From The Fire

      FROM THE FIRE: Ojai Reflects on the Thomas Fire. www.fromthefirebook.com.

I'm creating this book. With a friend of mine. We are new friends. I believe I have written about this book before and so you may already know this. We met on Facebook because we both wanted to create a book about the Thomas Fire. We have combined forces and are creating this most incredible anthology of our town's experience in what is the largest wild fire in California history.

We are finishing up the submission stage of this book. In truth, this stage was supposed to be finished in March. That was our deadline. Then May. Then June. And now, now. But this time is the real time. It is a hard stop.

And I am heading to Oregon next week to layout this book with all it's photographs and poetry, and reflection. And the interviews.  We interviewed over 40 community members about their experience with this fire. And so we have this comprehensive fire story told from all these different angles - we know this fire.

And so, because I am so in this, this creating of this book I am feeling a bit stressed. As in really stressed. And this is really what this writing today is about.

First off I want to say that the fan on the Mac is running very fast and so I can hear it. This is new. It started to happen with I downloaded Chrome on this computer and then added theses two extensions because I wanted to back up my google drive to my dropbox. And then I freaked out because I am worried when I deal with technology. And so I ended up not doing that. And then the fan started. So I googled that and it said it may be because of Chrome which is what I was thinking since it never did this before this. So... I dumped Chrome in the trash and then dumped the trash.  But here is my question... if I dump Chrome, so that it is off my computer, are the extensions off my computer, too? Since they are Chrome extensions. If someone knows the answer to this please let me know.

Okay...

Even before this happened today I had a challenging day because I ran my car into a metal gate. This was an accident. I was going up to this beautiful spot in Ojai to interview this lovely man about his experience with the Thomas Fire and I went through the gate and misjudged the opening and scraped the passenger side of my car against the metal. Fuck. This is not a little scrape. This is an I bent the gate and dented my car and now the passenger door will not open kind of scrape. Uggghhh.

So that was that today, too.

And I am hungry. I am taking this breath text thing to see if I have "Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth" and so I could not eat anything but like plain chicken and rice. And black coffee. And then I need twelve hours with no food and then I breathe into a bag like a dozen times in different twenty minute intervals and send it off in a Fedex bag and voila - bacteria will show up or not. I think.

And not only am I hungry because of this I am stressed, too. Because I do not quite know how to administer this test and my lack of focus and ability to keep my attention to understanding instructions is preventing me from figuring it out at this time. It's an ADD thing that I have even though I do not have ADD. More, as my kids always said, I have the attention span of a squirrel. Which may be ADD. I don't have the focus to go figure that out either.

And so, this fire book. It's going to be quite amazing and most of the time I am loving creating it. And proud of it. And moved by it. And so grateful that so many people are open and sharing and supportive and excited about being a part of this book. It will be beautiful.