The CVS is closing. January 2; last day. It didn’t burn. But first it had to wait for the town to reopen. Then there was the water problem. Too, it was yellowtagged; though the building itself didn’t burn, the fire burnt trees out back black, and these had to be cleared, before the doors could open. The CVS people did that. Put in all new landscaping.

But corporate, it had set quotas. And the town, reduced from 25,000 people, to something like 2000, these quotas: the Paradise CVS, could not meet. And so, now. It is over.

I never went in the CVS much, before the fire. But, after the fire, I try to go anywhere, everywhere, that still stands, wherever the bus, or feets don’t fail me now, will take me.

Sometimes I’ll have the bus drop me at the post-fire cig store, at Skyway and Wagstaff, and then I’ll walk the two miles of via dolorosa Skyway back to my house. CVS is on that route.

The CVS, post-fire, was always sad. Because it had a feeling, of end. You could tell there was no corporate support. Could just feel it. Unlike, say, the Save Mart, where corporate had, from the get-go, told the burned of its Paradise store: we don’t care how much you lose; we are Stand By Me.

The CVS people were nice, but you knew they wouldn’t be there long. It was like you knew, another fire, would soon, come through. And carry them all away.

Once there I bought some nice chocolate, for somebody nice, who needed it. I intended to write about that here, but somehow didn’t get to it. It remained but in communiqué.

There’s a lot of that about. I have recently embarked on gathering together all the fire writings, from various hithers and yons; and have determined, with some alarm, that we are looking at serious word count. It’s looking like the thing will top out at around the twin of Robert Burton’s Anatomy Of Melancholy. Do they even print books that big any more? I don’t know. I do know that when Stephen King came out of the cocaine frenzy and wheelbarrowed The Stand to the publisher, the publisher said: no, we will not be printing that; here is a meat ax; chop off a third. And wipe your freakin’ nose.

Then again, when Thomas Pynchon came out of the cocaine frenzy, and herniated Gravity’s Rainbow to the publisher, the publisher went into the forest, and cut down all the trees, and so the Rainbow powdered down in toto, in all its Peruvian flake glory. Or not.

I do not write in cocaine frenzy any more; that was for the newspapers. These days, I just write in fire frenzy. And I’m thinking: when I go to the publisher, I will say I am a Pynchon. Because I am certainly not a King. And “Pynchon,” that references “Pontcardon,” a commune in Normandy; the Thomas version of Pynchon, he has written enough words to cover all of Normandy, pretty much all France, and for sure the entirety of the UK, where his people went in 1066, when they got bored with farming, and decided to have some more conquering. It is said that my people went along, too; though, most likely, they were bent over, there, heaving, off the bow.

This is the sort of perfectly useless information that will be in the fire book at all times. I am older than dead, so this book is my last chance to say anything. So why not say everything?

Clark Brown, he came to me in a dream, and he said that’s what I should do. “You are who you are,” he said. “Be that.”

You can say nay to Clark. Not me.

About Chico? His book? You have it? No? Get it.

When I did come upon the CVS chocolate communique, I understood why it had never come into here: there were not enough words! It was skeletal. Emaciated. Also, many Importances, were not there mentioned. Like, when I asked the Garden Man, how he be, he replied, with great good cheer: “If I were any better, I’d be twins!” I have no idea what that means. But I know it is wisdom; gnomic; and fine.

Anyway, here it is. From May. Doesn’t seem that long ago. At the same time, it seems longer. Because there is, no longer, any time. At all. When you burn. In a fire.

. . . . I have a nice story for you.

This morning I took a very early bus to the cig store; but I fouled up, took the wrong one; there would be no return route, not for many whiles; so I’d either be stuck forever up there, or have to walk home, a couple miles, through the whole of the town. I walked. And I’m glad I did.

First a couple work trucks pull up, guys hop out, and start shoveling hot asphalt. City workers. “One pothole at a time,” one said. I liked that. I mean, the whole town is burned down, but still they’re going around filling the potholes. One at a time.

Then I saw them making real progress, up on the roof of the bingo hall. Took fire, but they’re fixing it.

