fire

I prefer to live in a “drama-free” zone. So does my husband. Even our dog hides when a voice is raised at our house.

Now, that doesn’t mean our life is 24/7 Kumbaya or completely void of passion. It’s just that, after the past two years, I can hardly imagine what could be more dramatic than a persistent pandemic actively seeking to infect us all the goddamn time. One that gleefully throws a curve-ball into, well, every plan, every chance it gets. Self-certified experts at rolling with punches, the two of us are officially all out of shits to give, making it nearly impossible to be, “emotionally surprised by events or circumstance— which is how Miriam Webster defines drama.

Enter 2022.

Last Monday night, as we engaged in some not at all sexy tandem teeth-brushing, my husband informed me that he might have to visit Urgent Care at 3am.

“Why don’t we go now and save ourselves some drama?” I asked, with a mouth full of paste.
“Because right now I’m fine. I want to observe.”

Let me just say, we observed the shit out of his condition——if observing is snoring with your eyes closed for seven hours.

The next morning, everything appeared under control. I even got my new dryer delivered six weeks late, a day early.
All was right with the world.

“Why don’t you pay urgent care a preemptive visit today?” I suggested, while loading perfectly clean clothes into the washer so I could give my new dryer a test spin.

“Good idea!” he replied.
So he did.
That’s when things went sideways.

“Urgent Care can’t fix the problem so they’re sending me to my doctor,” he said, from his car speaker-phone.
“Mmmmmkay,” I shouted over the loud kerplunk of jeans in the dryer, “lemme know how it goes.”

“I’m getting worried.” I texted two hours later. A short time after that, he called me. “I need emergency surgery,” he said. He sounded like shit.
“I’m coming!”
“You can’t. No outside visitors allowed. Covid.”
“Fuck.”
“I know.”

The surgery went well. I know that because the doctor told me so. My husband, on the other hand, texted me from recovery which was…well, if you ask me, I think they give them their phones too soon, you know, because they can’t have visitors and let’s just say—— I don’t recommend it.

Alone in bed that night, I petitioned god for a referendum on any further drama. We’d had an agreement and she’d broken it. “That’s it!” I declared. “You get one thing. And you blew it all in January so, that’s it for 2022. No more drama.”

Did you know you get to do that?

I learned this trick from my shaman after the California earthquake of 1994.

Terrified of aftershocks, I’d feel every damn one while he felt NONE OF THEM.
NADA.
Zip.
Zero.
It was beyond infuriating!
“I didn’t feel a thing,” he remarked after one particularly strong tremor that sent me diving under the dining room table. Apparently, the kitchen, a mere ten feet away, was not prone to aftershocks. “Remove yourself from the drama,” he advised, “you lived the initial trauma, you don’t have to keep re-living it. Ask to sleep through them.”

So I asked. And from that day forward, I was impervious to aftershocks. I slept, or drove, or simply ladeedah’d my way through them. Seriously.

At 9:30 Friday night, there was a fire across the street. Another one! Except this one was inside the house and it was enormous. Five fire trucks. The home fully engulfed, with flames shooting ten feet in the air. Thick, black smoke. I saw the pictures and I’d have to say it was the highest drama possible without anyone being hurt.

And we had no idea. None.

Our neighbors knocked for us, but when we didn’t answer, they assumed we were out of town.

Stranger yet, you know who hears and smells all of that? All the sirens, smoke, raised voices, and door knocking——Our dog.
Did she hear a thing that night? Nope.

The three of us were blissfully ignorant inside a drama-free bubble in the back of our house. Indulging in comfort food, watching The Prisoner of Azkaban. Spells are magic. Agreements are nonbreakable. God is a mensch.

Abracadabra, y’all,
xox J

It was 8 pm. We had just settled in after a long day.

I was on the couch, wrapped up in a fur blanket, living off the fumes of a recently completed, particularly fabulous zoom call.  He’d just completed a day running around, “putting out fires”, (the irony of this will be evident shortly. Wait for it) which is the way he’s always described his life as a contractor.

“I’m so ready to have this beer and chill,” he said, his flannel jammie-pants signaling his surrender.

