Winter Fire

(Baonghean) - The weather of the four seasons changes throughout the year with different emotional concentrations. From early spring, early summer to late autumn and early winter. The moments of seasonal change create a difference with many levels, many impressions of the colors of flowers, leaves, grass and trees. The operation of the universe permeates even the planting season. In that interaction, humans and nature have a harmonious voice with a shared intuition that is imbued as a potential of creation.

Spring is full of vitality, promising a new beginning. Summer comes with all the passionate blooming and tingling in every vein of the soil, at the roots and the tips of the branches. So many red flowers seem to be waiting for the warmth of the weather and sunlight to bloom, as if wanting to express the rising vitality. And when it is late autumn, everything seems to stop with slow and quiet ferry trips across the river, contemplating with so many peaceful memories that have just passed through the hustle and bustle to collect all worries into a yellow chrysanthemum color. And at the beginning of winter, when the sweet cold has penetrated, the flickering fire stirs up in us so many memories...

I don’t know who named the early winter cold as sweet cold. There is a bit of exhilaration when swallowing the numbing taste of wind candy. There is a bit of withdrawal to rise up and explode with the colors of artificial clothes when nature quietly gives way to shedding leaves and re-flowering. But behind the rough wood grain, the sap and life still silently flow into ambers of time, preserving the hesitation of the autumn that has just passed and the spring that has not yet come. The rhythm of the rainbow of the northern winter between the old and the new, the falling and growing of natural movements, of human movements from root to tip. The winter stove is the focal point of convergence, both flickering illusions and also the place where small joys are nurtured, creeping into the mind, spreading into the sympathetic pulse when burning the ashes, igniting the ashes, and igniting hope. The stove is where we return to our childhood, “I only remember the smoke that made my eyes sting – until now my nose still stings” (Bang Viet).

The winter kitchen fire with its sudden moments, with its small time slots divided like sugarcane stalks, burning areca nuts step by step to grow taller and sweeter. The sweetness of the earth, the scent of life, in the sweetness there is both richness and warmth. There is also a bit of bitterness to make the betel nut more intense, the skin more red, the sugarcane candy more crispy, the honey strands more chewy. A lingering toughness blends together to awaken all senses of smell. What is so strange about the winter kitchen fire that it is so strangely stirring, making the whole person feel light as if suddenly lifting us up without being superficial or absent-minded, flickering and entwining, so generous and trustworthy.

Two lines of poetry by poet Huu Thinh haunt and torment me: “There is still a little bit of the riềng flower at the end of the fence – one day the frost will come and take it away”. The color of the riềng flower is like a lonely natural fire lit up from the ground, offering itself to make the sweet potato more plump, more fragrant and rich, hidden behind the cold color of the frost of the harsh winter. Knowing that the vitality of nature is so great, why don’t we preserve and rekindle the fire like an echo between the withered and the fresh, between wood and fire, casting for people a pure metal block without the dust and sand of everyday life. But condensing into “The Golden Rose” like the name of a famous story by Russian writer Pau-tốp-xki, tiny gold particles, imprinted with the fire scales of human love’s throbbing.

In these cold days of early winter, we feel sad when we see street vendors lighting fires on the sidewalks so that their cries do not become hoarse. Then, in the highlands, students come to class to warm their thin, crooked letters on the warmth of the forest. And on the faraway islands, naval soldiers lean against each other to find warmth in their wind-swept houses, longing to hear the sound of the fire simmering rice with the shadow of their old mothers. The winter fire - the winter fire is kindling in us so many beliefs in life. Don't let those old days fade away - who once said that! In the sunlight spectrum, we see green chlorophyll. In the almost weightless electric light, we see bright photosynthesis, and in the light of the fire that lights the flame, we see the warmth of human love...

Nguyen Ngoc Phu