Pure Fire

From the mountains of the Central Coast of California, where I'm living now, I've watched handfuls of fires pop up unexpectedly. Sometimes they are distant but still visible--a volcano spurting a surreal coal-like orange glow over the ridge behind Monterey (over 80 miles away) in the huge Basin Fire in June. Others seem to lurk around nearby, closing roads and stinking up the air like an ashtray, but never showing their faces or flames. They move fast, OR they might move slow; they change direction, they jump; they burn in areas unreachable and thus un-fightable; they ask you to stay on alert and pay attention but they give you no solid information to work with. I've found that the most frustrating aspect of fire energy is the "hurry up and wait" feeling: my car sat packed, a potential evacuation hanging like a drawn out farewell, making all normal activity or conversation seem useless, or forced, or repetitive. All we could do was check in on the current state of the fire, discuss it from some new angle, and carry on with the day. I kept thinking about the phrase "putting out fires" which is often used to describe the mode of operation in a dysfunctional system like an alcoholic family or a corrupt political system. It's a panicky survival--just a low-grade maintenance, no rich or meaningful life-living. I'm familiar with it, and I hate it.

I noticed, too, how different it is from the extreme blizzards or hurricanes I'm used to on the East Coast, where everyone knows it's coming and then buckles down and waits it out until it ends. Those affect whole towns, states, regions. But the fires here are unannounced and unpredictable, inexplicably hopping around and swiping off parts of the earth like a layer of dust. Strangely, in that, something very clean and total is felt when the fires blow through because something about it requires that you just give in to impermanence and chance.

I wrote this poem seven years ago, after experiencing my first wildfire, and my first winter, in California. I've gotten to know the intricacies of fires a bit more, but this first impression still holds.

Purifier
On the day of the eternal sunset
I awoke,
ashes softly falling from the sky.
A pink haze greeted my eyes
and I couldn't tell you where I was.
My first thoughts trickled out...
purposeful destruction...
pointless devastation?

I woke up
but it seemed the sun was going down,
and my sleepy headed, east coast reality
read:
A Southern California Snowstorm
in the skies that morning.

Collecting my logic,
I rewrite a new story
and I choose this to remember:
That December is still a time to die,
to leave our preconceptions behind.
Cause if it's not the cold, the heat'll get you
down,
choke the air from your throat
and leave you lonely--
yet proud!--
that at least you have yourself
(and no small task at that...)

Sometimes our hope for warmth
becomes the winds on a raging fire.
So, are you ready
for the death and dying?
For the purifying
-Heat-
that melts your need
to search
and learn.
It says give up and start again.

It wants to shed your skin.