That’s when the power went out, throwing our den into a darkness so complete I never saw him leave the room.
For a brief moment, it went back on.
Then blackness.
Three times the power tried to return, each attempt producing a mournful groan. “What is that?” I asked no one in particular. It was a sound so weird I can hardly describe it, residing somewhere between a whale fart and elephants singing the blues, it triggered an anal kegel.
“I have no idea but it doesn’t sound good.” He’d found a working flashlight the size of a light-saber and was headed outside.

The Santa Ana winds had picked up at sunset, but they were nowhere near as ferocious as it takes to knock out the power. But apparently, ferocity isn’t necessary when you have bamboo branches to do the job for you.

“Siri, turn on the flashlight!” I ordered, following a loud popping sound as I traversed the pitch-black obstacle course previously known as our living room. He’d left the door to the driveway wide open, the wind whipping a frenzy of leaves into the garage.
The minute I looked outside I could see why.
I froze in my tracks. Ruby, who’d been hot on my heels, recoiled, the bejesus scared out of her by the roman candle of fire roaring and popping like gunfire directly across the street.

Holy shit, I whispered under my breath.

All the neighbors who hadn’t left for the holiday poured into the street. “Has anyone seen Raphael?” I yelled, the wind carrying my query up and down the block. Half a dozen people pointed toward the fire.
“He’s back there with Marty, they’re putting out the fire!”
Of course he is.
Across the street was total chaos. People were either yelling and running like headless chickens, or standing like zombies their faces frozen in fear as the wind whipped hot embers over the rooftops. Two large cables had fallen from a transformer igniting a wall of bamboo behind a gray two-story with a white picket fence, and then, in an act of contrition, the bamboo promptly lit itself on fire.

Before I could get my bearings, a hysterical woman handed me a terrified, shivering toddler who’d had the misfortune of being in the bathtub of the bamboo house when the power went out.
“Take him!” she screamed at me. “I have to go back for the baby!”

Wait. There’s a baby inside?

NOOOOO! the gathering crowd screamed in unison, reading my mind. I couldn’t help but notice, as I ran him across the street into the waiting arms of his grandmother, that the naked little boy was wrapped in one of Ruby’s dog blankets.

That explained why the door to Raphael’s van was open.

Within minutes, five fire trucks showed up. Checking for smoking rafters and smoldering bushes, it was their job to make sure all the fire fighting the brave men of our neighborhood had kept the fire from spreading. Soon, the crowds broke up and we all returned, safe and sound, to our eerily dark and silent homes. Y’all, there is no silence like the absence of technology. No humming in the background. No beeping, whirring, or clicking. Just quiet. And total, dark-side of the moon, blackness.

Full. Stop.

Things I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving:

Our wonderful neighbors, who really showed up for each other and restored my faith in humanity.

Raphael, the de facto mayor of Bakman Avenue, and a man who runs towards fire while wrapping wet babies in freshly washed dog blankets. And did I mention he makes a mean turkey and his gravy is sublime?

The fire department.

ELECTRICITY! Omg! We take it SO for granted—until it goes away.

The DWP, who restored the power at 3 am with the help of mayor Raphael who just happened to be awake, see their truck, and show them the way into the neighbor’s backyard. wtf?

Flashlights with working batteries.

Solar candles.

And an Honorable Mention shout-out goes to the Emotional Support Pie we stress-ate by candlelight.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the US and Thursday everywhere else.

Carry on,
xoxJ

“Fire is a double edged sword. It can give us warmth and cook our food, but it can also burn us.”

I have  a complicated relationship with fire and by that I mean I love it. Maybe a little too much. 

Since I was born an Aries, which is a fire sign, that really shouldn’t come as any surprise, but recently— like this week—our relationship had been tested. I have to admit that it’s strained and like any other relationship that is fraught with turmoil, I guess you could file it under the heading of a love/hate sort of thing.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a thing for fire. From Girl Scout campfires that imprinted me with happy childhood memories tied to the smell of burnt hickory in my hair and gooey, marshmallow-chocolately graham cracker goodness, to warm, cozy, afternoons reading instead of skiing because—why not? 

It has always held me under its spell; a mesmerizing force of nature that can purify or destroy, cleanse or choke with its smoke, and perform its own special brand of alchemy by reducing the solid to ashes. 

