Fire Line

Disclaimer: Cue the finding closure, processing-out-loud, stream of consciousness, nostalgic melodrama that is the last 3 weeks as a PCV in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Welcome to my brain, world, drop some crumbs for yourself lest you get lost in my over-analysis.

(photo- open steppe between Karaganda and Astana where I have done a lot of this thinking as of late)

A fire line is the gap between the combustible and combustion; a literal space of nothingness on the edge of a sweltering madness in which fire finds no fodder; an intentional, fixed, obdurate eye of the storm where the chaos of a whirling, screaming deluge, of a frenetic maelstrom, never breaks; a barrier of protection around your sanctuary of all that is everything to you; a buffer where one can safely stand laughing temerariously in the face of a dangerous, omnipresent heat. The fire line is what fire can't jump. Before I came to Kazakhstan, I was living my life behind the fire line.

The thing about my existence in the past two years that now seems so cataclysmically exceptional, has been a persistent, inexorably intertwined sense of connection to each and every passing moment in time. That is not to allude to the hackneyed pop culture expression of the "emotional roller coaster", or to lace my experience with an overly precious and melodramatic reminiscence of all that has impacted me, but rather to highlight a steadfast, resolute, overarching feeling of being shackled to a forced vulnerability- an assailable state that stems from being ubiquitously different from every single other person, of waking up with a gnawing uncertainty of how the day will unfold, of being tossed into a realm of absolute non-control, of the humbling realization of being utterly alone, of living within a stream of moments as they unfold such that no matter how you shake it down or turn it over in your mind, it is always raw. It is a connection to NOW that you cannot break.

Perhaps this is the crux of being abroad- right- of the salacious, intoxicating addiction that so many of us come to feed off of, to crave, to seek out; to feel everything all the time because you have to, because you can't run from being intimately exposed, because you can't hide from being the only person responsible for you, because you can't avoid being impacted by all things new- new sounds, new smells, new tastes, new worldviews, new tribulations, new heartaches. It's a reality that is both debilitating and empowering, a condition of being keyed in on, latched onto, swimming within, and pushed up against the full implication of emotion that comes now, and now, and now, and if you have ever been thrust outside of your comfort zone or forced to break boundaries you wished to maintain, then you know all too well the split second, heart-racing, pupil dilating, relentless connection to a series of moments that obfuscate everything else outside of you and it, whatever 'it' may be.

Kazakhstan has held no fire line for me, and to say that it even could have is a fabrication. The very nature of this life- of the status quo- of my job- of being precariously positioned within a system to change it from within- precludes any such protection. The fire contained here is Kandinsky unfettered, it's Escher in circles, it's Dostoyevsky between the lines, it's, it's, it's a multi-threaded, amplified, dynamic burning that is inescapable for me, and in its own way, it is a beautiful, reckless tumult that catalyzed a kind of openness to recognizing value in moments that before I wouldn't have internalized, and maybe not even felt at all.

And here is where I'm going risk a heaviness that may startle you because in a public forum I have never delved into the negative aspects of my life, but I feel like it's common sense enough to assume that things have been a mixed bag, for that's pretty standard no matter where you find yourself rolling the dice. The thing I've realized, and maybe even come to appreciate, is that when the fire line is removed (or unpredictably snatched away against your will), and dangling over the precipice of flames gives way to free falling like a sack of stones into the dancing firelight, there is a very telling moment of what kind of person you are to become, and this is poignantly true if the fire contains a kind of unimaginable heartache that swallows you whole.

What I mean to say is this- living in the fire can be imbued with a rapturous jubilation, where you are out on a limb, go all in, and find that you held a royal flush. You can reap the rewards of being exposed, of being caught in that connection, in all of the times when pride, confidence, excitement, success, love, acceptance, laughter, happiness, prosperity, contentment, serenity, and shameless delight come racing to the forefront of your emotional palate. You cash in big. You go home a winner. And this is huge, huge, and I have been so fortunate to share in that with people, both new and old, who have traipsed into my life.

But the part that I find new value in, and perhaps the part that was missing behind the fire line, and maybe even what many people forgo in order to maintain a sense of safety, predictability, and stability, is the earth-shattering, ineffable despondency that comes with being absolutely broken, that comes with being totally alone, that comes with being wrecked. It's in this other end of the spectrum that I have really profited, because a life with only the goods is a life with little perspective.

I think it's only when you lose it all, when you can't tell up from down, when you question everything you ever stood for or against, when you are racked with a kind of isolation and intense grief that has you on your shaking hands and knees, desperately clawing towards a better tomorrow on a tear-stained floor because you're too damn stubborn to languish in the dark and twisted fringes of insanity, can you ever reach a vantage point to truly accept happiness, to really hold onto the treasures of life, to really look back on that moment of sorrow and without capitulation see that you breathed it in, and I mean really breathed it in with every fiber of your broken being, and to finally, like shimmers of twinkling diamonds sprayed across the ocean around the place where the water meets the sky as the sun pops up dreary- eyed from the night's darkness, blanketed in vibrant yellows and pinks and oranges, do you emerge with the smiling minority who has tasted the indelible catharsis of breakdown.

And it's in the distance between these two points, of the winning big and of the losing big, that has brought new meaning, wisdom, and maturity to my life, and I question if I can ever again live secluded behind the fire line, or if I am now Pavlovian conditioned to seek that veritable connection that burns with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. No matter which side of that line I eventually find myself rooted to, I am positive that the time I have spent in Kazakhstan has made me realize that I have it 'all' (told you in the last post I would define that out for you), and that is the simple, hard-earned truth that I have, and always will have- myself, even when I have nothing else.