Fire Demon

In the 0400 hour, on September 19, 2020, I put my 8 month old baby down to bed for the umteenth time this early morning. Although I love all the little moments with our baby at times I feel like I lose myself. This time I thought I felt awake enough to go outside for a few minutes and sit in the rocking chair and feel the cool morning air. Have a quiet peaceful moment.

I opened the door to the balcony and was greeted immediately by a wave of heat just as I saw the orange glow, heard crackling, and the words of a man shouting, “let it all burn down.” I felt dazed and wondered if this was really happening. There is a fire at the sidewalk. Then my brain clicked in. Opened the door to go back inside, shouted to wake up my boyfriend, and for him to call 911 because there is a fire. I wasn’t sure if this was going to affect our building and I was already thinking that we should be prepared to get out in case the building was next. Above his head was the phones so that is why I didn’t just call. I would have had to stumble back through the room to do so.

The trash pile for bulk pick up had been growing with the addition of several mattresses, all of which I suspect were bed bug infected since they otherwise looked new. Now, it was all up in flames with the tree that stood adjacent. Along with the trash and tree, a vehicle was also caught up in the fire and the back window was shattered.

I felt a strong urge to take a photo, so I grabbed my phone and took a photo of the flames. There was still someone screaming to burn it all down. Another person tried using the fire hose at our apartment to put it out which only made a lot of smoke. Then soon after the fire department arrived and finished extinguishing the fire. The smell was so bad we had to wake the kids to move rooms to try to avoid as much smoke as possible. Between fans and the wind it still took a while to get the air to clear and days for the smell of burnt metal to subside.

The next morning I looked at the photos of the fire and paused. It literally looked like a fire demon was climbing the tree and looking over for a place to jump to the building. A fire can jump as far as it is high and if the neighbors had a lot of items it is plausible that that fire could have come to the building. But in the photo it just looked so clear. Is my mind playing tricks on me? I do not think so. Everything that has been happening to me lately has been quite an adventure and if I told you it all you may think I was crazy, yet this is a glimpse that maybe I am not and there is more that we do not see and perceive. Life as we know it, what we think we see and what we think we know, may not be the actual reality of what is. What happens if we just let go, just for a moment, could we see something more of the really real reality of everything? There is so much more to see, the eyes filters are only one set of perceptions, they are incapable of perceiving so much out there, what are we missing that is right in front of our face? What is really going on around us? Especially since there have been so many fires all over the world.