Burning with Optimism's Flames

While I never had to "duck and cover," I'm still plenty old enough to think the world might have ended in a lickety-split atomic moment, especially when there was a president who thought it funny to talk about outlawing Russia forever and begin bombing in five minutes. Sure, it might be because I spent too much time in eighth grade religion class in Catholic school on the Book of Revelations. It might be my own Eastern European angsty roots. But it's always been easy for me to think the apocalypse was just out of eye-shot (why do ears get to have all the "fun"?)--something horrible lurking around the corner. Where better for me to end up living than in California, where practically any disaster seems imminent, and they've all been written up by Mike Davis as if they're just a script waiting for the cameras to roll.

So it's more than a bit terrifying--in that your deepest fear is actually true way, in that weight on your heart way, not the run about screaming like a mad man way--to watch plumes of smoke come up from behind the Santa Ynez Mountains that generally are one reason living in Santa Barbara is so sustaining. We live between mountains and the sea, 5 easy minutes to either. Generally, that beauty doesn't leave you thinking how vulnerable you are, but with the Zaca Fire at 86K acres (that's like burning down New York's Central Park over 100 times) and spuming up little mushroom clouds, things get a bit, oh, nerve-wracking.

There are times you don't want to be right, you know. And what's even creepier to me, about me, is this manifestation of my fears that life can switch from happy to sad faster than a match-strike seems somehow the way things should be. That apocalypse just around the bend is almost in view. If you strain to see it, will you see it? Is that what you want?