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Henrie's Recipes
The Fire Dancers
By Aalize Donnez
Posted Wed, 21 Jan 2004
Perhaps being outnumbered by blondes and brunettes in school has led me to the sometimes unwilling feeling of kinship towards all fellow redheads. Standing out in a crowd with red hair and freckles can make one feel almost freakish. Perhaps this explains my love for Tom Robbins’ book, ‘Still Life With Woodpecker’. After all, the protagonists and I share deeply similar roots, that is, red follicles. More than this, Robbins has assured me that I am not a freak. I am the sun; the primordial spark; the marrow of the volcano.
All right, I’ll stave my delusions of grandeur and admit that Robbins was rather describing a smoker’s addiction to cigarettes. Or more romantically: smoking as “a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning”.
This awakened me to the thought that the bane of my health conscious existence — my smoke excreting fellow humans — are the embodiment of my ancient ancestors. Ancestors who looked on with awe as the glorious sun blazed across the open plains of the Karoo; they who were held captive as the sun rose behind a roaring ocean. Can one really fight the urge to dance in frenzied wonder of it all? To honour nature by lighting up an ancestral peace pipe seems almost fitting. Perhaps the surgeon general’s warning on your favourite brand of cigarettes should read: “The lung of the smoker is a naked virgin thrown as a sacrifice into the [volcano’s] godfire” (Robbins).
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Your favourite restaurant of course. Here smokers can be found in cult-like trances, cigarette poised between seemingly nervous fingers, in an attempt to pacify the rumblings of the volcano within. Indulging in fire ritual has never been easier. In fact, most restaurateurs are happy to sneer at worshippers behind their smoky glass temples. And for a smoker’s spiritual ecstasy, a virgin-lunged waiter has been provided to answer to their every whim. The perfect opportunity to order a little flambéed something to finish off a tasty (unless Tongue and Nose have been sacrificial objects too) meal.
Being a redhead who imagines herself favoured by the fire gods (hence the lava coloured hair), I have learnt to become more tolerant of the smoker’s anguished need for a cigarette. This does not mean that I won’t scuttle my child off in hurried panic if a worshipper should light up nearby. I do, however, try to refrain from feigning a spluttering cough and waving my hand frantically in front of my nose like my dear Granny does. Oh, and the embarrassment when my partner voices his disgust loud enough that the 'heathen' may hear, of course pretending that they can not.
In my honourable capacity as redhead, I would like to offer the following advice to my fellow oxygen lovers. Watch the sun rise as often as you can to help you identify with the yearnings of the fire dancer, a.k.a. smoker.
Secondly, don’t be afraid to ask your mother (or whomever it may be) not to leave her cigarette butts jammed into your pot plants (deep seated trauma). It might also help you to think of the beautifully searing Namibian desert sands (wishing you were there) the next time you find a cigarette butt glaring back at you whilst emitting its very last camel behind smells.
And to the sweet significant others who smoke to pacify the gods: please use the designated ritual spaces reserved for heightened fire worshipping pleasure. These would be the hyper modern airtight glass temples you might find in restaurants. Not the kinds with invisible walls often situated near the back of a room, closest to the kitchen. These are as useful and considerate as a designated peeing section in your local swimming pool (as the adage goes).
May the gods bless us all at our next fire dance. Be that a tobacco fondling reverie, or a hallowed South African ‘braai’.
