Fire Symbol Analysis

“I write it all down, everything that's gone on with the farms too. Families being scattered, friends making enemies just so as to stay alive. I've kept dry paper and each night I write down what happened during the day. I'll write about you tonight, what you taught me but also what you are, making money on other people's losses. People won't take notice of it now, but I'm keeping the pages safe till that time they become ready for the truth. There's no way I'd ever burn my writing or allow it to get wet, regardless of what comes.”

[Jenna]’s exactly the kind of romantic that's got no instinct to make it. She's fighting the tree, fighting the rain, fighting me, and her whole purpose in life is to record every indignity.

Most evacuees don't learn. They try to start over someplace exciting (a target) or temperate (subject to floods, fires or earthquakes). Or they identified this month's most thermal politically neutral region. They assume they're not going to have to pack again. Even though it may be the third or fourth time for some of them, they're still completely tweaked with relocation fever. Full of piss and, as the expression goes, vinegar. They take their first steps around their new home and get confidence; make friends, buy appliances, plant tomatoes. You want to shake them: Do you really think this time it's going to be different?

There's a spark in front of us as [Juliet] lights two long white candles with a match. She hands one to each of us. “Go on. We’re protected.” She holds her arms open to the woods. “It's time for it to go. Do the honors. Don't think about it, we're safe in the suits, the vehicle is secure, the edges of the forest are protected. Everyone, everything is safe. It will all grow back. The forest needs the fire.”

Margo's eyes are shining. “Yes! Yes!” she yells, as she pushes her little flame against one twig and then another. She turns to me in lecturing ecstasy, “You don't even comprehend it do you? […] We’re three already, you don't need documentation! You've got your security and all the love you'll ever need!”

They each quietly wished they'd splurged for the extra day trip to see a live one in Japan. No matter what, you want an explosion, especially when you're going to die. […]

An innocent symbol of destruction, like the sun. My doctor encourages me to meditate on the natural world. Get lost in it and find yourself, like she's selling me a three-week safari. I humor her every now and then by trying one of these exercises because she also prescribes the serious bone-curdling meds when I need them.

So I study the hill, let it tell me the earth is round, filled with elaborate, molten plumbing. All this will allegedly lead to inner reliance and, eventually, clean detachment from the body—just what the doctor ordered.