As an Aries, I may have been known to maniacally stoke the “Witches” bonfires that my tribe and I gather around whenever we’re together. Under that spell, I stand a little too close, blindly feeding its ravenous flames with twigs and sticks for hours at a time. Oddly impervious to the smoke, my eyes don’t burn, and I feed the flames with the same single-minded love and devotion I usually reserve for truffle almonds and my BFF. 

All I’m saying is, I’m weird you guys. 

By design, I have three fireplaces at my house and I if I had my druthers, or if I lived in Sweden or Buffalo New York, a fire would roar happily 24/7. But I don’t, I live in freaking Southern California so I can only light them MAYBE ten days a year. 

I also have a thing for candles and staring into their flames as a form of meditation. Like I said, I find fire mesmerizing. 

So, you can imagine my conflicted confusion when giant wildfires broke out in California on Thursday. I sat glued to the news reports, staring at the flames, but this time it wasn’t due to my fascination with all things hot and fiery—it was because one of them was a little too close to home. It was licking at the doorstep of a neighborhood I know well. My sister’s to be exact. It was threatening the warm and homey haven where she’s raised her kids. We’ve held family Christmas festivities there every year for as long as I can remember. She’s hosted birthday barbecues, post funeral gatherings, anniversary parties, and taco night. And it was where we all gathered and sat in a stupor the day after our dad died. 

It’s our family “go to” hang out.

And to add a bit of insult to injury—after fifteen years she just remodeled her kitchen, and it’s so beautiful it would make Martha Stewart weep with envy.

But let’s get real here. My heart aches as I write this. These fires have been relentless in their destruction. Animals were killed and people have died. And THAT is unforgivable.

I have come to the realization that fire is a dangerous obsession. It shows up without knocking, sucks all the oxygen out of the room, and it can burn you and the things you love to ash in an instant. I suppose I knew that on a subconscious level but now that I’ve witnessed its handiwork up close, this has become very personal to me. 

In the end my sister’s home was saved. Thank God for all of the extraordinarily courageous fire fighters. They are a very special breed of human being. They are the ones who run toward the flames as we run away and I cannot stress our gratitude strongly enough.

I remember hearing once that most firefighters also have a real fascination with fire. They too are mesmerized by its mysterious flames; its amber glow. But they’ve also borne witness to the destructive nature of this untamed beast. Its impulsivity, and unpredictability. The lives it takes so indiscriminately. The forests, homes and businesses it devours without rhyme or reason. The lives it takes. The lives it ruins.

So, their fascination is tempered by a healthy respect. 

Not me. I feel burned.  I feel sick for all of the people who have lost so much. I’m pissed. This feels personal. Maybe I’ll get there. Just not there yet.

Please, if you get a second, send California some love. We could use it. And if you have a fire story, feel free to share it here. Believe it or not it helps to vent.

Carry on,
xox

Hey you guys,
This is from last year, but we did it again a couple of days ago on New Years morning.

A couple we love was staying with us so before I would agree to serve them breakfast — we gathered up some scraps of paper and scribbled notes to ourselves. I’ve noticed that hungry people in pajamas will do whatever you ask of them.

We wrote down things we want to change, things that went well, single words that hold a charge, sayings that carry magic, curse words, blessings and more. Then we chanted some incantations and danced naked (well, maybe only I did that), and into the fire they went!

Instant Resurrection wth a side order of transformation. Brought to us by fire.

I highly encourage you all to do the same. Because who doesn’t need some resurrection? Especially after surviving 2016 ( the year that was supposed to be unbearably light.)

Carry on,
xox

Goddamn, I love rituals. Beginnings and endings. Marking time. Rites of passage.

I figure that love seeped into my DNA after sitting in a smokey Catholic church inhaling Frankincense for pretty much my entire youth (it may also explain a ton of other crazy attributes I’d rather not go into).
What it DOES explain is my obsession with incense, focused prayer, incantations, and human sacrifice. Well, that and the fact that I’m certain I had a past life as some kind of mystical druid sorceress taken right out of the pages of Mists Of Avalon.
Or better yet, Merlin.
But more likely the medieval court jester who wore a silly hat, sported pointy shoes with bells and lived under a bridge with the trolls.

