The Fireplace Records. By Michael P. Garofalo.

Conversations Between Taoists, Chan Buddhists, Philosophers and Spiritual Seekers
Brief Stories, Reflections, Meditations, Reminders, Dialogues, Questions, Considerations, Poems

Michael P. Garofalo

Cloud Hands Blog
Biography

Fireplaces - History

Fire, Cooking, Survival, Light, Warmth
Fireplaces, Stoves, Hearths, Campfires
Kitchens, Ovens, Pots, Firewood, BBQ
Bonfires, Kettles, Pans, Fire Crafts, Fuels
Quotations, Photographs, Notes

Compiled By Michael P. Garofalo

"In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are halfconcealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends.... We enjoy now, not an Oriental, but a Boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces, and watch the shadow of motes in the sunbeams."
- Henry David Thoreau

"In freezing weather, I would enjoy the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world (like the swallow which builds a nest at the end of a dark tunnel and is kept warm by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire keeping in all night, I would sleep wrapped up, as it were, in a great cloak of snug and smoky air, shot with the glow of the logs intermittently breaking out again in flame, a sort of alcove without walls, a cave of warmth dug out the heart of the room itself, a zone of heat whose boundaries were constantly shifting and altering the temperature as gusts of air transversed them to strike freshly upon my face, from the corners of the room or from parts near the window or far from the fireplace with had therefore remained cold."
- Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Combray

“The joy of the open fireplace is playing with fire without being accused of playing with fire.”
- Gene Logsdon

"We dare not talk of the darkness for fear it will infect us. We dare not talk of the fire, for fear it will destroy us. And we live in the half-light, Like our mothers before us. Come to the fire, feel it warm your skin. Come to the fire, feel it burn in your belly, Shine out through your eyes. Come dance in the fire, let it fuel your prayers."
- Lucy H. Pearce

“After we've stuffed ourselves, we scatter around the living room, falling into a comfortable quiet. The living room is a majestic place - I mean, it is massive - with vaulted log ceilings and old wood floors covered in wide woven rugs. Along one long wall, the fire crackles and snaps, heating the room to just below too warm. It's wood from town and nothing smells like it. I want to find a candle of this, incense, room spray. I want every living room in every house I live in for the rest of time to smell like the Hollis cabin does on December evenings. The hearth is expansive; when we were about seven, our chore was sweeping out the fireplace at the end of the holiday, Theo and I could almost stand up inside it. The flames actually roar to life. Even once they mellow into a rumbling, crackling simmer, the blaze still feels like a living, breathing creature in here with us.”
- Christina Lauren

" I say to myself that I shall try to make my life like an open fireplace, so that people may be warmed and cheered by it and so go out themselves to warm and cheer."
- George Matthew Adams

"We do not lend the hearth quite the importance that our ancestors did, Greek or otherwise. Yet, even for us, the word stands for something more than just a fireplace. We speak of 'hearth and home'. The word 'hearth' shares its ancestry with 'heart', just as the modern Greek for 'hearth' is kardia, which also means 'heart'. In Ancient Greece the wider concept of hearth and home was expressed by the oikos, which lives on for us today in economics and ecology. The Latin for hearth is focus - with speaks for itself. It is a strange and wonderful thing that out of the words for fireplace we have spun "cardiologist', 'deep focus' and 'eco-warrior'. The essential meaning of centrality that connects them also reveals the great significance of the hearth to the Greeks and Romans, and consequently the importance of Hestia, its presiding deity.”
- Stephen Fry

“Very few things in life can be so exhilarating as a cabin in the middle of the forest and loving life effortlessly while enjoying the smell of freshly ground heaven in your hot cup, in front of a fireplace... Sweet Solitude, you have taught me to live with very little. So very little it turned out to be a luxury.”
- Efrat Cybulkiewicz

"Throughout history, people in all cultures and lands have gathered together at mealtimes. In forests and mountains, in humble abodes and great mansions, beneath star filled skies and beside hearths, people have given thanks, and offered their blessings."
- John Robbins

The Fireplace Records
By Michael P. Garofalo

The word "Fire" can't burn you fingers.
- Pulling Onions, Over 1,000 One-Liners by Mike Garofalo

"The last cobwebs of fog in the black firtrees are flakes of white ash in the world's hearth."
- Denise Levertov

"A man must go on a quest
to discover the sacred fire
in the sanctuary of his own belly
to ignite the flame in his heart
to fuel the blaze in the hearth
to rekindle his ardor for the earth"
- Sam Keen

Roman Kitchen

"Your practice should be strengthened by the difficult situations you encounter, just as a bonfire in a strong wind is not blown out, but blazes even brighter."
- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

"Poetry is a fireplace in summer and a fan in winter."
- Robert Hass

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

"Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket. . . . Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace."
- Sherman Alexie

“She sighed and walked over to the tall windows peering into the gloominess of smokefall. A thin scrim of fog huddled against the hills and the moon winked half-lidded in the murky sky that had merged with the horizon. The fire crackled for attention and she swerved to gaze at its throbbing red-orange wood-heart that held a million days of sunlight.”
- Franciska Soares

