Two Fire Years–Philosophical Questions

The before-the-MARSHALL-FIRE-past reveals itself like slow bubbles rising from a sludgy pond. Yesterday, I remembered I used to have a functional small garlic press. Earlier, remembered I had this blog, and liked it, and even that I kept paying for it! Questions I have been exploring since the destruction of 1100 homes in a straight-line wind grass fire? Well–what happens to stuff? Does it matter? Where did my memories go when everything disappeared? Was a bit of my dead father in his old mug, a bit of my mother in a teacup, so now I have less of them to touch? I like the zen saying “The Cup is Already Broken,” but it is harder to accept when it is all the cups, and they cannot be mended with gold, they are dust. And then, unsought for gifts filter up through the ash–the light catcher I had hung in my mom’s window in her Alzheimer’s unit, the last scrap of her handwriting on a card. 

I hope this finds you well, as we grew to say during Covid and are saying again; even more, I hope you find yourselves able to “hold life as if it were a face”, as poet Ellen Bass wrote, and say “yes, I will take you/I will love you again.”