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Element Dancing
Jun. 24th, 2003 02:50 amThe fifth anniversary of the housefire passed without incident a couple of days ago.
A brief recap for anyone who is reading this but didn't know me back then (which I think is all of two people): the Spouse and I had an apartment fire the day after Solstice in 1998. I had just returned from a camping trip and had (much to my later chagrin) been a good girl and brought my camping stuff into the bedroom rather than leaving it in the front room. The Spouse and I left to do Father's Day stuff with his stepgrandfather. While we were out, the wiring for our bedroom window A/C unit (which was almost certainly not properly grounded) caught fire. Fortunately, our neighbors (in particular, JG) were alert and the fire department was called. We returned to find that everything in our bedroom and bathroom was gone, and the vast majority of the items in our hall closet and study were too damaged to retrieve. It wasn't a total loss; the kitchen and front room only got smoke damage, and all in all a little over half our stuff survived more or less intact.
At the time, it was one of the worst things that had happened to me that didn't involve someone dying. It was the inciting incident for my worst episode of acute depression; indeed, I haven't had a major episode since, just the usual dysthymia. (Of course, since I was still subbing in private preschools at the time, I didn't have health insurance.) I usually have some sort of minor remembrance of the event on the anniversary, but I missed it this year. I think this means that it's not a major formative event for who I am anymore - its shadow has been long, but not all-covering.
One anecdote: the fire left a large hole in what used to be our south bedroom wall. If you've never sen a burned book (and I hope you never have), it burns just like a block of wood - from the outside edges in. The cover can be completely gone, but if you put it out, the interior pages will still be legible, just yellowed with charred edges. DG was standing with one foot inside the hole and one foot outside as we poked through some of the cold ashes about a week after the fire occurred, and he picked up a loose page that was left lying on the ground. He didn't even really read it, until I read it aloud over his shoulder.
It was a page from a young adult modern fantasy novel (which I still have not replaced; I don't know if it's even still in print) called Isle of the Shapeshifters. While most of the magic in the story is fantasy stuff, it's not Tolkienesque sorcery - it's rather shamanic, and uses the four Greek elements. Some of my ideas about certain aspects of the elements are still related to that little story.
The page he picked up was the first page of the chapter titled "A Room Full of Fire."
A brief recap for anyone who is reading this but didn't know me back then (which I think is all of two people): the Spouse and I had an apartment fire the day after Solstice in 1998. I had just returned from a camping trip and had (much to my later chagrin) been a good girl and brought my camping stuff into the bedroom rather than leaving it in the front room. The Spouse and I left to do Father's Day stuff with his stepgrandfather. While we were out, the wiring for our bedroom window A/C unit (which was almost certainly not properly grounded) caught fire. Fortunately, our neighbors (in particular, JG) were alert and the fire department was called. We returned to find that everything in our bedroom and bathroom was gone, and the vast majority of the items in our hall closet and study were too damaged to retrieve. It wasn't a total loss; the kitchen and front room only got smoke damage, and all in all a little over half our stuff survived more or less intact.
At the time, it was one of the worst things that had happened to me that didn't involve someone dying. It was the inciting incident for my worst episode of acute depression; indeed, I haven't had a major episode since, just the usual dysthymia. (Of course, since I was still subbing in private preschools at the time, I didn't have health insurance.) I usually have some sort of minor remembrance of the event on the anniversary, but I missed it this year. I think this means that it's not a major formative event for who I am anymore - its shadow has been long, but not all-covering.
One anecdote: the fire left a large hole in what used to be our south bedroom wall. If you've never sen a burned book (and I hope you never have), it burns just like a block of wood - from the outside edges in. The cover can be completely gone, but if you put it out, the interior pages will still be legible, just yellowed with charred edges. DG was standing with one foot inside the hole and one foot outside as we poked through some of the cold ashes about a week after the fire occurred, and he picked up a loose page that was left lying on the ground. He didn't even really read it, until I read it aloud over his shoulder.
It was a page from a young adult modern fantasy novel (which I still have not replaced; I don't know if it's even still in print) called Isle of the Shapeshifters. While most of the magic in the story is fantasy stuff, it's not Tolkienesque sorcery - it's rather shamanic, and uses the four Greek elements. Some of my ideas about certain aspects of the elements are still related to that little story.
The page he picked up was the first page of the chapter titled "A Room Full of Fire."
