh he stretched his wings out,and then deftly wrapped them tight around her, a cradle of soft white holding the two of them fast. "You really believe it?" she whispered. "That someday I'll live through this?" "With all my heart and soul," he said, cupping her face in his hands, pulling his wings tighter around them both. "I will wait for you as long as it takes. I will love you every moment across time." By then,Luce was broiling hot. She cried out from the pain,thrashing in Daniel's arms as the heat overwhelmed her. She was burning his skin, but he never let her go. The moment had come. The starshot was tucked inside her dress,and this-right now-was when she would have used it.But she was never going to give up.Not on Daniel. Not when she knew,no matter how hard it got,that he would never give up on her. Her skin began to blister.The heat was so brutal,she could do nothing but shiver. And then she could only scream. Layla combusted,and as the flames engulfed her body,Luce felt her own body and the soul they were sharing untwine,seeking the fastest escape from the unforgiving heat. The column of fire grew taller and wider until it filled the room and the world,until it was everything,and Layla was nothing at all.

Stars are bright, hot, rotating masses of gas which emit large quantities of light and heat as a result of nuclear reactions. Most newly-forming large stars begin to collapse under the weight of their own gravitational pull. That means that their centres are hotter and denser. When the matter in the centre of the star is sufficiently heated-when it reaches at least 10 million degrees Celsius (18 million degrees Fahrenheit)-nuclear reactions begin.56 What happens inside a star is that with enormous energy (fusion), hydrogen turns into helium. Nuclear fusion takes the particles that make up hydrogen and sticks them together to make helium (1 helium atom is made from 4 hydrogen atoms). In order to make the protons and neutrons in the helium stick together, the atom gives off tremendous energy. The energy released in the process is radiated from the surface of the star as light and heat. When the hydrogen is consumed, the star then begins to burn with helium, in exactly the same way, and heavier elements are formed. These reactions continue until the mass of the star has been consumed. However, since oxygen is not used in these reactions inside stars, the result is not ordinary combustion, such as that takes place when burning a piece of wood. The combustion seen as giant flames in stars does not actually derive from fire. Indeed, burning of just this kind is described in the verse. If one also thinks that the verse refers to a star, its fuel and combustion without fire, then one can also think that it is referring to the emission of light and mode of combustion in stars. (Allah knows best.)

I shouted over the music, 'I don't need a keeper"' I wanted to spin and spin and spin. 'No, you don't,' Tamlin said, never once stumbling over his playing. How his bow did dance upon the strings, his fingers sturdy and strong, no sign of those claws that I had come to stop fearing... 'Dance, Feyre,' he whispered. So I did. I was loosened, a top whirling around and around, and I didn't know who I danced with or what they looked like, only that I had become the music and the fire and the night, and there was nothing that could slow me down. Through it all, Tamlin and his musicians played such joyous music that I didn't think the world could contain it all. I sashayed over to him, my faerie lord, my protector and warrior, my friend, and danced before him. He grinned at me, and I didn't break my dancing as he rose from his seat and knelt before me in the grass, offering up a solo on his fiddle to me. Music just for me- a gift. He played on, his fingers fast and hard upon the strings of his fiddle. My body slithering like a snake, I tipped my head back to the heavens and let Tamlin's music fill all of me. There was a pressure at my waist and I was swept away in someone's arms as they whisked me back into the ring of dancing. I laughed so hard I thought I'd combust, and when I opened my eyes, I found Tamlin there, spinning me round and round. Everything became a blur of colour and sound, and he was the only object in it, tethering me to sanity, to my body, which glowed and burned in every place he touched. I was filled with sunshine. It was like I'd never experienced summer before, like I'd never known who was waiting to emerge from that forest of ice and snow. I didn't want it to end- I never wanted to leave this hilltop.

