This morning I had a heart-stopping moment- when what I was seeing was in total conflict with my ideas of what is probable. A moment when an entire alternate future took shape in my imagination.
There’s a loft above the kitchen of our rental house- a snug space with two low windows and no access except for the rope ladder I rigged up. Since moving here I’ve been climbing up the ladder every morning for twenty minutes of meditation. I’ve been proud of my consistency, even on those mornings when it seems like a big waste of time and I’d rather go straight to a cup of tea by the fire. Pride, of course, is the opposite outcome from ego dissolution that meditation is supposed to produce, so that gives you some idea of where I am on the curve of spiritual enlightenment.
Yesterday, I did skip it. Had a cold, didn’t feel good- forget it. And this morning I almost bagged it again, but managed to disengage from the mental dissent long enough to get myself up on the kitchen counter and half way up the ladder. That’s when my line of vision cleared the loft floor and I saw the burning candle. What?? How could that be? I haven’t lit it yet- I’m not even in the loft yet so how could it already be lit? My brain is a little slow at 7am. But oh, now I’m getting it. I left it lit. Oh . . . wow, I wasn’t even up here yesterday. Shit- 48 hours! I stare for a full minute while my self-image as a responsible, aware-of-my-surroundings kind of person goes up in smoke.
I blow the candle out. It was one of those fat, heavy candles, and it was down to half an inch from the cloth covering the low altar. The sides had split open, and green wax had run across the altar, onto the floor, and had puddled up against the wall. The wick was tall, and a good inch high flame was happily bouncing above the pool of melted wax.
I stare at the trail of smoke rising from the blown out candle as I see the whole thing unfolding differently in an alternate future- how easily I could have not been there this morning- could have been grocery shopping while flames spread across the surface of the wax, licking up the wall until the window sill caught, until the loft was filled with flame, until the whole house turned to raging fire. I slowly realize how completely oblivious I have been to this quietly developing disaster- all day Thursday working across the canyon while the candle burned, then all day yesterday sitting at home with a cold, while the candle burned. Sleeping all night for TWO nights, while the candle burned.
I am completely humbled. How could I do that? Is this a sign of early Alzheimers? And what other things are slowly burning, out of view? What catastrophes are already cooking, right under our noses? Growing tumors, slowly clogging arteries- my mind won’t stop. I am shaken.
How odd it is that fire shows up in the literal world, when we have been thrashing it out with the county about their over-the-top fire wall regulations. Our east and west walls are less than five feet from the property line, so we have to have walls that are constructed to stay standing for one hour with a fire burning on either the inside or the outside. Don’t even try to find the logic between distance to a property line and fire safety. There is none, but it’s a good way to pad the pockets of the construction industry with thousands of dollars of extra materials. I won’t bore you with all the details, but we’re talking about TWO layers of Type X 5/8” gypsum on the inside AND the outside, running all our furnace, bathroom, and stove vents all the way to the north wall, and the possibility of no windows at all on the east side. Fortunately that’s not our view side, and we have hopefully surmounted the window issue through discovery of a product that the county may accept. For $250 a square foot, we can have a section of ‘transparent wall’. Normally, such a thing would be called a window, but not in the language of ASTM E-119, which is the language in which I am learning rudimentary phrases so that I can converse with Larry P**., the lead plans examiner at the county (see 11/19 posting for my very disheartening initial encounter with Larry).
Larry has a voice that sounds like over-cooked oatmeal. I have spoken to his voice mail many more times than I have actually spoken to him in person, and I can now perfectly mimic the mushy, drawled-out intonation of his mechanical greeting. “Hi . . . this . . . is . . . .Laaaaar . . .ry.” By the time I hear ‘Hi this . .’ I am already pissed off. Let’s just say that Larry P** has not exercised his brain much beyond the boundaries of the Boulder County Building Code. ‘You knoooowwww . . . . this is for your own safety’, he says, and I want to scream at him that a raging fire at our doorstep is about as likely as his brain coming up with an original, creative, or helpful thought.
But look. Every stance has an equally true opposite stance. Fire happens. And not that I think we need to be wrapped in gypsum, with no windows and 25’ vents to protect us from it, but my certainty about how things are has been scrambled. Larry P** may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, but I’m not so right or invincible either. Fire happens, gypsum walls happen, and it’s all just going to unfold in the only way it can. Next time I talk to Larry I’ll try to remember that he’s just on a mission to protect Boulder County residents from the candles they leave burning.
There’s a loft above the kitchen of our rental house- a snug space with two low windows and no access except for the rope ladder I rigged up. Since moving here I’ve been climbing up the ladder every morning for twenty minutes of meditation. I’ve been proud of my consistency, even on those mornings when it seems like a big waste of time and I’d rather go straight to a cup of tea by the fire. Pride, of course, is the opposite outcome from ego dissolution that meditation is supposed to produce, so that gives you some idea of where I am on the curve of spiritual enlightenment.
