Embers, Well-Flinged

One of my friends from The Fellowship was jolted out of bed about midnight on Day One and told his apartment complex was under mandatory evacuation.  He and his wife fled with their dog, computers, and a change of clothes.  I sent him a note this morning, checking in.  His terse reply: "We lost everything." I spoke with him later in the day and he was philosophical about this.  He was upset - stunned, even - but I could hear him cycling through the tools that we're given, that we practice every day, sometimes well and sometimes not, but always diligently, trying to right himself and be strong for his devastated wife.  He sounded like a cornerback, a breed of football player who has to have absolutely no memory of defeat.  Their mantra must be "You just got burned but you're not going to get burned again."  You just won't admit it.  Every play is a new play.  You forget about the last play, especially if you've gotten burned very publicly.

I know that when we're under duress - like the first days of sobriety - we say words that we may not feel.  Fake it 'till you make it.  I suspect there is some lack of feeling underneath the words my buddy is saying, but it's good that he's saying them.  Fake it until you make it, we say.  Pray even if you don't know who or what you're praying to, we say.

I went to my meeting downtown today.  It was well attended, including four or five people who lost their homes.  There has been a curfew since Monday and most of downtown - a few hundred yards from the sweep of the fire - has been without power.  Moreover, once the power was restored most public places were hampered by a boil water alert.  Sort of hard to cook food with no water.  Or make coffee.

450 homes in a smallish city are gone.

A few of us went out for coffee and rolls after the meeting.  I wanted to do a little bit to support my hometown businesses after all of the turmoil and to spend some time with other rattled folks.  The day was sunny when I left - downtown ash was raining down like snow.  It wasn't ash from active fires but ash stirred up and lifted into the air by the slightest breeze, fibers and bits of the lives of my fellow citizens - I could have been breathing in a tidbit of someone's couch or toilet, or leather upholstery from a vintage car.  At 9AM the day had the feel of twilight.  Most people are wearing masks to keep large chunks of particulate out of their lungs.  I figure if all the LSD I did in college on top of the 40 cubic yards of weed I smoked, all of this washed down with 100,000 cigarettes or so didn't fuck me up bad then a little toxic fire debris, well-inhaled, wasn't going to be a problem.  I felt like one of those bad-ass football players who insist on wearing short-sleeved jerseys in sub-zero weather.

(Ed Note: 100,000, written numerically, has a much bigger punch than one hundred thousand, which seems kind of sterile and not that impressive.  This is a reasonable estimate, I think: 20 buttes a day, 365 days in a year, 12 years, and I'm not going to do the math for you).

 One of the large apartment complexes that burned was five or six blocks up the hill from the meeting place.  Those brave SOBs who were at the meeting Tuesday morning watched the thing go up in flames as they were walking in to fellowship.  There was nothing but smoldering rubble when the meeting let out.  THAT'S some meeting dedication.  I personally would have been in my car getting the fuck out of there.  Maybe not - all of this was happening at such lighting speed that very few people had a handle on it.  Try this - get in your car, accelerate up to 50MPH - 80MPH - and stick your hand out the window.  That's what the wind was like all day and all night.  It's no wonder flaming embers were being flung - flinged?  done flung? - great distances.

When I wake up during the night to pee I still peek out my blinds, still tensing against black smoke or rosy glares.  I still step outside and walk around the house many times during the day, looking east, west, north, and south, looking for new glows or plumes of smoke.  I now know that black smoke is very bad - this is shit that is burning - and white smoke is less bad - this is fire that has been hit with water.  Brown smoke is a grey area - usually organics going up, trees and bushes and such.

Over the last few days we've had clear weather, sunny and everything; we've had, during calm periods, great smoky clouds lower down and blanket the area; we've had monstrous columns of smoke, of all colors and hues, rising straight up like funeral pyres or blowing in any direction, sometimes gently angled, sometimes in ferocious horizontal columns.  I hate to see something new, especially when it's blowing towards me.  I don't know if it's near or far, fresh or stale, coming to get me or letting me know that it has been victorious somewhere else.  

Grateful for my stuff today.