Anyhow, I decided to take everything that had to do with my failed business and burn it.
A perfectly legal Ritual Sacrifice. Of paperwork. Paperwork that held power over me.

2015 was the year of dealing with paperwork. I would have rather had a root canal without Novocaine.
I finally found it in me to throw what merchandise remained into an auction and dissolve the corporation which had been insolvent for several years but had retained a kind of sick sentimental place in my heart—like a shitty high-school boyfriend or a threadbare flannel nightgown.

I basically broke up with ATIK. It was time. Actually, it was way past time.

The relationship had become unbalanced. In a nutshell, it had become completely, horribly and totally dysfunctionally one-sided. I was doing all the emotional heavy lifting, holding the history of our love together while Atik went on an extended five-year vacation with a stripper named Trixie, forgetting my name and the fact that we once meant the world to each other.
Oh well, shit happens.

Once the litigation shitastrophy dust had settled I was left with a HUGE satchel that I’d been toting around for years filled with tons and tons of legal fuckery.
It was heavy in all the ways you can imagine and others you cannot. It lived in a shed in the backyard as physically far away from me as sadistic legal paperwork feels comfortable and even though it’s my office— I seldom went back there. I hated that thing.

So I decided to burn the contents as a ritual releasing of the old dragged-behind-a-car energy of 2009-2012 in order to move on.

2016—The Year of Unbearable Lightness. Burn that shit and get on with it!

So I did.

I had to let it go. Stop life-support. Kill it. Put us both out of our misery.

Time of death of Atik Inc. 12 p.m. December 26, 2015.

After quickly going through the toxic waste of debauchery to make sure I wasn’t, in my haste to dance naked in the flames, torching something important, I started the gas in my fireplace, set my intention “DO NOT EVER Darken My doorstep with your toxic bullshit AGAIN!” (I cleaned that up. It was much worse than that).

And then I said thank you to the worst thing that has EVER happened to me for all of the valuable insights and gifts it has delivered. I really did you guys but it’s taken me six years to get there.

Then I squealed with unabashed joy as I watched it go up in smoke. All of it.

My husband came in from outside and said the smoke smelled really bad. Oh, I bet it did.

That paperwork held so much sadness and failure and hopes dashed. It was filled with terse language and mean words. Horrible words. Words that cut me to the core. Words that human beings should never say to each other. Mad words. Words filled with rage wrapped in legalese.

I’m surprised the smoke didn’t get all Voldemort and come back inside the house and strangle me. I’m telling you, that was a satchel full of failure and it wanted to finish me.

But, I have already risen from the ashes—I am FREE.

I may have a had a little help with my pyro-ritual. There may have been a fellow recovering broken-hearted soul who was throwing his/her “annus horribilis” into the fire right beside me.

So now WE are free.

I cannot recommend this ritual highly enough.

Please, please consider doing this with anything toxic from your past. You don’t need a fireplace! I did it many years ago to free myself from a relationship whose grip I could not escape. I just put a large metal pot in the kitchen sink and lit a match burning all the old photos and letters. Many years later I did it again in my backyard on a rainy night (you may remember that post).
http://www.theobserversvoice.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1877&action=edit

Fire is healing.
Smoke is healing.
Endings are healing.
Rituals are healing.
Starting a new year feeling lighter is healing AND freeing.

And I’ve come to realize I’m a bit of a pyromaniac.

Love you all & Carry on,
xox

Ruby supervises the process about half-way through.

In an act of full disclosure prompted by yesterday’s post, here is photographic proof that I am someone who has felt the WRONG EMOTION once or twice in my life. Case in point: the end of your childbearing years can be a time of great sorrow. I’ve witnessed the melancholy that particular rite of passage has caused several of my close friends. I’ve comforted them and dried their tears at the fact that no more babies are in their future (at least not in the traditional way).

Not me! I was thrilled my childbearing years had come to a close! Ecstatic! Dare I say, giddy?

You see, I like to have…ceremonies. I like to mark rites of passage, beginnings, and endings and celebrate milestones with candles or fireworks.

Or giant bonfires. I like to burn stuff. Things that caused me grief. I must have been a Viking in a past life.

Like old love letters and photographs from past relationships. I know that I hold all of the good memories in my heart.

Those can go.

Remember when I lit all of the legal papers on fire from the numerous lawsuits pertaining to the closing of my store?

