May 20, 2025

flirting is like the flame in a campfire

Each morning I choose a different way I create, serve, and drink my coffee.
Today I made a pot of espresso, warmed up a splash of milk to heat up so high in the microwave it almost spills over – I guess to boiling point, take out my handheld frother that has been weak and not as effective for probably over a year now, and froth up probably three times the amount of time it would take if I just pulled the gun and bought yet again another new frother.
Filled half the mug – today it’s a clear glass mug that I bought a case of clear cups and mugs on an impulse after being influenced just a little too hard one summer. I personally like to have an array of different styled mugs or glassware to drink out of. It makes like just a little bit more special I think. Makes you feel something different every morning, I guess.
Filled half the glass with espresso, then the milk, add in a teaspoon or so of sugar -real sugar, rare these days, huh? Today I didn’t use a full teaspoon because the grocers was out of the milk I usually buy, and the one I bought has half the amount of sugar in it than the ol’ faithful, added a travel-size of vanilla liquid creamer for some unique little flavor. I feel I do this some days when I just want my morning to be just a splash bit of special. It reminds me of traveling, going somewhere, exploring the world, and going on an adventure. Which, by the way, none of those actions are true for today, but maybe in my mind they will be.
Lastly I’ll add a splash more of espresso since I’m not a fan of cold, room temperature, or even warm coffee. I want it hot. Just that point under the hotness of burning your tongue. I don’t want it to burn, I just want it to be like hot soup – tasting all the flavors and textures at once, like a dance and melody playing all perfectly at the same time.
Anyway, today we had an espresso drink, with a splash of flavored creamer, in a clear mug. And it is good.

Lately I’ve been saying that I want to feel better. Like I want to feel something again. Almost like to flirt with the idea of experiencing life.

What is the exact meaning of flirt?

Dictionary

Definitions from Oxford Languages ·

flirt

verb

1.1

behave as though attracted to or trying to attract someone, but for amusement rather than with serious intentions.

“it amused him to flirt with her”

Similar:

trifle with

toy with

tease

lead on

philander with

dally with

make romantic advances to

chat up

make eyes at

make sheep’s eyes at

give the come-on to

come on to

2.

(of a bird) wave or open and shut (its wings or tail) with a quick flicking motion.

“a moorhen stepped out of the reeds, flirting its white tail”

What is the exact meaning of flirting?

to court triflingly or act amorously without serious intentions; play at love; coquet.
Synonyms: dally, tease. to trifle or toy, as with an idea: She flirted with the notion of buying a sports car.

Is this why we love to flirt so much? With anything and everything?

Like playing a video game on fighting all day, then never really signing up and going to war, or getting up to fight the battles you’ve been playing over in your own head with the people you see often.
Like playing poker, and never gambling on your own talents and strengths.
Or watching porn, instead of taking the change to be social, possibly go on a date, connecting with someone who makes you nervous enough to open up and be vulnerable with.
Or teaching the same subject for years, instead of going back to school and learn to exploring a new topic you’ve been flirting with for years.

Or practicing being nice, timid to opportunities of being able to lash out at the right before you lose your sense of self. So you flirt with the idea of removing that anger from your life like reorganizing your space, buying new things to fill it up or having something about it just make it seem like “your own”.

Anyway, are short story writers just taking their talent and flirting with the idea of being a novelist Same with those who write articles. Or, dare I say, readers instead of writers?

It’s easy to flirt with something and stay in the flirting stage. With people, ideas, well-maybe they’re all just ideas we flirt with and we just express it to nouns (people, places, and things). Because most flirting is an idea, that never fully blooms into it’s truest desired action. It stays in limbo. I guess it stays in desired state of mind. Never fully developed into a permanent effect into reality. And of course this could be led to good reasoning, and that’s it’s own tale.

Does flirting keep things alive? Is flirting like the flame in a campfire – keeping the warmth, the light, the life alive?
The tune of an old song you wake up with, still in the back of your mind, even surpassing all your active thoughts?

Keeping memories made alive, in hopes that one day they can be lit again by the logs you set on that dirt ground, give it the birth of the strike of a match, and there you go a new fire is made.
Alive. You’ve created that moment where you can feel alive again.

It’s tough when we allow our fire, or flirt with life, wait upon a person, place or thing. Like “Once I get….fill in your own statement of first thought that popped into your head…I can BE it – also fill in your desired way you want to see yourself.”

It feels scary, or depressing, or just plain ol’ stupid to do the things you once felt that lit you up. Those things you did with others, or at different places, or with more bigger/better things. Those things that you felt something from those first times of accomplishing the completion of an act past the flirting stage.

Or worse, knowing or thinking that it could lead to no where. So why bother flirting with the opportunity?

Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough to not only ignore the topic that I am interested in flirting with, as well as the feeling of flirting with it.
I swear, the logic of emotions just kills the whole trajectory of flirting.
So please, to myself and others, stop over-thinking and trying to add logic to flirting, to desire, shit even to life.
Because it’s not logic that births life or the magical moments to life, it’s the flirting with life. It’s emotion that will always be the fire.