Wildfire Edition

I'm on a brief disaster retreat from the Ranch. We had a fire burning up Little Tujunga Canyon and yesterday morning I was awoken to the sound of a bullhorn blurping and an official Man recommending residents evacuate. The sound gusted into my window, ghostly, and abruptly disappeared, replaced by ghostly wind gusts. I got up to pee and collect my thoughts. I made mental note of locations of things I thought I would want to take with me. I wasn't particularly worried--just vaguely and sentimentally entertained by the thought of quickly gathering what I'd quickly decided were the most important things in my life. Just surreal. It was like I'd never woken up. It was that sort of frame of reference, there, as I was taking that pee. It was chilly.
I mostly put my notebooks and videotapes in my bag. A pair of pants. I negotiated transport for two computer towers and some harddrives. Another pile of notebooks, some mail and some cash. Last second I go back for a small box of sentimental items. I look up at the bookshelf in the bathroom and I consider grabbing my high school yearbook. It makes me feel really corny, but I kind of force myself to savor the moment. I'm pretty sure I'll be back soon. But it's like discovering a gross face you can make in the mirror and then making yourself do it over and over again. Or watching a good Saved by the Bell episode. You kind of feel gross and good at the same time in the pit of your torso. The blend, ooh, like a gigantic frappie-chino pumpkin-spice peach-colored blendered-baby in a moist, plastic cup. Nothing like an evacuation brings out the contemporary references in a guy like me. Nothing.
Anyway, we have some guests and I'm just kind of putting around, ho-humming and whatnot, keeping the whole thing pretty low-key so nobody gets panicky... I'm fairly optimistic about our chances of return, after all... And I notice the bottle of wine from the night before and so I figure out a way to store the rest of that that really hardly takes up any extra room at all and so I do that. And now I'm feelin' good. Reeeeeal good. Tedd's gonna drive. It's seven-AM in the morning and the sun is just cresting the valley and light is spilling into the cabin. I put on some wool socks my mom sent me. I'm snug in my shoes and I'm eating some firm, cold tofu like candy and then we're out the door, driving up and out of the mountains the back way because the regular way is closed off. And god, it is so beautiful and fresh outside, and so brightly keen, and so exciting and dangerous and free-feeling. We're escaping danger mountain in a worn-out old Saturn that doesn't always run... NPR threatens the edges of consciousness through the mountain static, at low volume beneath our stimulating conversations. Probably about tits and axes and other mountain stuff. Crass--just really crass, repetitive stuff at varying levels of volume.
No, just kidding. I'm sure it was solid gold, most of it. There's debris like sticks and rocks all over, no doubt from the insistent Santa Anna Winds. Those gusts we felt the night before, when we went down into the dry riverbed to soak up some moonbeams--they had surely dislodged much of what we saw. They were also the culprit behind the spread of the wildfires, like a giant spirit-bellows angry at the pace of development in the hills. We would come around a hairpin turn and a gust of wind would rattle the smashed-up front-right corner of the poor little Saturn we drove, chugging and choking to make it back down into the thicker valley air.
And then, around another bend, and then there's the tall downtown buildings in the smoggy distance, and we're descending through watered lawns and a stoplight admits us and then another one and we come to a sleepy stop.

4th of July...

Hard to describe. I am in an armpit. Unshorn. Flea-bitten. Me--and the
armpit. Maybe I am the flea. There is a swollen lymph-node and it
radiates pain all the way from the heel--the scarred,veiny, calloused scabrous
heel. Always sweating--radiating lead... Metallic discomfort up and
down the right side of the body, it would appear. The body favors this
uncomfortable side by lying on the other, stretching its elbow up and
over its head and back and around and under the two soaked pillows.
That is when I can breathe. Then it brings its arm back down, clutching
tightly at its chest, as if in an effort to protect the painful,
swollen node from the invisible crawling stingers that first afflicted
the heel some hours ago, passing poison up the right side of the body,
terminating in the armpit where I reside, terrified and clutching more
tightly than ever. I am. I am terrified and grasping at the porous,
metal-soaked walls. The chlorinated roots of the scraggly hair all
around me leaves a pungent chalk in my nostrils and around my eyes and
on my grasping limbs. I am hot and cold too often at odd intervals to
know whether I am hot or cold, living or just breathing at odd
intervals, responding to conditions or to the condition of the body I
am struggling to inhabit. How the hell did I get here? How will
I get out? What then?

