Today has been a very long and trying day.The fire is still blazing pretty much out of control. The west end of Simi is totally evacuated, plenty of people from the east end of Simi have left. At least 30 houses have been claimed by the fire and I guess a few hundred people are without a place to stay. The city has converted the YMCA and the Boys and Girls clubs into make shift shelters for anyone who needs them. I guess the Chemical portion of the fire is out, the smoke isn't black anymore but it is everywhere. It is so hard to breath here, being from the LA area I am use to gray skies, this however is something completely different. Ash is falling everywhere, and the smoke is so thick it has visibility reduced to 20ft in some place. It hasn't been all bad news though, we are no longer restricted to our homes, but we are still on evacuation watch. I guess I was being paranoid about what I saw over the weekend because we are all over the news now. It is hard to imagine that in the day and age we live in that a fire might be able to take a whole city out. The news is saying that it's a real possibility unless we get help soon, the Governator has begged all available fire departments to send help. Access to Simi is still closed off, I should really go, but the question is go where? My parents moved to Oregon last summer, all of my friends have pretty much gone, the few friends I have left here are all with their families, it is terrible. The feeling of isolation is totally unexpected. I have always been a person who does well alone, I never felt like I needed people, but that may have only been true because people were always around for me. This is the first time that I don't have anyone at arms reach when I need them. My nature is not to be introspective, it is just something I don't do. For me my vision always falls on whatever is in front of me, the past is gone and the future is to far away. Some might consider this being too narrow, I always fancied it as living in the moment. Oh well it is whatever it is.
I packed my things, well the important things and the things that fit in my car. Every important piece of paper is packed and ready to go, my hard drive is backed up on an external drive and my laptop is packed too. Aside from that I grabbed a few trinkets and clothes. Here is an exercise. Sit in your house and look at everything you own, now pick the 5 most important things. For me I only had like 3 things that were important to me. My hard drive was important, it has pictures and everything I wrote in school. My car keys because it holds my freedom, and a few trinkets from my childhood. Those are my important things, my laptop isn't important, neither are the clothes those I just needthem for convenience. My birth certificate, ID, social security card, and Medical info are not important. These are Items that society needs me to have, but to live and cherish the life I have lived they have zero consequence.
I keep coming back to the one thing I can't get over about the past few days. The guys in the yellow hazmat suits. It's like when you loose a tooth and your tongue keeps swooping through the hole, you know its gone but you just can't keep yourself from checking. No one seems to have seen them but me. Enough of my obsessing, I have bigger hotter things to worry about right now.
Tranquilnow@gmail.com
~Johnny~
If I Stay there could be trouble
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