After the Fire, the Fire still Burns

 

 

The pandemic kept me away for three years.  Emotionally I’d held up well during the whole global implosion, but when I eventually did hit rock bottom, it was inextricably bound to this place.  The heavy rains that bombarded Kyoto during the summer of ’21 had already done a number on my spirits, as I felt imprisoned within my house, unwilling to distract myself in some risky indoor venue, and unable to spend time at the lake or in the mountains, places that my soul craves desperately.  But it was the fires here in France that summer that threatened to sink me through the floor.     

The flames started a few valleys to the north, but high winds had coaxed them down toward the sea.  Day after day I followed their progress online, feeling such hopeless as I watched this disaster play out in slow motion, from such a distance where I could do absolutely nothing.  Lai Yong too watched from England, fatalistically optimistic, but her voice betrayed anxiety, a tone I rarely hear from her.  

We had assumed the house lost.  But as is often the way with these things, the winds shifted suddenly, the flames reaching 100 meters from the front drive but mercifully no further.

The drive in last weekend betrayed little fire damage, as five seasons had coaxed out new vegetation.  Things were beginning to green, as the odometer had rolled over into September. But flashes of black seen from the car increased as we entered the long straight drive that led away from town.  The steep little bridge that Sora so loved to hop at high speed in the Jeep had been replaced, and the forest beyond was all thinned out.  It reminded me of the old Matthew Brady prints of the American Civil War, great debris-filled spaces bordered by the agonized twisting of charred trees. The hillsides too bore scars, but you had to know where to look for them.  

But the house and the land surrounding it looked as they always had.  It, and all it contained, had survived.  Yet it is the scars within, a week’s worth of memories growing less and less visceral, that lead me to finish this paragraph with the words, “survived yes, but for how long.” 

 

On the turntable: Bola Sete, "Tour de Force"