"I don't know why, but the warmth and the comfort of flickering light help. And a fire, in the fireplace or on the beach, is very comforting. I think when you make something consistent and familiar, it helps. I light candles every single night in my home."
- Evangeline Lilly

Chinese stove and wok

" I don't believe anything can do as much for a room as a glowing fire in an attractive fireplace. Men and dogs love an open fire - they show good sense. It is the heart of any room and should be kindled on the slightest provocation."
- Dorothy Draper

"We no longer build fireplaces for physical warmthwe build them for the warmth of the soul; we build them to dream by, to hope by, to home by."
- Edna Ferber

“Peace, a fireplace, books, silence ... Before this was seen as one philistinism. Now these are dreams of a lost paradise.”
- Erich Maria Remarque

"Gather wood, build a fire, stay up all night with the fire and stars.
Have a little blackberry brandy as you telescope to bring the stars closer in.
The sound of the fire, the smell of the fire,
The light and heat of the fire will help you, heal you.
A campfire’s Paleolithic experience we can all still have."
- Antler

"The kitchen is a place of adventure and entirely fun, not drudgery. I can't think of anything better to do with family and friends than to be together to create something."
- Ted Allen

Fireplaces, Hearths, Campfires, Stoves, Kitchens

The Fireplace Records
By Michael P. Garofalo

"It's amazing how the biggest things in our lives - when we're around the fireplace and talking about them when we're older - the things that matter the most to us start off amazingly small and in a humble way."
- Frankie Ballard

“He had flowing coarse parted fiery crimson hair and with coals for eyes his entire smooth ruddy face seemed to be holding back a furnace that ignited the rest of his head; he utilized his umbrella as a poker to close the door and walked into the hearth of the house - the kitchen table.”
- J.S. Mason

"The kitchen really is the castle itself. This is where we spend our happiest moments and where we find the joy of being a family."
- Mario Batali

"Soup is the song of the hearth... and the home."
- Louis Pullig De Gouy

Subject Index to 1,975 Zen Buddhist Koans

Keys to Zen Buddhist Koans Database Collections

"There will always be those who feel more comfortable not venturing from the warmth of the hearth, but there are those who prefer to look out the window and wonder what is beyond the horizon."
- Jimmy Buffett

"The Kitchen", 1894, Kitagawa Utamaro

"The tendency of fire is to go out; watch the fire on the altar of your heart. Anyone who has tended a fireplace fire knows that it needs to be stirred up occasionally."
- William Booth

"She lit a fire, but now she’s in my every thought.”
- Lord Huron

The Fireplace Records (Text Version)

The Fireplace Records (Cloud Hands Blog Version)

"Good food and a warm kitchen is what makes a house a home."
- Rachael Ray

Cape Lookout State Park Campground, near Tillamook, Oregon

"I sit by my simple yurt by the sea,
and light a campfire at dawn,
against the cold,
and just be.

Sitka Spruce Forest
all around---
smoking campfire
on cold wet ground.

Do the pines daydream?
feeding logs
into the campfire flames.

Splitting dry kindling,
damp December day---
wind chimes tinkling.

Wet pine logs---
campfire smoke
in our eyes

Gathered around
the campfire's light---
very chilly night

Crackling campfire
pops and sparks---
keeping ghosts away

Campfire embers,
fading reds---
time for bed."

- Memories of Pacific Coast Places, Highwaay 101 and 1
By Michael P. Garofalo

"The kitchen is where you put all the ingredients together. No matter what you do in life, you have to have a plan and put it together."
- Yo Gotti

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

"The more you know, the more you can create. There's no end to imagination in the kitchen."
- Julia Child

"In the heat of her hands I thought, this is the campfire that mocks the sun."
- Jeanette Winterson

" I lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house."
- Henry David Thoreau

"Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark."
- Theodor Parker

"I don’t approve of open fires. You can’t think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it."
- Rex Stout

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

"Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream. Inside, the fireplace is brightly lit, and the Yule log crackles with orange and crimson sparks. There’s a steaming mug in your hands, warming your fingers. There’s a friend seated across from you in the cozy chair, warming your heart. There is mystery unfolding."
- Vera Nazarian

The Fireplace Records
By Michael P. Garofalo

"The home is the empire! There is no peace more delightful than one's own fireplace."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Sometimes neither a friend nor a psychologist can enter the depths of your soul, but only the flames of a candle or a fireplace.”
- Mehmet Murat ildan

Van Gogh, 1885, "Peasant Woman by the Fireplace

"One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.
- Vincent Van Gogh

"In the childhood memories of every good cook, there's a large kitchen, a warm stove,
a simmering pot and a mom."
- Barbara Costikyan

"Strangers who have come to visit the philosopher Heraclitus wait to be greeted in the main room, which contains the dwelling's hearth where the fire in honor of Hestia burns. Yet, Heraclitus invites them to come as far as the kitchen stove, for all fire is divine. This means that the sacred is not longer restricted to certain places such as the altar of Hestia; all physical reality and the entire universe are sacred. There is something marvelous and divine about even the most humble things."
- Pierre Hadot