Orion threw a grin back at me as headed to the bar, ducking behind it. “What would madam like?” he asked in a formal tone which was a damn good impression of the Acruxes' butler. I giggled hurrying over to take a stool in front of the bar and placing my clutch down, relishing the cool breeze against my burning neck. “Hmm...a Manhattan?” I teased and he cocked his head. “I'm afraid we're fresh out of bullshit, how about a white wine spritzer with a tiny umbrella in it?” I laughed, nodding eagerly as he made up my drink then poured himself a measure of bourbon. He held it out for me and I leaned across the bar to take it. As I took hold of the glass, he didn't let go and I gazed up at him under my lashes questioning why. “Have I told you have exceptionally beautiful you look tonight, Darcy?” Darcy. He'd said my name. For the first time ever. And why did it sound like so much more than a name when he spoke it? It was like he'd fired an arrow and it had punctured a flesh wound in me at the exact same moment. Hell. I needed to get over this guy. Why was I so caught up on him? Unavailable, that's what it was. We always want what we can't have and Professor Orion was off limits. Simple as that. And those muscles. And the beard. And the dark eyes. And the dimple. But that was it. “That's the first I've heard of it, Professor,” I whispered, unable to make my voice rise any louder. “Don't do that,” he grunted, releasing the drink. I eyed him curiously as he walked around the bar with his bourbon in hand. He took the stool beside mine, his arm butting up against me. “Do what?” I asked, swivelling around to face the pool and taking a sip of my spritzer. It fizzed on my tongue and sent a deep kick of heat through my chest. “You know what.” “You're very presumptuous, Orion. You think I'm far more aware of your chaotic way of thinking than I really am.” I sipped my drink again, spying on him from the corner of my eye. He took a swig of his own drink and the familiar waft of bourbon drifted over me, tingling my senses. It was becoming a trigger, like the moment I walked into his office and he uncorked a bottle, it made me want to taste it on his mouth. And then that led to me wondering whether his fangs would brush my tongue when we kissed, and that always led to me mentally undressing him, then me conjuring an image of what those muscles looked like beneath that shirt... “I have something for you,” he said and I turned, blinking out of my dark fantasy. “You do?” He nodded, reaching into his inside pocket and taking out my coil of blue hair. My heart combusted and a choked noise escaped me. I reached for it and he slid it onto my wrist. He kept my hand in his, his eyes downcast as they remained on the band of hair. “I want you to know, I believe you would have gotten this back yourself when you were ready. But I took a lot of pleasure in retrieving it for you all the same.” I stared at him in complete shock, unsure what to say, my tongue tied in knots. “But Fae don't fight battles for other Fae,” I blurted, completely astonished that his actions that day had been to take this back from Seth. For me. And nothing else. He finished his drink and planted the glass on the bar, rising to his feet. He didn't reply to what I'd said and I barely even remembered what it was as he started pulling his clothes off. “Err, what are you doing?” I half laughed as he shed his jacket and kicked off his shoes, pulling off his socks. Oh my god. “I hate parties, but I like swimming.” He started undoing the buttons of his shirt and thought his back was to me, I was still captivated as he dropped it to the floor like a silken sheet. My eyes scraped down his skin to where his muscles etched an upside down v into his lower back, disappearing beneath his waistband. His shoulders were tanned and heavenly broad, making me long to explore all of those muscles with my hands.(Darcy)

The fire can burn inside that door for a long time because there are combustibles in the apartment to feed the fire. When you come to the door, you feel the door is very, very hot. You force the door, but you also control the door—that is, you don’t open fully all of a sudden. You open the door gradually until you see what’s going to happen.

