recalling Bachelard’s comment on poetic time in The Poetics of Reverie: “In reverie we re-enter into contact with possibilities which destiny has not… - Gaston Bachelard

L'imagination est une force première. Elle doit naître dans la solitude de l'être imaginant.

So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.

Contemplating a flame perpetuates a primordial reverie. It separates us from the world and enlarges our world as dreamers. In itself the flame is a major presence, but being close to it makes us dream of far away, too far away. The flame is there, feeble and tiny, struggling to stay in existence, and the dreamer goes on to dream of elsewhere, losing his own being by dreaming on a grand, on a too grand scale by dreaming of the world.