" As any parent, teacher, or librarian knows, there is no richer experience than to see children's faces light up at the suspense of a new tale or the surprise of a new poem. The uninhibited joy with which they listen is surely akin to that of adult audiences of old around campfire and hearth."
- William Jay Smith

"Everything happens in the kitchen. Life happens in the kitchen.'
- Andrew Zimmern

"The tools of social networking: These are the digital campfires around which the audience gathers to hear our story."
- Marco Tempest

" We're not home-and-hearth people. We're the adventurers, the buccaneers, the blockade runners.
Without challenge, we're only alive."
- Alexander Eliot

"We hunched close to the fire, encircled by the stones. Suzie and I took turns telling tales about the Man in the Moon, Orion, and other sky dwellers --- or we tried to, anyway. Mac kept interrupting our narratives to ask for clarification. Skye was less interested in our stories than in the popping, incandescent fire. She pulled a stick out and inspected the burning end so closely that I warned her she was about to set her hair on fire. After the stick flickered out, Skye shoved it back so far into the fire that her mitten smoked. I nagged her about that too, but she ignored me. Mac, seeing the fun Skye was having, joined her in poking and prodding the fire. It occurred to me that I should stop worrying about the kids and appreciate the moment. Pay attention. See!"
- John Horan, Rational Mysticism

" Better freedom and a chilly road than a warm hearth and servitude.'
- Fritz Leiber

" One afternoon, Master Hakuin said " An ancient sage once said that there are three requirements for the study of Zen. The first is a great root of faith. The second is a great ball of doubt. The third is a great tenacity of purpose. A man who lacks any of these is like a three-legged kettle with one broken leg."
- Ruth Fuller Sasakir

"I consider the television set as the American fireplace, around which the whole family will gather."
- Red Skelton

" Beautiful eyes are those that show, Like crystal panes where hearth fires glow, Beautiful thoughts that burn below."
- Ellen Palmer Allerto

"The first campfire did not exist until something nearly human shambled over and camped near it."
- Buck Tilton

"The most significant gifts are the ones most easily overlooked. Small, everyday blessings: woods, health, music, laughter, memories, books, family, friends, second chances, warm fireplaces, and all the footprints scattered throughout our days."
- Sue Monk Kidd

"These are the essential components that make up any kitchen: life, love, and happiness. Every day, families are bustling in the kitchen - rushing to leave for school and work, cooking a delicious dinner to wind down for the evening, batch cooking nibbles for a game night with friends - and every day these moments are filled with love, laughter, and happiness. I don't think you could say the same for any other room in the home, at least not to the same degree."
- Emma Reed

"Once in camp I put a log on top of the fire and it was full of ants. As it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went first towards the centre where the fire was; then turned back and ran toward the end. When there was enough on the end they fell off into the fire. Some got out, their bodies burnt and flattened, and went off not knowing where they were going. But most of them went toward the fire and then back toward the end and swarmed on the cool end and finally fell off into the fire. I remember thinking at at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire and throw it out where the ants could get off into the ground. But I did not do anything but throw a tin cup of water on the log, so that I would have the cup empty to put whiskey in before I added water to it. I think the cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants."
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, p. 328

"Build a campfire only when environmental conditions allow it. The danger of wildfire must be low, and you can find out if it is by checking land management agencies."
- Buck Tilton

"The onlookers watched as the fire snapped and popped, observing the flames encircle the logs. Bits of blue and green intertwined with the blazing orange and yellow. The smoke rose high above the campfire, lifting glowing embers."
- Ann White Lombardi

" Light a campfire and everyone’s a storyteller."
- John Geddes

"He was a prosperous old bachelor, and his open window looked into a prosperous little garden and orchard, and there was a prosperous iron safe let into the wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did not doubt that heaps of his prosperity were put away in it in bags."
- Charles Dickens

Michael P. Garofalo's Reading Chair and Fireplace
Mike and his dog, Bruno
Home, Vancouver, Washington, 2023

The Fireplace Records
By Michael P. Garofalo

"No special effect can ever come close to the power and impact of human imagination. A story, told or read around a campfire, will keep alive our time-honored traditions of oral history."
- Rick Steber

“Apart from the peace and emptiness of the landscape, there is a special smell about winter in Provence which is accentuated by the wind and the clean, dry air. Walking in the hills, I was often able to smell a house before I could see it, because of the scent of woodsmoke coming from an invisible chimney. It is one of the most primitive smells in life, and consequently extinct in most cities, where fire regulations and interior decorators have combined to turn fireplaces into blocked-up holes or self-consciously lit "architectural features." The fireplace in Provence is still used - to cook on, to sit around, to warm the toes, and to please the eye - and fires are laid in the early morning and fed throughout the day with scrub oak from the Luberon or beech from the foothills of Mont Ventoux. Coming home with the dogs as dusk fell, I always stopped to look from the top of the valley at the long zigzag of smoke ribbons drifting up from the farms that are scattered along the Bonnieux road. It was a sight that made me think of warm kitchens and well-seasoned stews, and it never failed to make me ravenous.”
- Peter Mayle

"Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people."
- Garrison Keillor

"I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Naure I loved, and next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart."
- Walter Savage Landor, Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher

“A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.”
- Marcus Aurelius, Amor Fati (Love/Accept/Embrace Your Blazing Personal Fate)

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

"There’s a saying I read recently; I painted it on the fireplace and in my studio: “Be kind to everyone you meet, for everyone is fighting a great battle.” We all are. Everyone."
- Gloria Vanderbilt

"I left him in his wheelchair, staring sadly into the fireplace. I wondered how many times he’d sat here, waiting for heroes that never came back."
- Rick Riordan

Riddles

Cliches

Pulling Onions: Over, 1,000 Quips, Satire, Sayings

"I just like TV. I think to me, it replaced the fireplace when I was a child. They took the fire away and they put a TV in instead and I got hooked on it."
- John Lennon

I am not alive, but I grow; I don't have lungs, but I need air; I don't have a mouth, but water kills me. What am I?
Fire

" High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring."
- Edward Abbey

"Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice."
- Henry Ford

" Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block."
- Annie Dillard

"Wood burns faster when you have to cut and chop it yourself."
- Harrison Ford

"Boys need wood to chop."
- Stephen D. Nadauld

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.'
- Abraham Lincoln

"The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den."
- Lewis H. Lapham

"This tiny habitation on wheels, with bit parts of the living room, the washroom, and the fireplace, is a pathetic admission that human life is no more than this: an attempt to feel at home while racing towards oblivion."
- Yann Martel

"Granny disapproved of magic for domestic purposes, but she was annoyed. She also wanted her tea. She threw a couple of logs into the fireplace and glared at them until they burst into flame out of sheer embarrassment."
- Terry Pratchett

The Fireplace Records
By Michael P. Garofalo

" It’s easier to throw sticks on the campfire than to try to restart it when it goes out."
- Cynthia Lewis

"I feel we don’t really need scriptures. The entire life is an open book, a scripture. Read it. Learn while digging a pit or chopping some wood or cooking some food. If you can’t learn from your daily activities, how are you going to understand the scriptures?"
- Swami Satchidananda

The Daodejing by Laozi

Pulling Onions Over 1,043 One-line Sayings by Mike Garofalo

Chinese Chan Buddhist and Taoist Stories and Koans

Taoism

Buddhism

Fireplaces, Stoves, Campfires, Kitchens, Pots, Firewood

Chinese Art

Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong

Meditation Methods

Zen Koan Books I Use

Zen Koans, Testing Verses, Mondos, Dialogues, Stories
Bibliography, Quotations, Notes, Resources
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

Subject Index to 1,975 Zen Buddhist Koans

Keys to Zen Buddhist Koans Database Collections

" People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results."
- Albert Einstein

"As social animals, we need to exchange juicy tales about someone – to connect with one another. For millions of years our forebears must have sat around the campfire, whispering about everyone they knew."
- Helen Fisher

"These hedge-rows, hardly
  hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild;
  these pastoral farms
Green to the very door; and
  wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from
  among the trees,
With some uncertain notice,
  as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the
  houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave,
  where his fire
The hermit sits alone."
- William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

" Burning fossil fuels is like breaking up the furniture to feed the fireplace because it’s easier than going out to the woodpile."
- Theodore Roosevelt

"When someone asked Zen Master Hyang Gok, "What is Buddha?" he answered, "Face of fire in the rocks."
- Seung Sahn, The Whole World is a Single Flower, Case 109

When someone asked Zen Master Hyang Gok, "What is the eminent teacher? he answered,"Face of rocks in the fire."
- Seung Sahn, The Whole World is a Single Flower, Case 110

When someone asked Zen Master Hyang Gok, "What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming to China" he answered, "Make a mud horse in the fire." "
- Seung Sahn, The Whole World is a Single Flower, Case 111

"There were shadows galore in the dim light, but there was one shadow that did not correspond to any object in the room. It lurked next to the fireplace, a formless, undulating darkness."
- Bentley Little

"When your down on your luck and you’ve lost all your dreams,
there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans."
- Tom Waits

"The study of Zen is like boring wood to get fire. The wisest course is to forge straight ahead without stopping. If you rest at the first sign of heat, and then again as soon as the first wisp of some arises, even though you bore for three asamkheyeya kalpas, you will never see a spark of fire."
- Ruth Fuller Sasaki

" Cold coiled through me, lacing each breath with clouded wisps of frost. There was not so much as a candle lit within the small, single room of my cottage, and delicate crystals of alabaster and beryl rimed my meagre possessions and the barren fireplace. I did not care."
- Hazel Butler

"Once all the power goes out, there will still be human beings standing together around a campfire, playing acoustic guitars."
- Jim James"

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

"The fire is the main comfort of camp, whether in summer or winter.”
- Henry David Thoreau“

" The glories of a mountain campfire are far greater than may be guessed."
- John Muir

