Yesterday on my drive to work, about five houses down from me, I thought I saw a burned-out firefighters coat in the yard of a house. “That can’t be what I saw,” I thought (glancing at the house as I drove past), “that house is fine except for being a burned out shell.” Errr? I slammed on my brakes and drove backwards (9:15 AM on a Sunday morning in my ‘hood isn’t really known for heavy traffic). Sure enough, the house was gutted.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it for most of the day. Did she get out? Was anyone injured? It looked like the kind of fire that probably took someone’s life. It looked… violent. Angry. Frightening.
So of course I wanted a photo of it. Voyeuristic? Sure, a bit. But I’m reminded of a story my mom told me, about the house next door, when we lived in Baltimore, catching on fire. And the only thing she could think to do was photograph it, because that helped her process what was going on. And since – and you might not know this if you don’t know my mom – I pretty much am a carbon copy of her, I did take a photograph.
And then of course, I wanted to post the photo in my Photo-of-the-Day album. I’m trying to keep those photos as yarn-free as possible; I started doing the project again because while I love yarn (obviously) I am around yarn 24 hours a day, and I really need one thing in my day that isn’t about knitting. But this is an awfully personal photograph for the family involved. So post it? Or not? After much chewing over it, I decided to post it.
Here’s why: this is affecting me on a number of levels. Although it might sound like it, I’m really not trying to make the actual fire all about me – for fucks sake, I slept through the whole 2 AM event! – but I think the repercussions of this are going to be felt through my neighborhood for a long time, and I’m going to be blogging about that as it happens, so I want a starting point. A place to reference. A place to come back to.
In no particular order, here’s what’s on my mind…
Read the rest of this entry »