Maybe you saw the smoke? They could see it from space.

I felt relief and a certain sense of pride in the fact that I’d survived such a shitshow emotionally intact, fat and happy!

So this…this is the picture of just such an occasion. A particularly meaningful event that I had been waiting years, no, make that decades to celebrate.

A few years back, once I was sure my birth-control days were behind me I impaled my trusty diaphragm with a sparkler—and lit it on fire!

We all cheered. There was alcohol. And snacks. My sister immortalized it on film. It was awesome!

You can see from the smile on my face how happy this made me. Maybe you can relate.

All those years.
All that worry.
All that mess.

Gone!

Some things just need to be lit on fire. So, what’s next?

Carry on,
xox

I overheard a woman in Trader Joe’s today and I had to stop and pretend I was looking with great interest at the ingredients on the side of the microwave macaroni and cheese.

Trader Joe’s is an eavesdropper’s paradise. Especially after school gets out and always around the microwave comfort food.

She had a seven-year-old girl with her, Sophie, (presumably her daughter), and she was on her cellphone with someone who, after listening for several minutes to her conversation, is a saint.
Literally.
The Vatican has spoken. This person earned it!
I’m guessing a sister, best friend, or telemarketer.

Anyhow, I was riveted to her rant because the nature of it was well, so absurd — and I could totally relate.

She was going on and on about the dangers of camping. Like her kids were Tributes in the Hunger Games.

Hypothermia. “What if it gets below fifty? We don’t have the arctic down bags, only the light down summer bags. I mean, I could bundle the kids up with hoods, socks, and gloves in their bags…oh, yes, they’ll be in a tent…”

Sand fleas, (so, like the Mensa member that I am (not) I surmised a beach campout. “Sam had bites all over his privates last summer.” Ouch. And TMI.

Fire. “Josh is gonna have his hands full. What if Lizzie runs into the fire.”
I’m no expert here, but I think both Josh AND Lizzie have a bigger problem on their hands if she’s running into fire. And yes, camping could turn poor Lizzie into a human s’more. So, I’m with the worried lady, no camping for Lizzie.

Wait. Maybe Lizzy is a dog. Oh, that’s even worse.

Ocean. “I heard there’s gonna be high surf. What happens if the waves are so big the kids can’t go in the water? Then what’ll we do?”

Oh, I don’t know, play cards or board games, build sand castles, run into fire, you know, the normal kid stuff.

OMG Lady, seriously? You are a piece of work! Oh, and can you talk louder? I don’t want to miss a minute!

But by this time, I’d lingered too long. I was skirting the edges of stalker-ville so I moved on. But grudgingly. I was worried about Asbestos Lizzie the fire-walker.

The woman did leave me with a parting worry as I scurried into the cookie aisle.
“Sophie, don’t run with the pretzels in your mouth. What if you fall and choke to death.”

And…scene.

I’m not a worrier by nature but if I do go there if I start with the “what if’s” then I’m on the train, miles down the track before I even realize it.

And it gets even more ridiculous as it goes along. You know what I’m talking about!

After the 1993 Northridge earthquake, I was terrified to be anywhere besides home (preferably under my bed), in the event of an aftershock.
I could “what if” myself into a full-blown panic attack.

What if I’m at the movies? Dark, crowded, scary as shit.
What if I’m in the shower? Naked, wet, embarrassing as shit.

The one that could send me over the edge was:
What if I’m sitting at this light, caught in bumper to bumper traffic, STUCK UNDER A FREEWAY OVERPASS!
Trapped, crushed, flat as shit.

I would go out of my way to avoid an overpass. If it looked like I was going to be stuck underneath I’d gun it and jump over cars like fucking Vin Diesel. I’d lay on my horn and make people move out-of-the-way. I came thisclose to causing accidents and hurting myself. I was Lizzie looking for fire.

Eventually, (like three years later), I realized that all those “what if’s” never happened and I started to lighten up. But even now, if I think about it when I’m sitting there, it makes my butt cheeks clench.

“What if” is imagination gone awry and once you board that train you may as well find the bar-car and liquor up because it’s nearly impossible to slow down a speeding train.