Essay on Submission" Having ebbed in the disbelief of it instead of its weight. Stone-tiled the floor the blood a trickling fire confessional. Here the ocean metaphor refused. He tore me shut & seeping no vastness. To marvel or hide in. Being told i don’t exist i laugh with wounded teeth into. The folds of his larynx a choir of bees rattle me. Into myth less the mechanics of. Throat than the usage the context neither divorced from combustion. Of birth more or less i forgave him before. He entered because he swelled for me i could never trust. Myself in his hands but i did want. Him. Knocking leaning into the sliver of light he. Missed the wastebasket he couldn’t bear. The sight of me i never slept. With the lights off i don’t know that. History. But i named it so it can’t be. Holy. Or rather question. Of distance my skin. And cold waters my skin and woundless. Skin i wade in the contradiction. After i wanted only to be. Held. No. Distance his hand & the small of my. Back his hand & the lip. Of a waterfall here i reject the landscape. Its vastness i don’t think. We’re looking for the same thing you. And i you’d think olympus. Would dethrone itself of goldenrod leaves i told you it was. Blood did i claim it. Mine i am built of avoidable. Violences with one drop apocalypse. The burning wilderness you can see yourself. Out now histories like this cannot. Be known let alone escaped even the one. Where i set fire to my colonizer i can afford neither. Reclamation nor reconciliation. No. Unfragmented i cannot give you an ending. That isn’t body lunar. And concave staining instead. The bathroom floor.

They burnt not children before their teeth appeared, as apprehending their bodies too tender a morsel for fire, and that their gristly bones would scarce leave separable relicks after the pyral combustion. That they kindled not fire in their houses for some days after was a strict memorial of the late afflicting fire. And mourning without hope, they had an happy fraud against excessive lamentation, by a common opinion that deep sorrows disturb their ghosts.

They’d made the bricks from the local earth, processed through some of the mining equipment and fired in a kiln powered by combustion. It could only have been more primitive if they’d dug a cave and painted bison on the walls.

The existence of birds demonstrated that heavier-than-air flight was physically possible and prompted efforts to build flying machines. Yet the first functioning airplanes did not flap their wings. The jury is out on whether machine intelligence will be like flight, which humans achieved through an artificial mechanism, or like combustion, which we initially mastered by copying naturally occurring fires. Turing

I squat to retrieve the pitcher but Bruno’s faster. He offers it to me and I make the mistake of looking him in the eye. My balance is thrown and I start to fall back. Bruno drops the pitcher and takes hold of both of my wrists to keep my butt from slamming into the ground. He uses my momentum, and in one swift movement, we’re both standing again, face-to-face. Too close. Way too close. He smells of wine. And basil. Bruno picks up the pitcher, slowly this time, and loops my fingers through the handle. “All right?” he asks, his smile big and hypnotizing. I nod. “You should wash this.” I nod again. “And refill it.” Nod. “You agree with everything I say?” Nod. “You like sleeping in my bed last night?” My face combusts, suddenly very aware of all the customers, especially the table of American hoochies not even five feet away. I steal a glance at them. The brunette’s mouth hangs open and the blond one looks me up and down, her expression simultaneously appalled and impressed. I’m mortified. And slightly thrilled. I run through the restaurant and into the kitchen without looking back. I blast the cold water into the sink, let it fill my cupped hands, and dip my face down into it again and again until I’m no longer on fire. When my eyes clear, I notice a hand towel dangling in front of me. Luca. I take it and quickly pat my face dry. “I--”…have no idea what to say. “Your brother…” Luca makes an understanding noise. “Bruno is”--he struggles for the world--“loud.” I would have said something else, but his definition is accurate too. Luca wasn’t even outside but he obviously knows his brother well. Bruno barging in on me while I was changing should have told me everything I needed to know about him.

In the boreal forest, there are many highly combustible materials to be found – the north woods are a living ‘tinderbox’, one of the easiest places on earth to start a fire.

Coming to the alchemists, we find the view that the metals are all composed of two elementary principles—sulphur and mercury—in different proportions and degrees of purity, well-nigh universally accepted in the earlier days of Alchemy. By these terms “sulphur” and “mercury,” however, must not be understood the common bodies ordinarily designated by these names; like the elements of Aristotle, the alchemistic principles were regarded as properties rather than as substances, though it must be confessed that the alchemists were by no means always clear on this point themselves. Indeed, it is not altogether easy to say exactly what the alchemists did mean by these terms, and the question is complicated by the fact that very frequently they make mention of different sorts of “sulphur” and “mercury.” Probably, however, we shall not be far wrong in saying that “sulphur” was generally regarded as the principle of combustion and also of colour, and was said to be present on account of the fact that most metals are changed into earthy substances by the aid of fire; and to the “mercury,” the metallic principle par excellence, was attributed such properties as fusibility, malleability and lustre, which were regarded as characteristic of the metals in general.