" The echoes of beauty you’ve seen transpire, Resound through dying coals of a campfire."
- Ernest Hemingway

"The lamps were lit, and a good fire crackled in the great stone fireplace. There was a discreet chink of china, the brightness of silver teapot and muffin cover, the comforting smell mingled of steaming hot water, toast and a little sweet tobacco."
- Susan Hill

The Fireplace Records
By Michael P. Garofalo

"The campfire is the most important part of camping. It’s far more than just a source of heat or light. It’s the heart of civilization. All other activities revolve around the fire."
- David Lubar

You shared the spark,
You fanned the flame,
You fed the fires,
You passed the Names.
For all those know and
For all unnamed,
For all who have walked the Way;
We raise this toast,
With thanks this Sunday."
- Michael P. Garofalo

"Cozy was a fun night by a fireplace with marshmallows. Cozy was a grandmother knitting Christmas sweaters. Cozy was new puppies in a litter. Cozy was not what he had in mind to do in that tent with Tes."
- Susannah Scott

"She stood by the fireplace talking in that beautiful voice which made everything she said sound like a caress."
- Virginia Woolf

" You don’t have to say everything to be a light. Sometimes a fire built on a hill will bring interested people to your campfire.”
- Shannon L. Alder

"Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from The Eternal."
- Dante Alighieri

" Ella turned to the fireplace where a blackened kettle hung over what Granny Weatherwax always called an optimist’s fire: two logs and hope."
- Terry Pratchett

"The spirit
of the Buddhist law---
a woodsman's ax
that has cracked open
the hard wood of enlightenment."
- Saigyo

"We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won't need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don't fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine."
- Dwight L. Moody

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

“Fire is never a gentle master.”
- Proverb

"Before men ever dreamed of shelter, campfires were their homes. Here they gathered and made their first plans for communal living, for tribal hunts and raids. Here for centuries they dreamed vague dreams and became slowly aware of the first faint glimmerings and nebulous urges that eventually were to widen the gulf between them and the primitive darkness from which they sprang."
- Sigurd Olson

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."
- Plutarch

What has no lungs but needs air?
Fire

I am not alive, but I grow; I don't have lungs, but I need air. I don't have a mouth, but water kills me. What am I?
Fire

"Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way."
- Vincent Van Gogh

Don't let your dreams go up in smoke - practice fire safety.

"Man is the only creature that dares to light a fire and live with it. The reason? Because he alone has learned to put it out."
- Henry Jackson Vandyke

" Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves."
- Laura Esquivel

"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."
- Victor Hugo

"A church can be unified in one of two ways. You can freeze together, as the Church of the Frozen Chosen; or you can melt together with the fire of the Holy Spirit."
- John Hagee

"If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy."
- Jeremy Taylor

“I am building a fire, and every day I train, I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match.”
- Mia Hamm

"The fires of suffering become the light of consciousness."
- Eckhart Tolle

"A wonderful warrior exists on earth.
Two dumb creatures make him grow bright between them.
Enemies use him against one another.
He will meekly serve both women and men;
His strength is fierce but a woman can tame him;
If they know the tricks of looking after him;
And feeding him properly.
He makes people happy.
He makes their lives better.
But if they let him grow proud,
This ungrateful friend soon turns against them.
Who am I?
Fire
From the Beowulf Legend

"Then the fire was shining on the hearth, the cold and the dark and the wild beasts were all shut out, and Jack the brindle bulldog and Black Susan the cat lay blinking at the flames in the fireplace. Ma sat in her rocking chair, sewing by the light."
- Laura Ingalls Wilder

"The kitchen is the heart of every home, for the most part. It evokes memories of your family history."
- Debi Mazar

" For the millennium, New Year’s Eve, you really have a choice to make. You either have to be naked with your head on fire and a shotgun in Bali or else you have to spend time with friends or family around the fireplace. And I’m choosing option B"
- Tom Morello

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
- William Butler Yeats

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

"There was a difference between being proud of a grand fireplace in your hall and walking into the flames."
- Robert Jordan

" Every professor worth his PhD should have a fireplace in his study."
- Nora Roberts

" His sword, Sting, Bilbo hung over his fireplace, and his coat of marvellous mail, the gift of the Dwarves from the Dragon-hoard, he lent to a museum, to the Michel Delving Mathom-house in fact."
- J.R.R. Tolkien

"If summer had one defining scent, it'd definitely be the smell of barbecue."
- Katie Lee

"There are two different things: there's grilling, and there's barbecue. Grilling is when people say, 'We're going to turn up the heat, make it really hot and sear a steak, sear a burger, cook a chicken.' Barbecue is going low and slow.' "
- Guy Fieri

"Obviously, everyone's different, but I love just settling down and having a barbecue with my friends at the house."
- Harry Kane

Riddles

Cliches

Pulling Onions: Over, 1,000 Quips, Satire, Sayings

" Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it's a start."
- Anthony Bourdain

"I hope I will have a family. A house, with a garden, will be nice. And I would love a barbecue! Just very simple things and a passion to work hard."
- Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

"I'm a culture person when I'm working, so my downtime is beach time: sand, surf and a barbecue."
- John Torode

