“Fires Fires” is a personal essay by Caitlin Lorraine Johnson about the effect of global uncertainty on the small scale of a life.
1.
I moved to Los Angeles in late summer. Smoke filled my throat. I couldn’t see edges.
2.
Up the coast, wildfires reached a barn full of horses. Their owners frantically opened the stall doors and ran. The horses stayed. Too scared to move toward the approaching flames. Tossing their heads, snorting, stamping, backing farther and farther away—until the world was the limits of their bodies, fire, and time.
Then only fire and time.
Then just time.
3.
The fires spread close to the museum where I worked. My boss said not to worry about the art. The building has advanced systems—flip a switch and all of the air is sucked from a room. The art in those rooms doesn’t need oxygen.
Fires do.
Fires and people.
“Just make sure you’re not in one of those rooms!”
4.
I thought of what Georgia O’Keeffe said about the Japanese paintings at the Boston Museum—she liked them best, because they were the only ones that breathed.
5.
I studied philosophy in college. My admissions essay was on Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. In the play, Prometheus steals two gifts from the gods—blind hopes and fire—and gives them to human beings, as he explains (in the Herbert Weir Smyth translation):
Prometheus
I caused blind hopes to dwell within their breasts.
Chorus
A great benefit was this you gave to mortals.
Prometheus
In addition, I gave them fire.
Chorus
What! Do creatures of a day now have flame-eyed fire?
Prometheus
Yes, and from it they shall learn many arts.
At the time, I argued the lesser gift was fire. Now I’m not so sure. Fires warm, cook, harden, shape the realities around us. Blind hope is like freedom, it turns you back on yourself—and sometimes it’s hard to dream.
6.
Each summer, fires come closer. Everyone wonders what they’d do.
I hope I’d be able to close my eyes. Convince myself of water. The still-safety of another person’s arms.
Move towards that.