I moved before I could stop myself, leaning forward and resting my forearms on my knees as I drank in the sight of her. I knew I needed to stop, to pull my gaze from the bare skin of her waist and the tanned flesh there which ached for the touch of my tongue. I shouldn't have been staring at the curves of her body or thinking any of the things which were currently circling through my mind, but fuck. She looked like the most perfect kind of seduction. I dragged my eyes up and over every inch of her body, lingering on her mouth for a beat too long before finding her eyes. My fist clenched as I met her green gaze and it felt like a shot of power snapped from her soul right into mine. I was held captive there, wanting her and hating her for it. Hating her for all the reasons I knew I had to hate her, but just fucking wanting her all the same. Fuck. There was a challenge in her gaze which needed stamping out and as she raised her chin a fraction, still maintaining eye contact with me, I couldn't help but think up all of the best ways that I'd like to bring her under my control. The Dragon in me was shifting beneath my skin at the challenge she presented, hungering for the chance to put her in her place beneath me. And ideally if I could get her there willingly, then I could show her how good it could feel to be beneath me anyway. ... “Those aren’t our names,” the object of my attention interrupted in a hard voice which made me both pay attention and want to make her submit to me even more than I had before she opened that pretty mouth of hers. “I’m Tory and that’s Darcy.” ... “Can you feel that power?” Caleb asked, leaning towards the girls with a smile playing around his lips and I knew in that moment what he was planning. I could practically feel the hunger in him and I had to force back a growl which rose in my throat at the thought of him biting them. Biting her. I wasn't sure what it was about Roxy which kept making me focus on her. Maybe it was the fire in her eyes or the way she didn't even seem to give a fuck about being thrown at our mercy. Or maybe I just really, really wanted in her panties. But either way, I was filled with the desire to tell Caleb and the others to back the fuck off and leave her to me. ... Caleb dutifully stepped up, smiling his pretty boy smile in that way that got girls panties to combust and pissing me off even more as he dragged his eyes over my girl. “Earth focus, House Terra. And terror is exactly what you'll get if you don't fit in.” Roxy muttered something to her sister as she shot a venomous look Caleb's way, and I was pleased to see that she at least didn't seem to be inclined to turn all blood whore for him. If she'd started panting over the idea of him biting her again, I had to admit I'd probably have thrown down with him here and now. I didn't know why it was pissing me off so much, but it was. I'd claimed her the moment I saw her, and I knew that with his Vampire hearing he'd been damn well aware of it. Which meant this was a challenge to my command. And of course, I should have expected that because there wasn't a single one of my brothers who would bow to the others, but it still got me all kinds of pissed at him. ... She turned to look at me with bored eyes, her gaze dropping to my boots before crawling all the way up my body in a languid, lazy inspection that made my fucking dick jerk in my pants.(Darius POV)

The pain is a sizzle, then a flame, then a steady rain of fire until my whole body combusts, and I am baptized by it.

Leo kept swatting his own legs, checking for signs that his pants were on fire. He wasn’t steaming anymore, but the incident on the ice bridge had really freaked Jason out. Leo hadn’t seemed to realize that he had smoke coming out his ears and flames dancing through his hair. If Leo started spontaneously combusting every time he got excited, they were going to have a tough time taking him anywhere. Jason imagined trying to get food at a restaurant. I’ll have a cheeseburger and—Ahhh! My friend’s on fire! Get me a bucket!

Now for the really fun part,” Jenny said when Maya was done. “Here's a box of matches. Start lighting.” Maya's eyes widened. With this much fuel on the dry grass, and with the wind blowing a gale, even one match could instantly combust and burn her. “You're crazy.