" I will always do what I can to help others, but when I retire, I want to be a dad and a husband. I want a house and a dog in the yard. I want to have barbecues."
- J. J. Watt

"I love how the men stand around cooking the barbie while the women have done all the work beforehand doing the marinade and making the salads and then everybody says, 'what a great barbie' to the guy cooking. A barbecue is just the ultimate blokes' pastime, isn't it?"
- Curtis Stone

" I'm married to a health-conscious American. I try to eat well, but definitely, as an Australian, you have some of the red meat, lamb, steak, barbecues as part of your culture."
- James P. Gorman

" I love Korean rice and Korean food in general. Korean barbecues are cool - there's a table with a hole in it with fire coming through, and we throw meat on it."
- Son Heung-min

Barbeque Quotes and Tag Lines

“Barbecue sauce is like a beautiful woman. If it’s too sweet, it’s bound to be hiding something.”
- Lyle Lovett

Bar B Que Quotations

“The sacred fire is faith.”
- Lailah Gifty Akita

"Good barbecue has to fall of the bone when you grab it, and, ti me it's not pull-hard chewy."
-Sinbad Sinbad

"Southern barbecue is the closedt thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses. Drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes."
- Joh Shelton Reed

Subject Index to 1,975 Zen Buddhist Koans

Keys to Zen Buddhist Koans Database Collections

“Barbecue is the good old technique of people making a fire and putting some stuff over the top.”
- Graham Elliot

“The people who say ‘you are what you eat’ have always seemed addled to me. In my opinion, you are what you think, and if you don’t think, you can eat all the meat in Kansas City and still be nothing but a vegetable.”
- Russel Baker

" I have a fireplace in my kitchen that I light every night, no matter what."
- Alice Waters

“Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.”
- Buddha

“Among the notable things about fire is that it also requires oxygen to burn – exactly like its enemy, life. Thereby are life and flames so often compared.”
- Otto Weininger

“Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.”
- Martha Graham

“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”
- Charles Bukowski

"There was an avocado green slow cooker, a venerable coffeemaker, two coffee grinders, and a blender. These were the tools of the modern witch, though Sarah kept a big black cauldron by the fireplace for old times’ sake."
- Deborah Harkness

"Whatever the losses in warmth and comfort, the gains in space proved irresistible. So the development of the fireplace became one of the great breakthroughs in domestic history: they allowed people to lay boards across the beams and create a whole new world upstairs."
- Bill Bryson

"I grew up in rural Oregon in a log house with bark left on inside and out. We had no electricity, a massive stone fireplace, a grand piano, and tons of books."
- Virginia Euwer Wolff

"What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter’s evening."
- Truman Capote

"The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness."
- Henry David Thoreau

"The difference between a good life and a bad life is how well you walk through the fire."
- Carl Jung

" A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body."
- Benjamin Franklin

" In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."
- Albert Schweitzer

"Where there is smoke there is fire."
- Proverb

"Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire."
- Arnold Glascow

" I feel I want to be wise with white hair in a tall library in a deep chair by a fireplace."
- Gregory Corso

" Who has smelled the woodsmoke at twilight, who has seen the campfire burning, who is quick to read the noises of the night?
- Rudyard Kipling

"Around the Fireplace there is no talk of Guest or Host"
- Entangling Vines Koans, #219

"One winter night, at his home, while he was stirring up the logs in his fireplace, he muttered, “Computers are irrelevant.”
- Tracy Kidder

"I think a great deal of those dogs,” she said proudly. “They are over a hundred years old, and they have sat on either side of this fireplace ever since my brother Aaron brought them from London fifty years ago. Spofford Avenue was called after my brother Aaron.”
- L.M. Montgomery

"No fire sends up smoke
At the cooking place.
And in the cauldron
A spider spins its web."
- Okura Yamanoue, from A Dialogue on Poverty

"I have done without electricity, and tend the fireplace and stove myself. Evenings, I light the old lamps. There is no running water, and I pump the water from the well. I chop the wood and cook the food. These simple acts make man simple; and how difficult it is to be simple!"
- C. G. Jung

"I think people who come into my home feel comfortable and welcome and loved. And the biggest thing in my living room, the fireplace, is in and of itself an expression of love."
- Julia Roberts

"Pearl the Wonder Dog was asleep on her back, in the armchair next to the fireplace, with her feet sticking up in the air."
- Robert B. Parker

"Big fires flare up in a wind, but little ones are blown out unless they are carried in under cover."
- Saint Frances De Sales

" Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life."
- Buddha

"Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself."
- Mark Twain

"Among the notable things about fire is that it also requires oxygen to burn - exactly like its enemy, life. Thereby are life and flames so often compared."
- Otto Weininger

"In the broad light of day, I could not give his tale nearly so much credence as I had granted it when sitting rapt before a midnight fireplace whilst the tempest without erased the natural world."
- Lyndsay Faye

