Color of Fire

I want to thank the many people who emailed me to show concern about the wildfires possibly effecting us. Our house and family are some distance from the wildfires, which are raging south of here in Orange County and San Diego and north of here in Malibu. We are just fine, not really near any of the blazes. I was a little nonchalant about the fires when they first broke. Southern California gets wildfires. The Gulf Coast gets hurricanes. The Midwest gets tornadoes. The Northeast gets blizzards. Every part of this nation has it's own of Mother Nature's tantrums to tame. And Southern California gets wildfires. Trimming back hillside brush beats shoveling snow any day.

But then the numbers of evacuees quickly rose from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands. A customer of mine in Portola Hills watched flames soar 100 feet in the air behind her house while she was stomping burning embers on her back porch. This is a disaster unfolding.

Of this disaster that which I catch glimpse is a fine powdery layer of ash covering everything. The sky is hazy with particulates. Only the longest light waves, red, orange and yellow, are having much success piercing through this layer of ash, making the noonday light golden. I remember looking through the yellow celophane of Easter wrappings. It reminds me of that. Everything has the color of fading color photographs. Shadows look blue. The sunset is a stubborn bright pink, which doesn't manage to create a reflection on the ocean surface. It looks like a round burn mark, which takes away the top layer of skin. My world looks like Guillermo del Torro has walked in and said, "Yellow. I want everything to have a pale golden cast." The ocean water is blue and yellow at the same time, like iridescent silk taffeta. It is disconcerting. And beautiful.

Stay safe.

Für die vielen Emails, die nach unserem Wohlergehen fragten, möchte ich mich bedanken. Unser Haus und unsere Familie sind ziemlich gut entfernt von den Wildbrändte. Uns geht's gut.