Flash fire." She turned her head as far as she could, trying to look at him. "I don't know what that means." He shifted on the branch. "First time I was on a submarine, we had a flash fire. It's a combustion explosion. A flammable mist builds up in the air, then suddenly, bam. Think super high temperatures and a rapidly moving flame front. It kills by asphyxiation. Burns up all the available oxygen. It's devastating.

Yet even these missionaries of mechanical progress cannot entirely ignore the older passion for nature that still survives as an essential part of our New World heritage; for they have invented a prefabricated substitute for the wilderness, or at least an ingenious equivalent for the hunter's campfire. That ancient paleolithic hearth has become a backyard picnic grill, where, surrounded by plastic vegetation, factory-processed frankfurters are broiled on an open fire made with pressed charcoal eggs, brought to a combustion point by an electric torch connected by wire to a distant socket, while the assembled company views, either on television or on a domestic motion-picture screen, a travelogue through an African game preserve, or scenes with the grizzly bears in Yellowstone. Ah! Wilderness. For many of my own countrymen this is, I fear, the terminus of the pioneers' New World dream.

Then the lightning struck. A massive display of multiple lightning strikes painted the sky with a frightening brush. It lit the combustible elements in the whirlwind. A rainstorm of fire and brimstone from heaven engulfed the four cities of the plain in a furnace of sulfurous flames. Nothing survived.

In 1883, scientist Ignatius Donnelly made a compelling argument postulating that all of the fires in the area that night were caused by a meteor shower created when Biela’s Comet lost its tail.  In defending his theory, he wrote, “At that hour, half past nine o'clock in the evening, at apparently the same moment, at points hundreds of miles apart, in three different States, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, fires of the most peculiar and devastating kind broke out, so far as we know, by spontaneous combustion.  In Wisconsin, on its eastern borders, in a heavily timbered country, near Lake Michigan, a region embracing four hundred square miles, extending north from Brown County, and containing Peshtigo, Manistee, Holland, and numerous villages on the shores of Green Bay, was swept bare by an absolute whirlwind of flame. There were seven hundred and fifty people killed outright, besides great numbers of the wounded, maimed, and burned, who died afterward. More than three million dollars' worth of property was destroyed.

It just happened, like a fire naturally combusting from nothing, like the moon appearing in the sky without attracting notice, like the clouds passing overhead without further thought. Like it was meant to happen, it did. ***

He covered her hands with his. "Why the hurry?" "Seriously?" She stared at him, her jaw dropping. "I'm on fire! If we wait one more minute, I'm certain the sheets will spontaneously combust. I won't be held responsible if your house burns down because you wanted to waste time on foreplay.

I think you’re very brave,” he whispered. “You’re a fire that should burn itself out in five seconds of brilliant combustion. I know what it’s like to put forth that much energy, and yet you do it night after night. And nobody—not marquesses nor guardians nor physicians, not the whole weight of society’s expectations—can make you stop.” She let out a sigh, a trembling sigh that had her lips brushing against his thumb. So much like a kiss. “If people want you to stop talking, or to stop dressing the way you do, or to change who you are, it’s because you hurt their eyes. We’ve all been trained not to stare into the sun.

Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.” – Arnold H. Glasow

Leo kept swatting his own legs, checking for signs that his pants were on fire. He wasn’t steaming anymore, but the incident on the ice bridge had really freaked Jason out. Leo hadn’t seemed to realize that he had smoke coming out his ears and flames dancing through his hair. If Leo started spontaneously combusting every time he got excited, they were going to have a tough time taking him anywhere. Jason imagined trying to get food at a restaurant. I’ll have a cheeseburger and—Ahhh! My friend’s on fire! Get me a bucket!

