Oh, man. This is a month out of date. The following happened on Labor Day eve.
Burn burn burn. Something to write home about, as they say.
The garage behind my house burned down last night. The friendly neighborhood fire department got there in time to stop its advance across a fence and up my back steps. I owe them great gratitude. Nobody was hurt.
My neighbor suspects arson, though why anyone should torch a totally unoccupied garage is beyond me. Psychotic kicks, I suppose. He saw a young kid looked up to no good (bleached hair, gold chain, hard looks) walking from the alley to the street down the gangway between our houses just before the blaze went up. That doesn’t make me feel so good.
The color and light of a large fire is, of course, stupefying. The picture I took does nothing to capture the fear and the awe. I took it after the hoses had begun and the fire was hissing in a retreat whose speed amazed us all.
I was surprised at the clothing that I put on, sharply aware that I might flee my apartment and dimly that I could lose it all. Cowboy boots and jeans. In my bag I threw my computer and my little bear, Fuzzy. I’d like to think that acting journals would have been next, but who knows. Some part of the brainself deeply inaccessible to analysis takes over when you really switch on in the face of danger.
Not that I was in danger of death. By the time I got hip to what was happening outside my window, the fire department was already there displaying great mastery over the elements.
I was totally shocked at how fast the building went up, and at how fast the firefighters took the fire down. I had been sitting on my porch calmly stealing internet to watch Barack’s convention speech, and wandered in to bed. Time from shutting the door behind me to the Great Fear and Heat was maximum ten minutes.
Afterwards, in half-sleep, I had all manner of feverish dreams about going on tour, coming home, and seeing some of the Ladies from my past.
The smell is sweet and gives a headache. They say it will linger for weeks.
Happy Labor Day.
