This cartoon from The New Yorker pretty much says it all. And yes, we HAVE been eating olives.
What with the over 110f temperatures every day for a long time, the state of the world and all, everyone’s been a bit Tense. Barky, if you will. So this past week kind of put it all over the top, completely, seeing as how we currently find ourselves a bit closer than we’d ever want to be to the south end of an 89,000 acre fire, complete with firenados and total murk as far as air goes. The wind here is always like something out of some movie where you’d say, Oh, that’s not realistic!!! Wind doesn’t do THAT! so when there are flying sparks involved and the wind does THAT? It creates something very close indeed to apocalypse in spots. This afternoon is the first time in days that there has been anything even hinting at blue sky and it’s mostly in my imagination, probably. Anyway the other night we watched the City of Redding burn from our front door- the flames reflecting off the huge clouds of smoke. The fire guys got on it quickly and the red sky dimmed in an hour or so but I very much hope not to see anything like that again. It’s all kind of a stress blur, but yesterday it looked very likely that we would have to evacuate. In this situation, what that actually means is you leave and know there will be nothing when you return. So, what THAT actually means is you have to get over your sense of your entire body being ripped open, think it through and realistically assemble what can be taken- if you have, as we did, the…uhm, luxury…of time.
Seeing as how I have hundreds of books and bottles of oils and tinctures and essences and what not this was not the most fun I’ve ever had. But, I was proud of myself because I actually was able to put things together in a pile by the door. Leaving, of course, 99.9% in place. A Kitchenaid mixer can be replaced. An out of print copy of the only existing authoritative book about Yoruba herbology probably cannot, but there it is. In the end, at least for yesterday and today, the fire line held and we are still here. For which I am truly thankful. While we’re not anywhere near the end of this, unless the wind does something totally infernal, even for it around here, we will probably be OK.
So once again I marvel at the workings of the universe and all its mysteries, and once again realize that you do create your reality with your thoughts. No matter how awful the scene in front of you appears to be, it is always shaped by how you are reacting or responding to it. I couldn’t help thinking about all the people who live with smoke and destruction all the time, like in Syria. And what that kind of stress does to people- the grocery store yesterday was enough to make a person reach for Xanax, after a mere week of this disaster. But also? There are the unimaginably angelic individuals, like the farrier who was helping people move their animals to safety just Because. And of course, the firefighters. I feel as though I have a lifetime debt to them- it’s going to be interesting to figure out how to get that in balance- aside of course from the daily work of kindness to those one encounters. These people go directly into Hell and save places and people they don’t know, with everything on the line. Just Because. So in the end, and despite certain other things that transpired that sent me directly to the cocktail olives, I feel for the first time in a long time, a certain sort of hope…or maybe it isn’t hope. Maybe it is the sense of the Light that is always there, no matter how dark it appears to be. There is a peace in that, and a peace in knowing that there always IS light, and it is us and we are it. And, eventually the ash will stop falling, we’ll reorganize and move along. All of us.
Blessings and thanks as always!!!!!!!
Boozilla: learning to fly one room at a time 