No!” She yanked it away, curling protectively around it. He felt like she had slapped him. “What do you think I am going to do, snatch it and throw it in the lake?” he demanded in an angry voice. She took a step back, and he followed. “Do you?” “Shhhh!” she said in a fierce whisper. “People are still sleeping!” He stepped closer, his face inches from hers. “And I am dying here because a woman I have hankered after for years just kicked me in the teeth. Again.” Mollie blanched. “Why do you keep talking like that? We barely know each other!” He was mad enough to spit fire. “I couldn’t court a woman who did business with Hartman’s,” he ground out. “That was the quickest route for me to get canned, but after the fire, I don’t care anymore about rules. You are a woman I want in my life, but my hand to God, if you keep accusing me of trying to swindle you, I am liable to combust.” Her eyes narrowed in distrust, and he was smart enough to know that blasted scrap of paper was going to be a wedge between them forever unless he could figure a way to dispose of it. He settled his hands on her shoulders. “Mollie, you have a piece of paper. In the coming years, the court system in this city is going to be swamped with a legal quagmire the likes of which this country has never seen before. With the archives of the courthouse in ashes, there is no way to prove the legitimacy of that deed.” “No way to disprove it either.” “Exactly.” He turned her around and cupped the side of her face. He tried using a gentle pressure to nudge her face up to look at him, but she resisted. “Mollie, I have cared about you for years. I have made a great study of Mollie Knox and the way she runs her business, but you know nothing about me. I suppose it is not fair for me to expect you to trust me when I’ve never been more than the man signing off on your quarterly revenue statements. Come live at my house. Bring Frank. Heaven help me, you can even bring Sophie, but come. I can’t stand the thought of you shivering in that church. No matter what it takes, I intend to earn your trust, and after that, you’d better put an armed guard around your heart, because I plan on winning you and folding you into my life. Fair warning, woman.” Mollie squinted at something over his shoulder, and Zack realized she had not been paying attention to a single word he’d said.

if something breaks up into small pieces then the total surface that the fragments possess grows enormously as they get smaller. Fire feeds on surfaces because this is where combustible material can make contact with the oxygen in the air that it needs to sustain itself.

Spontaneous human combustion, or catacausis ebriosus,’” began Craig, “‘is one of the baffling human scientific mysteries. Indeed, there can be no doubt but that individuals have in some strange and inexplicable manner caught fire and been partially or almost wholly consumed.

Passion is like fire. For a fire to happen, three things are essential: a combustible material, high temperatures, and fuel.

It is not the fire, it is not the internet, it is not the vaccine, it is not the internal combustion engine, it is not the airplane or car, and it certainly is not the gunpowder! The spitting of the righteous person in the face of the unrighteous person, it is the greatest invention of humanity. -To be tried as a Jew-

I'm a car guy. Growing up, one of my favorite pastimes was working on old cars with my grandfather Daddy Bob. He taught me early on that no matter how complex a system is, it can always be reduced to a small handful of components. This is critical because when your car won't start, you need to be able to quickly identify which component is either most affected or responsible. Daddy Bob taught me that pretty much every internal combustion engine can be reduced to three components: air, fuel, and fire. Sure, there are other parts, but the whole system really comes down to those three areas. So when we were diagnosing an engine problem, Daddy Bob would ask, "OK, Robbie, where do you think the problem is : in the air, the fuel, or the fire?" Once we knew that answer, we could move on to fix the problem.

Iopened myself to the death current, feeling it charge my core with energy. But as I extended my consciousness toward it, Brother Zahi began to transform. The man before me went up in a pillar of flame, its heat so terrible I thought for sure we’d all combust. Then, as though Michelangelo himself took a chisel to it, the sculpted form of a man emerged from the fire. But not just any man. A blazing, twenty-foot tall man made of prismatic, smokeless flame. The jinni’s true form was astonishing. His fire twisted and flashed, his image rippling across the flames like a reflection on water. He thrust his arm forward and scorching air rushed past me, the heat so intense it disrupted my channeling.

I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you,” he murmured. “It’s all I can think about, and you’re so close but nowhere near close enough.” Oh boy. “Spontaneous combustion is a thing, I’ll have you know,” I said, my voice much breathier than I’d intended. “I’m very close to ignition, so if you have no intention of taming this fire, I might suggest you stop.

