Disoriented

Finally slept, fitfully. Scrambled some eggs, had a drink. A pall over everything, the thick smell of burned earth. This is the way the world ends. I've lived through hurricanes, tornados, ice-storms, but nothing like the smell of this. Mid-afternoon I took some beers down, gave them to the first guys I saw, they drank them in a single swallow, thanked me, told me I shouldn't be here, but I see the danger is passed. It was the green of the verges, simple grass, that stopped the flames. If they had jumped the road, I would probably be dead. Vic, the crew boss, said I was an idiot, I agreed with him, but pointed to where the fire had died at the edge of the road, told him I had a whole new reason for loving grass. Imagine this, on a front several hundred yards wide, at the far edge of the road, the fire had died, just at the bottom of my driveway, a few thousand feet away. I'm giddy. I would have fought, but as it happens, I just fretted. End-of-life harmonics. What you do, when serious danger pounds on your door, is worry about what your wearing, what you smell like. A guy at Janitor College, Fritz, was always worried about how he'd scored on the most recent test. He scored almost perfectly but worried nonetheless. I've known such great people in my life, possible annihilation brings things into focus. I'm merely lucky. I bring nothing to the table but the ability to survive. Maybe it's merely luck but maybe it's more than that, maybe I'm supposed to survive, as a kind of lesson to someone. You can be really stupid and live through things. I boxed several thousand pages of text, piled jeans and denim shirts on a laundry basket, collected all my bathroom items, prepared to pull my hard drive, I rehearsed, I had it down to minutes. I'd drive down through the flames, heading west, and once I'd broken free, I'd be a new man, something Whitman might write about. I'm so lucky I want to kiss something, someone, a rock, a piece of coal, the parched lips of tomorrow. In hindsight the firefighters might say it wasn't that close. I don't know, I just live here, it seemed close. My time-sense is fucked, eating and sleeping are afterthoughts, the smell, I need a room deodorizer, a new perfume. Something to alter the scene. Maybe the river, I don't know, I feel so lucky to be alive. I'm only smart in a stupid way, my feet are mired in molasses. Nothing prepares you for life. You just go from one beached landing to another. This world is so new, I can't comment, reality stinks. I wish I could make something up. An alternative. Fat chance. What you see is what you get. I don't mean that unkindly. Everything is ugly. This landscape, particularly. Spring is a myth.