Ho Ho Ho

It's a nice, clear, sunny day today.  I took some garbage outside, threw it over the fence into my neighbor's back yard - I don't know where it goes from there, just that it's not my problem any more - walked by my gray car which is covered with ash.  Really beautiful ash - that wispy ash that you see in a fire pit after a campfire's embers smolder down to nothing overnight.  The slightest breeze lifts it up into the air where it drifts around in gossamer tendrils.  There is gray ash and white ash and black ash.  I'm looking at somebody's tree and somebody's tire and somebody's dress.

I took some recycling over to the recycling dumpster yesterday - plastic bottles and such, things that are going to end up in the landfill anyway, despite the mild balm to my soul applied when I think I'm "making a difference" - when I noticed a huge plume of smoke rising in the distance.  It seemed weird to be recycling.  There was a picture of guys on a gulf course in the paper with a mountain-sized gray cloud in the distance.  That was a magnitude greater in the weird department.  I've seen pictures taken from downtown LA - fifty miles away - that literally show what appears to be the eruption of a major volcano.  A friend's Christmas card - showing his two smiling boys, in Christmas red - made a jarring appearance in my ash-covered mailbox.  Ho Ho Ho.

The world's burning and you're eating a burrito?  Really?

I have been trying to support some of our downtown businesses the last few days.  Initially, everything was closed because of the curfew; then because of the power outages; finally, the Boil Water order left the doors shuttered.  So I'm sitting at this coffee shop yesterday with the ash drifting down.  It looked like snow flurries from hell.  I did not try to catch any of them on my tongue.  I am convinced that no two were alike.

The week of fire.  Our particular fire - dubbed the "Thomas Incident" and I'm not making that up - continues to churn its way through the wilderness.  This fire has burned 300 square miles of terrain and we've not had one loss of life.  We really do have some incredible public servants.  The pictures of tiny little insignificant men standing a few yards away from a wall of fire are ineffable.

I was a Chicago White Sox baseball game many years ago, sitting in the first row of the upper deck.  Good seats.  The batter fouled a ball off that seemed to be coming my way.  I really had no idea - I have no sense of perception.  I'm amazed that an outfielder will take off - literally at the crack of the bat 80 yards away - and run at top speed very close to the place where the ball is going to land.  I don't know how they do this.  I wouldn't come within 20 yards.  I wouldn't know whether to charge toward the infield or to turn and sprint for the wall.  Anyway, as this ball came slicing towards me it became apparent that it was going to come goddam close.  It was spinning like a son of a bitch - you can imagine the torque that was applied to cause a baseball to leave the bat at a 30 degree angle while elevating 40 or 50 yards.  I could hear it sizzling as it got close, as it twisted in the air.  The ball hit me right in the hands and was gone in a flash.  I didn't get close to catching it.  I watched it drop into the lower deck.

This being Chicago I was booed, of course.  I took some shit when I left to go to the bathroom between innings.  And, of course, I spent the rest of the game thinking: "OK, hit another to me - I'll be ready for it this time."  I've gone to several hundred baseball games and never had the opportunity to catch a foul ball, and I was ready for another one.  This is another, much less traumatic, example of the concept of Very First Time.

I grew up in OH where tornadoes were a common event.  I wasn't afraid of tornadoes, particularly.  I understood what to do and when to do it and how random and rare they were.  SuperK grew up in ND where snow is the only common event.  She was very afraid of tornadoes.  The first time a tornado siren went off she freaked out and went to the basement.  I did not go to the basement.  I figured the discomfort of a cold, damp, concrete basement wasn't worth the risk of dying by tornado, and I was right!

One summer night I awoke to the sound of a fierce rain lashing the windows.  I got up and closed one that was open a crack and heard a curious locomotive-like sound.  I shrugged and went back to bed.  The next morning I found out that a tornado that had snaked its way through several neighborhoods had concluded its route about 100 yards from our home, destroying several industrial buildings in the process.  Again, an event that I was prepared for mentally but not emotionally.

Dashing through the ash,
In a two seat Cayman S,
O'er the hills we go,
Freaking all the way.
Hey!