Knob Magazine

"Misko gaisras" Vincas Dmachauskas

We still speak as if the world is an amusing place, something to be tinkered with and adjusted. The most dangerous part of growing up is finding your place and submitting to fate. The sparkle and beauty fades as we no longer step away from our lives and fiddle with the knobs, push the parameters. Perhaps there is a time approaching when we will have to take things seriously, our days of unfocused amusement may soon draw to a close. It is my hope that we may be armed with sound judgment so that when a time to take action arrives, a proper course may be chosen; though to be lost in ideas is the state of a man who sees the world as something as temporary and flexible as himself.

“That fire to the west, it’s mine.”

“What?”

“We went camping out on Stumpy Mountain Road and this morning I piled up a huge mound of pine needles, huge, on our fire and dragged some logs by it and anyway, we rode away and by the time we hit the meadow it was ten feet tall and spreading. That’s it, you can see it from town.”

Men consumed with ideas sometimes fail to grasp, or perhaps grasp too well, the effect of their behavior on other people. Those individuals who drive society are true egotists in that they never pause to question their role in relation to other people.

“You started a fire?”

“Yes.”

“A forest fire?”

“They burned over there a few years ago, the fuels are limited.”

“I guess you’ve got to break some eggs…”

“What are we breaking, fire is key to forest restoration.”

The sky has a smokey haze, obscuring both the sun and the peaks. It has not rained for weeks and the boys knew full well that it would not rain for several more.

“You had best not get caught.”

“My getaway vehicle malfunctioned, you know my freewheel.”

“It might be best to overhaul that before another fire.”