Eng 212

I started this blog with the intention of posting both my writing and pictures, but the writing category has been more or less lacking recently. I turned in a writing portfolio for my creative writing class at the end of this semester, so I decided to post a few pieces of essays that were included in the portfolio. This is more or less to keep me accountable with writing, knowing that at least a few people might look over it. Thanks for reading friends!      

from a braided essay...

That same corner of the earth caught fire several years later. The weeks I had spent sitting under soft night were over. I wasn’t waiting for a boy anymore, and any other questions I grappled with seemed not to merit solitary questionings of the galaxies. My town is prone to wildfires. The foothills of Santa Barbara, California, are home to miles of dry chaparral shrub, which, paired with the late summer sundowner winds, are a striking surface for the smallest match. In 2008, the Gap Fire arrived – a dry summer blaze – and burned to the west. The following November brought the Tea Fire, which ate the foothills to the east. Then in May, the Jesusita Fire raged down the middle.

       Here is what I remember of Jesusita: From the 101 highway, we saw the foothills, the La Cumbre Peaks, become tinder for a week’s worth of burning. Lines of red snaked down the mountains – separating, corralling, and enclosing in an entrapment of emergency blockades. For days, “structure protection” was all we heard and smoke was all we breathed. My bike seat was covered in a soft white fur of ash. Low-flying rescue planes dropped water onto burning homes. Barricades held us back from watching the light show, and as we evacuated wild heat chased us down the hill. A sermon I heard compared Jesusita to hellfire, and locals appeared as tourists, pointing cameras at all the calamity. 

       It felt wrong to watch such destruction and call it magnificent – but it was. At night, the mountains that encircle Santa Barbara radiated orange as the smoldering clouds hung over the town, lit from within by thousands of TVs turned to the fire watch channel. Sometimes I feel guilty for thinking that the flames of Jesusita were one of the more beautiful sights I’ve seen. During the nights of burning, I played Cummings’ words over in my mind: “…million flaming billion kinds /of nameless silence)sky;.” We sat on the mesa as if we were sitting shiva in waiting and watched our town catch fire.  Together our families viewed a tragedy doused in scenes of splendor. It was the strangest feeling, like one of secondary mourning. It could have been a death of a loved one’s loved one, or just the hills pulsing red with an inferno of heat.