Brush Fire

The light has gone but we can still hear the WHOOP WHOOPing of helicopters swinging down to snatch water from our lake. They're using the lake water to fight the fire. Yes, there's a fire here. In front of my house. I moved from the East coast - 20 years in New York City and nothing happened - and the minute I get out to L.A. THERE'S A FUCKING MORTALLY THREATENING BRUSH FIRE 500 YARDS AWAY FROM MY HOUSE!!!!!

I was being all innocent-and-shit this morning, minding my own business, doing my work. Then M called and frantically asked: "Are you anywhere near that fire?????" I was confused: " fire?" "Oh my god. Go outside!" So I did, and juuuuuuust over the ridge in front of me, about 500 yards away from my house I see huge, dirty-brown smoke. Billows and billows and billows. It was incredible. I was like: "HOLY. SHIT." I said into the phone: "Uh, yeah, THERE'S A FUCKING HUGE FIRE OVER HERE!" M was on her way back from the city where she was picking up my birthday present. "Should I start packing?" I asked her. "Yup," she replied calmly. "I would do computers and your cameras." "Ooooooooh-kay."

When she got home we launched into military mode. She told me what to do, how to do it, what to leave, what to keep, etc. I ran around placing important items into secure boxes (I KNEW there was a reason I kept all the packaging for my computers!), and gathering a pile of goods that we'd be packing into two cars. When I'd gathered my stuff I took the boxes and bags one-by-one to car #1 while M packed up car #2. As we did this we kept KCAL-9 on at full volume so that if we heard an order to evacuate we'd be able to act immediately. "Sometimes they don't give you more than 30-minute's warning," said M, all large and in charge. It was incredibly comforting to have a native Southern Californian to go through this with. If I'd been alone I would probably still be standing in the doorway waiting for the next tremor. For this Easterner the unfamiliar threat of fire is exactly the same as the unfamiliar threat of earthquake. Although, as the firefighters out here are so good the biggest difference between the two events is that you have a chance in a fire. If The Big One hits Los Angeles, there'll be nowhere to go but down. So glad I moved here...

Earlier, when M was still on her way and before I knew what I should have been doing, I couldn't resist being one of those dumbasses you see on TV: I grabbed my camera and went outside and shot footage of the smoke billowing so close to my life. As I was rolling and thinking to myself "This is so fucked up, BUT IT'S SO COOL TOO!!!!," a huge plume of flame shot up from the ridgeline, bisecting my frame. "OH SHIT!" was all I could say (my mother would hate this post with all these curse words). I kept rolling until I heard M drive up, then I went in to see what we should do.

I must say, we packed quickly. It's an interesting excerise, a fire, to see what you'll actually take. What - in a split second - you decide isn't worth saving. Here was my list: computers, cameras, photos. We managed to get all of M's sexiest musical equipment as well as her own huge computer, and still had/have (we're still waiting to hear about possible evac.) room for the 2 cats and one large dog. "Tzeitl! Don't forget the baby!" I definitely felt a little like Tevye in one of my favorite scenes from "Fiddler On The Roof." At the end his family is all packing up and he's agitated about something and yells the above line to his eldest daughter, Tzeitl. She and her husband are preparing to go with the rest of family as they all leave their beloved town, Anatevka. By the end of the play/movie/story, the Jewish families are leaving their beautiful, little town because they have been overrun one too many times by Catholic Russian soldiers carrying out pogroms. Fuckin' assholes. I still don't understand that kind of violence. It's the most disrespectful thing in the world. To hit, maim, kill someone just because they're not like you? Makes me want to puke. Fuckers.... Give me a minute, I've been battling a fire all day and have a little anger to work out...

Here's something cute: M and I are both writing in our blogs. What's a little fire when you need to update your public???