Our spread over the earth was fuelled by reducing the higher species of vegetation to charcoal, by incessantly burning whatever would burn. From the first smouldering taper to the elegant lanterns whose light reverberated around eighteenth-century courtyards and from the mild radiance of these lanterns to the unearthly glow of the sodium lamps that line the Belgian motorways, it has all been combustion. Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we create. The making of a fish-hook, manufacture of a china cup, or production of a television programme, all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night, and the fires still spread.

Sometimes the elite green gospel has proved catastrophic—especially for the middle classes. In August and September 2020, high winds, lightning strikes, and scorching temperatures caused hundreds of forest fires throughout California. Past “more natural” policies had discouraged controlled burning, removal of brush from forest floors, cattle grazing on hillsides of dead undergrowth, and the logging of tens of millions of dead trees lost during recent droughts. Even the emasculated timber industry might have managed if it had been permitted to hire thousands to harvest the dead trees of the last six years, thus providing jobs, timber, and forest safety. Instead, the summer perfect storm created a sort of green napalm—a combustible fuel of unharvested timber that would turn a traditional wildfire into an uncontrollable inferno, burn over four million acres, and send one hundred million metric tons of carbon emissions into the air. Due to the tremendous temperatures created by the infernos, eerie pyrocumulus clouds for weeks dotted the Sierra Nevada skyline, in apocalyptical fashion emulating the mushroom clouds that billow up after nuclear blasts. The ensuing smoke clouds soon covered much of the state and overwhelmed the efficacy of public and private solar farms, which in turn led to rolling scheduled power outages. And the power crisis had been made worse by the voluntary state shutdown of clean-burning natural gas and nuclear power plants—all exacerbated by near-record temperatures in some areas of the state reaching 110 degrees.

While Sonny loaded the truck with shovels and gunny sacks, along with gloves, jackets, and helmets—the basics—Lola phoned the other members of the local volunteer fire department. They were already awake because of the storm. With no other fire department to call on out here, neighbors had to take care of each other. Grass was money, especially now, but in this drought it was also explosively combustible. The month before there had been a fire on the other side of the mountains that shot up a plume like a hydrogen bomb. Wildfires were finishing off the West.

Between us is the definition of sexual chemistry, and it’s all about the combustible substances because we’re quickly on fire.

At home I fixed warm milk for us both. I was surprised to see him drink it. He gripped the mug with both hands, talked about the noise of the conflagration, the air-fed wallop of combustion, like a ramjet thrusting. I almost expected him to thank me for the nice fire. We sat there drinking our milk. After a while he went into his closet to chin.

I can smell the fire on your skin, an incendiary just below the surface. I bet you are positively combustible. -Slate That’s funny. I would’ve said the same thing about you, except your scent is more like fire and brimstone. -Scarlett

The house of leaves burst into full orange-yellow combustion, as the crowd stood up with the reflections shining on their faces and called back as a chorus; the gathered voices grew louder as the flames danced upward and filled the valley with light and shadows. 'Burn it down!' he said. 'Burn it down!' they said. 'BURN IT DOWN!

Pilon and Pablo staggered off to bed, and Jesus Maria lay comfortably on the floor, beside the stove. The fire died down. The house was filled with the deep sounds of slumber. In the front room only one thing moved. The blessed candle darted its little spear-pointed flame up and down with incredible rapidity. Later, this little candle gave Pilon and Pablo and Jesus Maria some ethical things to think about. Simple small rod of wax with a string through it. Such a thing, you would say, is answerable to certain physical laws, and to none other. Its conduct, you would think, was guaranteed by certain principles of heat and combustion. You light the wick; the wax is caught and drawn up the wick; the candle burns a number of hours, goes out, and that is all. The incident is finished. In a little while the candle is forgotten, and then, of course, it has never existed. Have you forgotten that this candle was blessed? That in a moment of conscience or perhaps pure religious exaltation, it was designed by Pablo for San Francisco? Here is the principle which takes the waxen rod outside the jurisdiction of physics. The candle aimed its spear of light at Heaven, like an artist who consumes himself to become divine. The candle grew shorter and shorter. A wind sprang up outside and sifted through the cracks in the wall. The candle sagged sideways. A silken calendar, bearing the face of a lovely girl looking out of the heart of an American Beauty rose,

Passion is the spark that put you on fire for combustion and propel the wheels of productivity that brings your ultimate success.