Well, maybe Vin Diesel can, or The Rock, or that little firecracker, Lizzie. Apparently NOTHING scares her!

Are you a “what if” worrier?  What are some of your best “what if”s”?

Carry on,
xox

Goddamn, I love rituals. Beginnings and endings. Marking time. Rites of passage.

I figure that love seeped into my DNA after sitting in a smokey Catholic church inhaling Frankincense for pretty much my entire youth (it may also explain a ton of other crazy attributes I’d rather not go into).
What it DOES explain is my obsession with incense, focused prayer, incantations, and human sacrifice. Well, that and the fact that I’m certain I had a past life as some kind of mystical druid sorceress taken right out of the pages of Mists Of Avalon.
Or better yet, Merlin.
But more likely the medieval court jester who wore a silly hat, sported pointy shoes with bells and lived under a bridge with the trolls.

Anyhow, I decided to take everything that had to do with my failed business and burn it.
A perfectly legal Ritual Sacrifice. Of paperwork. Paperwork that held power over me.

2015 was the year of dealing with paperwork. I would have rather had a root canal without Novocaine.
I finally found it in me to throw what merchandise remained into an auction and dissolve the corporation which had been insolvent for several years but had retained a kind of sick sentimental place in my heart—like a shitty high-school boyfriend or a threadbare flannel nightgown.

I basically broke up with ATIK. It was time. Actually, it was way past time.

The relationship had become unbalanced. In a nutshell, it had become completely, horribly and totally dysfunctionally one-sided. I was doing all the emotional heavy lifting, holding the history of our love together while Atik went on an extended five-year vacation with a stripper named Trixie, forgetting my name and the fact that we once meant the world to each other.
Oh well, shit happens.

Once the litigation shitastrophy dust had settled I was left with a HUGE satchel that I’d been toting around for years filled with tons and tons of legal fuckery.
It was heavy in all the ways you can imagine and others you cannot. It lived in a shed in the backyard as physically far away from me as sadistic legal paperwork feels comfortable and even though it’s my office— I seldom went back there. I hated that thing.

So I decided to burn the contents as a ritual releasing of the old dragged-behind-a-car energy of 2009-2012 in order to move on.

2016—The Year of Unbearable Lightness. Burn that shit and get on with it!

So I did.

I had to let it go. Stop life-support. Kill it. Put us both out of our misery.

Time of death of Atik Inc. 12 p.m. December 26, 2015.

After quickly going through the toxic waste of debauchery to make sure I wasn’t, in my haste to dance naked in the flames, torching something important, I started the gas in my fireplace, set my intention “DO NOT EVER Darken My doorstep with your toxic bullshit AGAIN!” (I cleaned that up. It was much worse than that).

And then I said thank you to the worst thing that has EVER happened to me for all of the valuable insights and gifts it has delivered. I really did you guys but it’s taken me six years to get there.

Then I squealed with unabashed joy as I watched it go up in smoke. All of it.

My husband came in from outside and said the smoke smelled really bad. Oh, I bet it did.

That paperwork held so much sadness and failure and hopes dashed. It was filled with terse language and mean words. Horrible words. Words that cut me to the core. Words that human beings should never say to each other. Mad words. Words filled with rage wrapped in legalese.

I’m surprised the smoke didn’t get all Voldemort and come back inside the house and strangle me. I’m telling you, that was a satchel full of failure and it wanted to finish me.

But, I have already risen from the ashes—I am FREE.

I may have a had a little help with my pyro-ritual. There may have been a fellow recovering broken-hearted soul who was throwing his/her “annus horribilis” into the fire right beside me.

So now WE are free.

I cannot recommend this ritual highly enough.
Please, please consider doing this with anything toxic from your past. You don’t need a fireplace! I did it many years ago to free myself from a relationship whose grip I could not escape. I just put a large metal pot in the kitchen sink and lit a match burning all the old photos and letters. Many years later I did it again in my backyard on a rainy night (you may remember that post).
http://www.theobserversvoice.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1877&action=edit

Fire is healing.
Smoke is healing.
Endings are healing.
Rituals are healing.
Starting a new year feeling lighter is healing AND freeing.

And I’ve come to realize I’m a bit of a pyromaniac.

Love you all & Carry on,
xox

Ruby supervises the process about half-way through.