Fires: External and Internal

There was a fire on the street next to ours last night. A mobile home burnt down to the ground and two others, one on each side were badly damaged. That trailer was engulfed in flames in a matter of minutes. Thankfully no one was hurt but it’s pretty scary to see how fast a trailer unit can burn down and disappear. There’s barely any time to get out with your life.

I keep thinking of my computer and my journals when I think of a fire taking our place, that and Pumpkin of course, but otherwise we don’t have much of value. My words are what are most precious to me. It would be what I would want to save the most.

There are times when I wish I had somewhere safe to keep my journals, some fire proof place somewhere although I have no idea where that would be. I don’t know why I want to protect this fast growing accumulation of journals except to extract from them some form of memoir or even several memoirs. This is what I would love to materialize one day.

Nathalie Goldberg says it well when she says this about why a person is drawn to write memoir: “To trust your experience, to have a confidence that your moments and the moments of others on this earth mattered, not to be forgotten, wiped out with the new decree, the better plan.” That’s why I continue to write and continue to want to write. That is why I celebrate my writing because it defines and celebrates who I am.

It allows me to remember, yes the good and the bad, to speak, to surrender, to accept, to recognize, to rejoice, to hear myself, to understand, to taste every morsel of life that I travel through both in the immediate experience and in looking in the rear view mirror. Writing brings significance to my life and the life of others. It makes my presence here real and one that will linger even after I am gone. It gives meaning and purpose to my life beyond the here and now. Writing is my internal fire that allows me to celebrate life.