Hi, I'm Mike Miller. On this, the fourth day of July in the year 2008, my thoughts drift in the direction of escape. Escape from debt. Escape from worry. From social responsibility and anxiety. From empathy. From pain and expectation. Escape from custom. Escape from systems of all kinds. Escape from economics. Escape from routine. Escape from uncertainty. Escape from poverty. Escape from entitlement. Escape from guilt and the fear of failure. Or the fear of success. Or the expectation of success. Or the expectation of entitlement. Or the social responsibility of expectation. Of empathy. Or the routine of anxiety. The economics of anxiety. The uncertainty of debt. The industry of debt. The guilty customs of expecation and pain. The poverty of entitlement...
My heart flutters at this notion of escape from time-to-time. When I am feeling sick and stuck, or sweaty and forlorn. Twisted up with abstract guilt. Pressured and ignored all at once--I'm sure you feel it too, from time-to-time. The kind of feeling makes you want to blow something up or knock something down or throw something up or out or away... Makes you imagine fire and tremors and ripping and caving walls and twisted debris. Kind of feeling makes you imagine drawing lines in or stomping emphatically on dirt. To create an impact or just to feel the impact of creation on yourself. To feel you and gravity and time and debris convolute and constitute and consecrate and reconcentrate... Well, that or it just makes you want to escape. My heart flutters at these notions from time-to-time.
What are we celebrating today?
What are we celebrating that we do not desecrate in every dimension of our feedback-distorted, irradiated proxy-lives?

WhoaA there!

Update Items! Rock'n'Roll! KGB Gambits! Matt Mangs! It's a Blog Bonanza!

Why, hello...?! I didn't see you there...!

Item 1: the term "Widowphiles"
- Tedd has been using this term to address those of you who follow our whimsical mass-mailers that we produce from time to time to highlight important dates and items of agenda. I like it. I would like to note as well that I am a hard-core Widowphile, and have been for some time. Also, noted author Henry James was an Anglophile, but I think, in today's day and age and faced with today's particular set of circumstances, he would be a Widowphile instead.

Item 2: topic for discussion
- Is Karl Rove a KGB mole? Was the fall of Soviet Russia a communist gambit to counter-program or destabilize the American self-image? Who's hubris is whose?

Item 3: fear
- I am afraid. Often, and in the face of an expanding mediasphere that offers a nearly limitless capacity to connect, subdivide, reconnoiter, synthesize, transitivize, sensitivize, and objectivize our ever-widening array of conscious and unconscious metaphor, I say FUCK YOU to those who capitalize on fear by inflating it. So right now I say FUCK Y"O"U. And fuck me. Let's figure this thing out.

Item 4: Thankyou!
- Thankyou ever-so-much to those of you who made it to Crane's Tavern last night and packed that little hallway full of love for our LOUDEST WIDOWS SHOW EVER. It was. My ears this morning were still ringing. That was awesome. I don't think we ought to be playing that loud for a multitude of different reasons, but on that night, in that scenario and in front of you I'd have to say I found the whole thing rather exhilarating. Not rather. Just straight exhilarating.

Item 5: Happy Birthday to Matt Mangs
- Today is Matthew Mangs's 25th birthday. I'm sure many of my readers know Mangs personally, but to those of you who don't, he is a staunch ally and official #1 fan of the Widows. He is also one of Hollywood's brightest film talents and is currently producing a web series called "Mountain Man" that will revolutionize the industry. What do I mean by this? Well, tell me what web series you are mad about right now. No, go ahead, just name them.
...What? I don't think I heard you say anything. Speak up.
Ah-hem! Well, right then, do you see what I mean?
Happy Birthday Mangs. You inspire all of us.

Please consider these five items carefully, choose one, then write a term paper or something. You can also comment. That's one of the fun things about blogs. Okay... Until next time, Widowphiles!

Thinkin about a blog here...