Sacred Circle Garden Project 2006-
Mike and Karen Garofalo
Red Bluff, California

The Fireplace in Our Sacred Circle Garden
Red Bluff, California, 2006-2017

Sacred Circle Garden Fireplace

“We remember though all the firelit glow
Of a great hearth's gleam and glare,
And we looked for a space at each happy face
And the love that was written there.”
- Caris Brooke

"The most tangible of all visible mysteries - fire."
- Leigh Hunt

"It is a dreary world out there. It makes one thankful after all to be indoors with a fire burning in the hearth."
- Mary Balogh

"He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire. Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient."
- W.J. Cameron

"I once said to a lady of great philosophical attainments, "I remember reading the following problem in some magazine:-- 'Which of the following pictures most truly represents Peace?'
1. A fire-side scene, the kettle singing on the hop, a cat contentedly sitting there.
2. A small bird perched on a slender branch over a roaring cataract.
3. A skull and some bones in the desert.
Which of them would you choose?" (Of course you were supposed to choose No. 2.)
She answered, "A picture of two drunken louts having a fight."
- R. H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, 1942, p. 179

"In Ohara
a lonely thread of smoke
from the charcoal burner's kiln
drifting
disconsolate"
- Saigyo

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

" Fire in the heart sends smoke into the head."
- Proverb

Burning Man Event, California Desert

"One can enjoy a wood fire worthily only when he warms his thoughts by it as well as his hands and feet."
- Odell Shepherd

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

"My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet."
- Mason Cooley

"So I shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of the fireplace of a country cottage, with a sympathetic soul opposite me. And I shall go on talking, in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars."
- Ford Madox Ford

"Then she clearly understood: If He was Fire, She must be Wood."
- Leonard Cohen, Joan of Arc

"Take a nap in a fireplace and you’ll sleep like a log."
- Ellen DeGeneres

Riddles

Cliches

Pulling Onions: Over, 1,000 Quips, Satire, Sayings

Brief Spiritual Lessons and Koans Database Project

" The backs of his hands remind him of paper burning in the fireplace, the moment the taut membrane goes slack into a thousand wrinkles, just before it withers to ash and air."
- Barbara Kingsolver

Chinook - American Indian People
Northwest Pacific Coast and Rivers
Cedar Plank House, Fireplace, Raised Beds
Fireplace: Cooking, Drying, Heat, Light
500 CE - 1850 CE, Astoria, Oregon
Four Days in Grayland

" The simple hearth of the small farm is the true center of our universe."
- Masanobu Fukuok

"Yes.’ He drank it all down and then casually threw the glass at the fireplace. I stared at the fragments. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ He gestured to the broken glass with a sarcastic smile. ‘I surely hope you don’t, because there’s nothing much you can do about it if you do mind."
- Anne Rice

"Fire is the most tolerable third party."
- Henry David Thoreau

The Fireplace Records (Text Version)

The Fireplace Records (Cloud Hands Blog Version)

" The fire you kindle for your enemy often burns yourself more than them."
- Chinese Proverb

"Having a campfire and roasted marshmallows, to me that sounds like Heaven."
- Randy Orton

"There's a certain time of day after sunset when people naturally seem to feel the urge to gather by a fire or a stove or a hibachi or anther common source of heat and food, and hunker down together to eat and drink. Call it the Blue Hour."
- Kate Christensen

"I've really learned a lot, really learned a lot, love is like a stove, burns you when it's hot."
- Roy Orbison

"When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea."
- Ernest Hemingway

"Cooking is one of the strongest ceremonies for life."
- Laura Esquivel

"The kitchen really is the castle itself. This is where we spend our happiest moments and where we find the yoy of being a family."
- Mario Batali

Hiroshige's Prints 1838 Japan
Kitchen Cooking Scenes

"Though I lie here
legs snuggled
close to the embers
tonight's cold
goes right though my stomach

In the mountain's shadow
my grass hut's
so cold
I'll be burning firewood
all night long

All through the night
in my grass hut
burning brushwood
how we talked on and on;
when will I forget it?"
- Ryokan (1758-1831) Tanka, Choka, and Sedoka

“The fire you kindle for your enemy often burns yourself more than them.”
- Chinese Proverb

"Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden."
- Cormac Mccarthy

“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however, hidden.”
- Cormac McCarthy

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

“Life is a flame that is always burning itself out, but it catches fire again every time a child is born.”
- George Bernard Shaw

"To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world."
- Charles Dudley Warner

"Film is just a different version of what we did round the campfire when we were Neanderthals. We tell stories so people can learn things and relativise things."
- Chris Pine

"I am alwys hungry and will die if not fed, but whatever I touch will soon turn red. What am I?
A fire

What can grow but cannot live?
A fire

You walk into a room that contains a match, a kerosene lamp, a candle and a fireplace. What would you light first?
The match

"I start with the story, almost in the old campfire sense, and the story leads to both the characters, which actors should best be cast in this story, and the language. The choice of words, more than anything else, creates the feeling that the story gives off."
- Donald E. Westlake

"The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess."
- Christian Nestell Bovee

" I think of myself... as a troubadour, a village storyteller, the guy in the shadows of the campfire."
- Louis L'Amour

"Well, religion has been passed down through the years by stories people tell around the campfire. Stories about God, stories about love. Stories about good spirits and evil spirits."
- Andrew Greeley

"As any parent, teacher, or librarian knows, there is no richer experience than to see children's faces light up at the suspense of a new tale or the surprise of a new poem. The uninhibited joy with which they listen is surely akin to that of adult audiences of old around campfire and hearth."
- William Jay Smith

"Firewood becomes ash, and does not become firewood again. Yet, do not suppose that the ash is after and the firewood before. Understand that firewood abides in its condition as firewood, which fully includes before and after, while it is independent of before and after. Ash abides in its condition as ash, which fully includes before and after. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.

