Fires and Roses

Fires and Roses is dedicated to thinking differently about subjects that otherwise seem familiar, pat, common, overdone, or cliche--uncovering the uncommon in the common. TS Eliot wrote:

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

It doesn't have to be a fire, or a rose. Depending on your interpretation--on your vision--it can be one, or the other, or both at the same time. This kind of conceptual flexibility is a cornerstone of poetic vision and creative thinking.

We see fire-roses in the business world all the time. One could conceive of a 10-K as a kind of fire-rose. Different analysts see the same information, the exact same numbers, and draw completely different conclusions. They choose their ideas based on things that are important to them, the context in which things are observed, surrounding chatter, confirming their previous ideas, or refuting those of others.

Fires and Roses is an attempt to see things differently, in their complexity, and sometimes in their simplicity. Again as Eliot wrote in "Little Gidding" (1942), one could conceive of our mission as an understanding through refreshing, trying to see old things anew:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.