...comme une pierre sur le ciel...

God I know I made light of it, but it isn't light. I just saw the pictures from the aftermath of the fire, and it broke my heart. My beautiful house is no more. Structurally intact, the inside looks like a warzone. The walls are black, the kitchen, solarium, and dining room are (for lack of a better word) melted, the TV looked like it dissolved in a pool of radiation, the computers about the same. Nothing electronic survived the heat damage. The furniture on the first floor is covered in soot. My piano is no more, at least in any functioning sense. That crushed me. But all of these things are replaceable. The things that aren't:

My mothers paintings. All of them, including the Lady, the Sailing Raft, the Owl and the Pussycat. All her oils, melted - the frames burnt and deformed.

Our photographs on the first floor, graduations, weddings, my mother's father who passed when she was 17, Dai Bahman...

My new mission - fire safety. For the love of God, all you ungrateful, ignorant miscreants are going to be well versed in the mantras of Smokey the Bear. We are going to have lessons, maybe flow charts and diagrams.

(This is me making light again. Really, I'm just hiding my sadness behind a thick veil of amateur humour, even that which falls short)

In a couple days, I'm going to scan and post some of the pictures, and you will cry with me, and develop paranoias about making sure all appliances are turned off when not in use, etc. Are we clear?