In the physics of fire, there is a chemical phenomenon known as a stoichiometric condition, in which a fire achieves the perfect burning ratio of oxygen to fuel—in other words, there is exactly enough air available for the fire to consume all of what it is burning. Such a ratio creates an ideal fire situation, which results in total, perfect combustion. A stoichiometric condition is almost impossible to create outside of a laboratory. It requires such an elusive, precise balance of fuel and fire and oxygen that, in a sense, it is more theoretical than actual. Many firefighters have never seen such a blaze and never will.

Kenny, used a ramrod to force the ammunition down the length of the barrel of a gun that everyone referred to as Nuke-U-Ler. “Okay,” Kenny said, his speech slightly slurred, beer cans scattered around his feet, “now I just open the valve here on the propane tank and set the pressure regulator to sixty PSI.” Buster struggled to write this down in his notebook, his fingers frozen at the tips, and asked, “Now what does PSI stand for?” Kenny looked up at Buster and frowned. “I have no idea,” he said. Buster nodded and made a notation to look it up later. “Open the gas valve,” Kenny continued, “wait a few seconds for it to regulate, then close the valve and open up the second valve here. That sends the propane into the combustion chamber.” Joseph, missing two fingers on his left hand, his face round and pink like a toddler’s, took another swig of beer and then giggled. “It’s about to get good,” he said. Kenny closed the valves and pointed the contraption into the air. “Squeeze the igniter button and—” Before he could finish, the air around the men vibrated and there was a sound like nothing Buster had ever heard before, a dense, punctuated explosion. A potato, a trail of vaporous fire trailing behind it, shot into the air and then disappeared, hundreds of yards, maybe a half mile across the field. Buster felt his heart stutter in his chest and wondered, without caring to discover the answer, why something so stupid, so unnecessary and ridiculous, made him so happy. Joseph put his arm around Buster and pulled him close. “It’s awesome, isn’t it?” he asked. Buster, feeling that he might cry at any moment, nodded and replied, “Yes it is. Hell yes it is.” Buster had come to Nebraska on assignment from a men’s magazine, Potent, to write about these four ex-soldiers who had been, for the past year, building and testing the most high-tech potato cannons ever seen. “It’s so goddamned manly,” said the editor, who was almost seven years younger than Buster, “we have to put it in the magazine.” Buster had been in his one-room apartment in Florida, his Internet girlfriend not returning his e-mails, nearly out of money, not working on his overdue third novel, when the editor had called him to offer the job. Even with the terrible circumstances of his life at the moment, he was loath to accept the assignment.

Love is a momentary destruction, a combustion that threatens the pure creature we love, the one who's wounded in our fire. But after we've pulled away from her unraveled flames and looked at her, we see clearly the new, re-formed and flawless life, the quiet, warm life that called to us from the sweet surface of her body. Here is love's perfect vessel, filled and overflowing with its serene and glistening golden blood.

Cutting tools to manufacture needed items and process food Cover elements to create a microclimate of protection from the elements Combustion devices for creating the fires needed not only to preserve and cook food, but also to make medicines and provide needed warmth Containers to carry water over distances or to protect collected food sources Cordages for bindings and lashing

Identifying our subject is not rational, analytical, methodical, or consistent. You cannot set your clock by it, as my grandfather used to say. Instead, it is fire-in-the-hole, it is combustion, it is a knowing thought with the force of magnetism, and it is very short-lived.