October, 1994

First there is the smell.
Hint of tin,
strong whiff of copper,
a sense of burning sulfur,
salt peter,
just a dash of carbon,
a faint olfactory memory of hoppes #9 cleaning solvent and oil,
shit.

Then there is the conspicuous lack of sound,
someone is suddenly not screaming,
unexplained ringing in the head,
a motor has just stopped running,
a non-buzzing just behind the ears,
familiar sound replaced by an unfamiliar silence,
echo of violence in a silent room.

Finally the look of the thing.
Slumped against the white brickwork,
russet crown stretching up the pasty white wall,
confettie strewn across the otherwise immaculate floor,
a study in total relaxation,
reddish purple roots,
grey rubber limbs,
blossom of grey and crimson.

Eyes betray anger,
sadness,
a touch of surprise,
a complete and utter lack of final comprehension.

Not every end marks a new beginning.
Sometimes an end marks only an ending.

A good week.

Four solid days of rain.
Glorious wonderful rain.
Fires are out,
roads are covered in mud,
city people are in a panic,
air is clean,
grass doesn't crunch and turn to dust under my feet.
The world is alive once more.

A beautiful fall afternoon

Some days it seems like the world is burning.
I haven't seen the sun in two and a half days,
the ash is falling like snow,
tonight as I drove home from work I had to keep my headlights on low beam.
The smoke is thicker than thule fog, and the high beams reflect,
even inside the smoke is so thick as to tint a flashlight beam down its entire length.

I wonder if I could sue an arsonist for exposing me to second hand smoke...

I hate summertime.

Another fire up here. This morning I woke up and the smoke was so thick that it blocked out the sun, it was raining ash. This evening when I got home from work the ash was almost 1/8" thick over everything. Nobody knows exactly where the fire is, and nobody who does know is going to bother to mention it to anyone on this side of the hill (until they want us out of our houses).
Like most folks I have a run bag packed, and all the essential paperwork sitting in a spare backpack in the front hall.
You really get a feel for what you can do without when you have to pack your entire life into a backpack and a duffel bag.

Its over 90 degrees outside, and my lungs are choked with ash and soot and smoke. I hate summertime.
This evening the smoke turned the sun a deep red, and the wind stopped.
Driving home the ash fell like snow in my high beams, and the smoke plume completely obscures the stars.
A semblance of winter amidst the conflagration.

A Thought.

Predatory animals are frugal by nature,
they are born with an innate understanding of limits,
of odds,
of boundaries.
They understand that starvation could come at any time,
so they waste as little as possible.

They fight when necessary to secure a mate,
or to protect themselves from other predators,
or from competition for food.

They rarely kill without reason,
and rarely kill that which they are unable to eat.

The human is the only species that kills its own for fun and profit.
We are not predators by nature,
just prey with better equipment.

Yellow dye #7

In my dream I see a million billion paper envelopes,
identical,
uniform,
precise.

The razing of a million forests,
ever expanding the landscape of asphaltic concrete,
enveloping the world,
a malignancy.

The firing of mighty furnaces,
commands over intercom loudspeakers,
the sound of boots in lock step,
cold grey suits cover cold grey skins covering nothing.

The ever present trip hammer of efficiency,
relentlessly driving square pegs into the round holes,
grinding the chaotic banquet into a uniform gruel,
slopping the hogs of industry.

To each is given the potential for greatness,
to each a blank page for a greater creativity to spill out upon,
reveling in the crisp grandeur of their youth,
all destined for the same cosmic trash bin.