Fire

Lovelies,

On Tuesday, 7/30, I woke pre-dawn to the feeling that something wasn't right. I told myself to go back to sleep but the feeling lingered so I could not. I wondered if maybe someone was breaking into our cars again and cajoled myself out of bed to look through the window -- and saw a strange orange glow. What happened next was undoubtedly fast but feels held in time. I put on the nearest clothes and headed toward the door, thought better and went to the bedside table for my phone, stepped toward the kitchen for my keys, but only when I saw flames moving toward me did I realize my apartment was on fire.

Long story short, I'm fine. Everyone is fine. My apartment and belongings burned in the East Bay Booksellers fire and I'm currently displaced, staying with my wonderful friend, Beth, in Pinole. 

My apartment was a lot of things. Fountain of three hundred songs, stardust for friendships, backdrop of countless tea-sipping conversations, reading nook, sunset lookout, makeshift yoga studio, haven for world-weary songwriters, favorite hour of the week for aspiring pianists, celery juice factory, nexus of my creativity empire. And also a secret thing, that I only now have the clarity to articulate. It was the empty box where I arrived, over a decade ago, with neurological Lyme disease and PTSD. It was where every day I moved through their layers, claiming pieces of myself until I'd constituted the whole of me. And it was where, again and again, I updated every detail of art and furniture and appliance to match. Those who know me know I'm MINIMALIST. I didn't own much. But what I owned was beautiful, considered -- added as it uplifted me and removed as soon as it no longer applied. For most of my stay, my apartment was a realer skin than my own. I felt this inward and outward becoming culminate just WEEKS ago, when I said and MEANT: I am FREE. I am SAFE. I put the last touches on my apartment -- a new bedspread, a print of a wave above my piano -- and felt, for the first time in my lifetime, home.

The timing of this fire is uncanny.

I think of my daily affirmation of the past year. Part one: "I'm free." As I mentioned, now true. Part two: "I'm safe." Again, now defiantly true. Oh, but then part three: "I'm at home in the world." It's not lost on me that though my keys now open nothing, this week I was handed more keys than I could keep straight. SO MANY PEOPLE opened their homes to me. I mean. I have a lot of keys in my (new) bag. So maybe just... be careful what you affirm! If you tell the angels you're at home in the world, they may go and burn down your very first home to prove the point!

Also home: The phone calls. The hugs. The donated clothes. The offered furniture. The cleared office space. And then my beautiful friend, Ellen, floored me with a GoFundMe, and even as I shudder to accept such help, with every donation I think, "That's a hairbrush," "That's a salad bowl," "That's a bed."

I don't think I'm ready to make a new home. Perhaps I will be tomorrow. But for now, I surrender, I practice: I'm at home in the world. 

All my love,

Rachel