I can hear my father’s disdain echo in the afterlife from a question he would never dream need answering. An electronic ignition gas fireplace to the man who built a double A-frame in Vermont with one “real one” on every level, would be sacrilege - the same man that insisted on building my character by stacking his wood piles, one cord at a time.
Maybe his disdain would be warranted. Contemplating an automatic fireplace made me feel like I was giving up on myself a little - a disrespect to my New England roots – roots that would surely signal other roots of this betrayal all the way back to Emerson and Thoreau.
Had I chosen a special kind of ineptness, like a transplanted east coaster’s reluctance to drive in the California rain?
I walk into the fireplace store, circa 1957, that sells fake logs and electric fireplaces. Visions of Dick Van Dyke dancing on the rooftop singing Chim Chim Cher-ee swirl in my head. “Where is the little Match Girl to light the flame?” I think as I ask the owner for a demonstration, but nothing is “hooked up.” They just have old ear-marked catalogues, lipstick-stained cigarette butts in amber glass ashtrays, and an inch of dust on every wooden surface.
Staring at the insert, this vending machine equivalent, I envision pressing a remote control button to ignite the flame - as easy as receiving a box full of Amazon or your personal climate via Nest - I click, therefore I am.
I decide to move forward with the installation. It looks rather life-like and over the course of the week I find myself reading more often in the living room in front of the fireplace. I suppose this could be seen as a positive tradeoff for yet another charcuterized facsimile in the name of progress. And yet I feel loss, having allowed myself to do less and expect more – and unlike Thoreau’s journey into the woods, I am that much further from myself.
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