With California once again burning, I wonder if those fires approached our Way, what Yo save?
I remember my cousin who, years ago, lost his house during a summer of flames; He had been out of home when he burned, so there was no frantic effort to fill the car with memories. After everything had cooled, he was allowed to return to the property; In a danger suit, he sat in the ashes, examining in search of jewels and anything else that could have survived (an image that has stayed with me since then). Nothing had, except the beautiful view of the mountains that I had once enjoyed every day. The vast art collection, many of them family pieces, was gone. Jewels, both real and false, missing. The music, so much music, was gone. (She was a radio personality and had a home study with a room full of cd cured, many of them delivered and signed by the artists). Of the family photos, many of them captured and developed in the old form and, therefore, they left forever. His chillars clash in his cooperative … I can’t let myself think of them. They, and those other things, I am sure, are some of the things that I would have taken if I could have done it.
At the time I sent you a randomized care package, my mother’s clothes that could fit in her height, a teapot, some probabilities and ends, something to help her happen. He didn’t feel like anything, but she had nothing. I have thought about that a lot, both nothing and something.
We are fortunate not to have a fire problem here, at least not yet. But I look around and ask myself, what is worth the effort? What could let it burn?
It should not fly on the horrible experience that should be a fire in the house, but it is an exercise that is worth doing. We are a culture of stuffAnd I have heard people say after losing everything, they realized how little it was significant. But the things they are? Those mean a lot.
Then, I started working on a list, just in case. It doesn’t matter that transporting large paintings out of danger would be a logistics nightmare. While I work on the list, I wonder if I could help me reduce, help me make decisions now. The disorder is exhausting with the real effects on our mental health: it can make thought clearly, it can move our attention from other things. It can cause conflicts and self -complacing. More on the physiological side, it is called a phenomenon “Visual increase” That happens when the disorder confuses how we take and process information at the edges of our vision.
Then, the list. Above all, I am surprised how short it results.
–Dags, any other living creature
– The bronze sculptures of my aunt
–The painting/other works of art, especially the articles collected from afar: a pot of Ghana honey, a hand -carved drum of Papua New Guinea, Timbuktu camel leather. Things like that.
– My grandmother’s brass candle and the port of my grandparents from Austria
– My mother’s nursing cap and wedding veil
–Laptops and support units with decades of family and travel photos
– Any official paperwork you can find (where are the birth certificates? I have no idea).
–Lum photo albums, and that giant drawer full of images that I have never organized
–Ponelas and some other special/valuable pieces of jewelry (my mother’s, my aunt’s)
–To old wall watches, perhaps, especially that of old family friends
Um … Is that? That could be everything. That could be everything.
I am looking around the room, around my house, while I write this. And honestly, although there are other articles that would be sad to see missing, none is so essential. Most are replaceable. Everything seems so crucial day by day, and much is useful or pleasant to have at hand. But significant? Not so much.
Which makes me feel a bit sad. It reminds me of cleaning my father’s apartment when he moved to an elderly home, starting value things and watching the rest, with greater pain, the hundreds of books, they took and then, from there, donating their few possessions possessions remaining after he died. Very, very little remained.
But also, there is relief. If everything mattered in the background, how do you fix them after the loss? Without a doubt, if you lose your things, there is a period of remembering things that you wanted to recover, and that would hurt. (Damn it, I loved that wool coat! That game of Christmas ornaments that my mother loved! The old crack of the bed of the invitation room!) But knowing the vast majority of what we “possess” that we would not miss So much … huh. How about that?
Again, I realize that I am ignoring many aspects of such tragedy. Surely there are layers of pain that I cannot imagine, he has never experienced it. In addition, the logistics of not having a home suddenly, losing everything that is familiar and having to replace all the basic concepts, to pray your insurance even to cover or curse yourself for letting you go. All telephone calls, all terrible music.
Even so, and it is a cliché to say it, but much of what we believe we care has little meaning, except that it belongs to us, and the property does not impart meaning. It reminds me to stop buying. It makes me want to give more things.
And in a way, I like the image of the curve of things of a life of a life, the accumulation, the brief plateau of having everything (for those who are lucky to get there) and the slow launch. Makes sense; When you are blooming, you are expanding in all directions. As he withers, the petals fall, the stem curls and occupies virtually no space at all.
A fire would be devastating. A fire would be cleaning. Both.
#word
