Sep. 5th, 2007

What a Burn

Sep. 5th, 2007 03:40 am
rejectomorph: (rudisuhli_demon of love)
I've been smelling burning brush for the last couple of hours. I can see no red glow along any horizon, but the crescent moon, just north of east and about a quarter of the way up the sky, is the color of a tangerine slice, so the smoke is thick in that direction. The only big fire I can find mentioned on the Internet is the one near San Jose, way southwest of here, and despite that fire's vast size I don't think it could be smelling up this vicinity. Locally, the mild wind is coming from the north anyway, and Santa Clara County is way southwest of here.

I suspect something burning within a few dozen miles, hopefully on the far side of the Feather River. It would be very bad if the town had to be evacuated right now, and having the air filled with dense smoke would be almost as bad. The cat is in no condition to be moved, and neither are the old people. My mom has already been having trouble breathing during the hot weather and would be in serious danger from a heavy smoke of the sort we've had here during some big brush fires in earlier years. But I have the feeling that the summer from hell might be about to get worse.

We're more that two hours from early light, and only with morning will it be possible to tell which horizon is obscured—unless the fire is close and drawing closer, in which case it might reveal itself sooner by a red glow. For now all I can do is sit and wait and inhale the smoky residue of whatever is now being destroyed. This summer just bites.


Update: Morning has brought no clarity—literally. There is smoke in every direction. Still, I've found the most likely source of the smoke: it's a fire a few dozen miles northeast of here in the Plumas National Forest, and it goes by the euphonious name Moonlight Fire. It's been growing since Monday afternoon, and has been heading away from us for most of that time. The local Foehn wind must have developed overnight and brought the smoke plume to us, hugging the ground all the way. Such winds usually reverse by day, so there's probably nothing for the town to fear from this fire other than slow suffocation. I'll find it hard to sleep today with the air so thick.
rejectomorph: (franz_marc_foxes)
The air reeked and the sun was a red blotch until late afternoon, when a breeze from the southwest finally reached us and shoved some of the pollution back toward its area of origin. The eastern sky remains obscured, but the northwest was almost blue in the hour before sunset. I can still smell the scent of burning brush clinging to everything, but the inhaled air no longer feels abrasive. The paled light of afternoon reminded me of Los Angeles during the fire season, though in Los Angeles we usually got ashfalls with fires, and there've been none here. I'm glad of that. It's always disconcerting to find a bit of ash that is easily recognizable as a bit of leaf or a feather or a patch of animal fur which disintegrates to a powdery residue when you touch it.


I'm running on very little sleep tonight, and my anxiety level has gone much higher than usual. I feel like joining the dying cat under the credenza and just lying there facing the wall. If we both die at the same time maybe we could get a twofer at the crematorium.


Today was the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, a book about which I've intended to write here on several occasions. I've never gotten around to it. Maybe I never will, but this seems an appropriate occasion to do a brief comment on it, especially since the anniversary has provided the occasion for the publication by Newsweek of what I find to be a surprisingly decentish article about Kerouac and his book, penned by their staffer David Gates. Gates writes that On the Road "... might be the saddest novel you'll ever read." I certainly thought it so when I first read it at the age of eighteen, but then and over the years since I've found this view of Kerouac's best-known opus to be uncommon.

That's one of the reasons I've wanted to write about it myself. The book had some influence on my view of reality and of literature when I was younger (which influence lingers still, I'm sure), but it was not the same influence that it had on so many other readers. My view of Kerouac and his work has always been ambivalent. Maybe I'll get around to writing about it someday, but for now I'm mired in a melancholy almost as intense as that which I beleive drove Kerouac to write frenetically, but which has rendered me listless and irritated by words.


Be still now, computer.

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