Only painted fire.

Folks say that you can not, no matter what you do, know what another's experiences are like. Your own experiences are limited to the edges of your fingertips, the drums of your ears, the pupils of your eyes.

And yet, though we can not know another's experience, we can get into them. Our words fall from our flesh and into the bodies of those around us. They tumble in past their drums, into their thoughts. There we can see our words' effects. They mix, and we can see on another's skin, on their faces, the meaning that they take.

We best be careful.

It's a-comin'.

Oh, it's a-comin' alright.

Link to our past, bridge to our future.

The weight of origination falls heavy. As our grandparents and our parents slip out of this life, the shaping history that cradles us, that which we are so pleasantly pushed along by, also disappears. And when that disappearance takes place behind us the forward motion that flows into our own children occurs only from us. The history makers are us, surprised and all angles. No longer can we rely on the strong hands of our ascendents. We have to straighten our own spines. We have to turn ourselves from smoke back into trees.