The Language of Embers

I remember a night on a beach in Greece where the wind had finally died down, leaving the air thick with the smell of salt and cooling wood. We were sitting around a fire that had burned down to a pulse of deep, rhythmic orange. Nobody was talking. We didn’t need to. There is a specific kind of intimacy that only happens in the dark, when the world beyond the reach of the flames ceases to exist and you are left with nothing but the faces of the people beside you. It is a quiet, heavy sort of peace. In those moments, you realize that language is often a clumsy tool, and that simply sharing the warmth of a dying fire is a much more honest way of saying you are glad to be alive. We aren’t meant to be constantly loud; sometimes, we are just meant to sit still and let the shadows do the talking for us. When was the last time you felt truly comfortable in the silence of a stranger?

Ryszard Wierzbicki has captured this exact feeling in his beautiful image titled Palms at Night. It brings me right back to that beach, where the firelight is the only thing holding the night at bay. Does it make you want to pull up a chair and join the circle?