This being so, it is an established way in buddha dharma to deny that birth turns into death. Accordingly, birth is understood as beyond birth. It is an unshakable teaching in the Buddha’s discourse that death does not turn into birth. Accordingly, death is understood as beyond death.

Birth is a condition complete in this moment. Death is a condition complete in this moment. They are like winter and spring. You do not call winter the beginning of spring, nor summer the end of spring."
- Eihei Dogen Zen Master, Genjo-Koan, Sec. 87, Translation by Tanahashi

"It is often said that truth is something that is universally valid. To put it simply, it is something which can be applied anytime, anywhere, and to anyone. For instance, fire is hot no matter what time it is. Fire was hot thousands of years ago as surely as fire will be hot hundreds of years from now. Of course, fire is hot today. Furthermore, fire is hot to you, to me, and ti will burn anyone who touches it. In this way it is true that fire is hot anytime, anywhere, and to anyone. Therefore, the fact that fire is hot is recognized as n indisputable truth.
Let us see just where that fire which is hot anytime, anywhere, and to anyone exists. Can you see that it is nowwhere except in theory and has nothing more than an abstract existence? It is not the real fire which will burn your hand if you touch it. Similarly, that which does not have universal validity anytime, anywhere, and for everyone is no more than a partial and arbitrary view of things: what is universally valid in itself is abstact and conceptual and cannot be real and concrete."
- Omori Sogen, Introduction to Zen Training, p. 5

Quotations: Light, Sun, Fire, Sunshine, Heat, Vision Shadows, Shade, Flames

Subject Index to 1,975 Zen Buddhist Koans

Keys to Zen Buddhist Koans Database Collections

This Fireplace Records hypertext document was last edited, modified, changed, expanded,
possibly improved, revised, or re-edited on January 31, 2024.

The Fireplace Records webpage was first published on the Internet on February 4, 2023.

The Fireplace Records webpage was created by Michael P. Garofalo, Green Way Research, Vancouver, Washington.

The Fireplace Records Chapters: Lessons, Brief Meditations, Talks, Considerations, Cases, Poems, Reflections, etc., created by Michael P. Garofalo.

The Fireplace - History: Kitchen, Cooking, Stove, Campfire, Pots, Fireplace, Warmth ... Quotations and Photographs were Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo..

Return to Top of Webpage

Subject Index to 1,975 Zen Buddhist Koans

Keys to Zen Buddhist Koans Database Collections

The Fireplace Records
By Michael P. Garofalo

Biography of Michael P. Garofalo

Michael Peter Garofalo (1945-) grew up in East Los Angeles, was educated in Catholic Schools, graduated (B.A., M.S.) from local universities, married Karen, served in the US Air Force, worked in and managed many City and Los Angeles County Public Libraries, raised two children (Alicia and Michael), socialized, traveled, and learned. In 1998, we moved to a rural 5 acre property in Red Bluff, in the North Sacramento Valley, CA. A webmaster since 1999. Worked part-time for the Corning School District (Technology and Media Services Manager); and as a Yoga, Taijiquan, and fitness club instructor until 2016. Traveled extensively in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. We both retired, and we moved to Vancouver, Washington, in 2017. Currently in 2023: reading, Taoist/Buddhist/Zen research, walking, writing, web publishing, monthly oceanside yurt camping retreats, gardening, harmonica playing, history reading, family events, poetry research, sports events, playing Tai Chi Chuan/Yoga/Qigong, photography, and coping with heart disease and injuries.

Cloud Hands Blog by Michael P. Garofalo

Indexes for The Fireplace Records (TFR)

Subject Index to 40 Chapters of The Fireplace Records. November 10, 2023. PDF, 14 pages.

Numerical Order List of 40 Chapters from The Fireplace Records. November 10, 2023. PDF, 2 pages.

Alphabetical Order List of 40 Chapters from The Fireplace Records. November 10, 2023. PDF, 2 pages.

Subject Index to 1,975 Zen Buddhist Koans

Keys to Zen Buddhist Koans Database Collections

Return to Top of Webpage

The Fireplace Records. By Michael P. Garofalo.

Fireplaces, Kitchens, Stoves, Campfires, Ovens, Pots, Kettles, Wood, BBQ
Literary reflections and flashes of insight around the fireplace
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

The Fireplace Records
By Michael P. Garofalo

Michael P. Garofalo
Cloud Hands Blog
Biography