Yesterday, I did skip it. Had a cold, didn’t feel good- forget it. And this morning I almost bagged it again, but managed to disengage from the mental dissent long enough to get myself up on the kitchen counter and half way up the ladder. That’s when my line of vision cleared the loft floor and I saw the burning candle. What?? How could that be? I haven’t lit it yet- I’m not even in the loft yet so how could it already be lit? My brain is a little slow at 7am. But oh, now I’m getting it. I left it lit. Oh . . . wow, I wasn’t even up here yesterday. Shit- 48 hours! I stare for a full minute while my self-image as a responsible, aware-of-my-surroundings kind of person goes up in smoke.
I blow the candle out. It was one of those fat, heavy candles, and it was down to half an inch from the cloth covering the low altar. The sides had split open, and green wax had run across the altar, onto the floor, and had puddled up against the wall. The wick was tall, and a good inch high flame was happily bouncing above the pool of melted wax.
I stare at the trail of smoke rising from the blown out candle as I see the whole thing unfolding differently in an alternate future- how easily I could have not been there this morning- could have been grocery shopping while flames spread across the surface of the wax, licking up the wall until the window sill caught, until the loft was filled with flame, until the whole house turned to raging fire. I slowly realize how completely oblivious I have been to this quietly developing disaster- all day Thursday working across the canyon while the candle burned, then all day yesterday sitting at home with a cold, while the candle burned. Sleeping all night for TWO nights, while the candle burned.
I am completely humbled. How could I do that? Is this a sign of early Alzheimers? And what other things are slowly burning, out of view? What catastrophes are already cooking, right under our noses? Growing tumors, slowly clogging arteries- my mind won’t stop. I am shaken.
How odd it is that fire shows up in the literal world, when we have been thrashing it out with the county about their over-the-top fire wall regulations. Our east and west walls are less than five feet from the property line, so we have to have walls that are constructed to stay standing for one hour with a fire burning on either the inside or the outside. Don’t even try to find the logic between distance to a property line and fire safety. There is none, but it’s a good way to pad the pockets of the construction industry with thousands of dollars of extra materials. I won’t bore you with all the details, but we’re talking about TWO layers of Type X 5/8” gypsum on the inside AND the outside, running all our furnace, bathroom, and stove vents all the way to the north wall, and the possibility of no windows at all on the east side. Fortunately that’s not our view side, and we have hopefully surmounted the window issue through discovery of a product that the county may accept. For $250 a square foot, we can have a section of ‘transparent wall’. Normally, such a thing would be called a window, but not in the language of ASTM E-119, which is the language in which I am learning rudimentary phrases so that I can converse with Larry P**., the lead plans examiner at the county (see 11/19 posting for my very disheartening initial encounter with Larry).
Larry has a voice that sounds like over-cooked oatmeal. I have spoken to his voice mail many more times than I have actually spoken to him in person, and I can now perfectly mimic the mushy, drawled-out intonation of his mechanical greeting. “Hi . . . this . . . is . . . .Laaaaar . . .ry.” By the time I hear ‘Hi this . .’ I am already pissed off. Let’s just say that Larry P** has not exercised his brain much beyond the boundaries of the Boulder County Building Code. ‘You knoooowwww . . . . this is for your own safety’, he says, and I want to scream at him that a raging fire at our doorstep is about as likely as his brain coming up with an original, creative, or helpful thought.
But look. Every stance has an equally true opposite stance. Fire happens. And not that I think we need to be wrapped in gypsum, with no windows and 25’ vents to protect us from it, but my certainty about how things are has been scrambled. Larry P** may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, but I’m not so right or invincible either. Fire happens, gypsum walls happen, and it’s all just going to unfold in the only way it can. Next time I talk to Larry I’ll try to remember that he’s just on a mission to protect Boulder County residents from the candles they leave burning.
**P.S. I returned to this post to edit out Larry's last name after I realized that if Larry likes to spend time googling his own name, (which I can easily imagine him doing while he procrastinates the returning of my phone calls), the perspectives offered in this blog would not work in our favor. Our house would be toast.
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1 comment:
Awesome piece!
"Pride, of course, is the opposite outcome from ego dissolution that meditation is supposed to produce, so that gives you some idea of where I am on the curve of spiritual enlightenment."
The fact that you can even say that DOES give me some idea of where you are on that curve!
Bravo, Laura.
Hope you two had a great Christmas today. Keep that home fire burnin'!!
Kheyala (Rebecca's Knob Sister)
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