I went into the CVS, because they’re really struggling, so I try to go in once a week or so. And they had some good “coffee,” so I bought you some . . . .

The guy in the little antique restoration place has reopened, and says the antique biz here is nowhere near what it was, but people are starting to come out of the shellshock, and getting back into it.

And in the little traffic triangle near the bingo place, three people were kneeling and pulling weeds from around the flowers. I asked if they were city workers, and they said no, Paradise Garden Club. And this was the first day they’ve been out officially since the fire. One man said he’d been approaching burned homeowners and asking if they’d like any of their surviving plants transplanted to where they could be regularly cared for. So that’s happening. Most of the Garden Club people are burned themselves, in their homes, but yet they’re out there, tending the brave public flowers, that have been all by their lonesome, for the last six months. I told the man about the flowers in the burned around here, that I’m worried about, drying and dying, once the rains stop, and he wrote them down, and said they’d see what they could do.

So these were all good things. When the town burned, and I realized I was going to be here alone in the dark for a while, I searched for something to read. Originally I was set next for Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, the world’s first apocalypse now story, where the human population reduces to zero. But I decided that would be exactly the wrong thing. And then I remembered this Martin Cruz Smith novel, where Renko one day recalls his exile in Siberia, not exactly a pleasant thing, but for the first time realizes he had experiences of worth there, understands “how unique and beautiful they were, what clear evidence that on no day could a man be sure he should not open his eyes.” So I read that. Because that’s a true thing. I try to remember that it is. Sometimes I forget. But sometimes, like this morning, I know it to be true.

Geez. That guy. Mr. Silver Lining. I remember him. Where did he go? Used to be around here. Somewhere. But he certainly wasn’t today. When we walked to Bobbi’s. For the fire cookbook.

I watched that cookbook come out of the ether, to be. For, among the numberless losses, in the fire, were recipes. Not those in books, but those passed down, in family, in friends; written on cards, scraps of paper, margins, walls. Gone to ash. All of them. Never coming back. Unless in memory recalled. And all PG&E’s $13.5 billion—here, we’ll give you that, for burning all that you are—cannot replace, a one of them.

This, a loss, suffered mostly by women. Because men, with the cooking, generally they confine themselves, to heaving huge slabs of meat, onto iron grills, over open flames—or sometimes they’ll actually bury the meats, in what is basically lava—then laying back, several hours, to drink cold beer, from metal cans, belching fulsomely, emitting wisdoms like “don’t mean shit,” “told that sum’bitch,” and “then I kicked his ass.”

There in the fire tubes I saw burned women grieving the loss of recipes that could never be replaced. And then unburned women, from elsewhere—not just countrywide, but worldwide—come in, and say: I can’t replace that. But I can give you this. And there, the notion aborned: a cookbook, to be, what no longer, could be.

There became a Faceborg group: Camp Fire Cook Book Of Love. Where the recipes came in. And, in the fullness of time—about nine months, just as it should be—the book itself emerged. And now it was at Bobbi’s.

I, personally, am still trying, and failing, to get used to the fact, that I can cook again. There are a fair number of us. Like this. Because first the town burned down. Then there was no water. And no electricity; no gas. Then, those returned. But the water was benzene, and we couldn’t cook with it, without risking tumors sprouting all up our ying-yangs, boiling out our noseholes.

Cooking, generally, wants water, and when your water comes in Crystal Geyser jugs, hauled in like from Augustus McCrae days, you tend, with the cooking, to leave off.

Those were the days of Dune, when Paradise was as Arrakis, the desert planet, the land of stillsuits: every drop of water, precious.

For me, it was ten months, till PID pronounced the water safe. But that was only to their meter. As for the line from the meter, to the tap, who knew? That’s the property owner’s responsibility. Because that’s just how it is, in the capitalism. So I continued to eschew the water. Then, a month or so later, the property-manager ladies announced the owner had sent in a water-tester, and we were good to go! All the way to the tap! Except no water diviners had actually come into my house. Which meant they’d just tested from some outdoors faucet. And I had been extensively schooled by Melissa, there at the CN&R, who, early on, had connected with a water wizard, out of Purdue, a cassandra to whom the authorities only intermittently listened, who said that to truly determine No Danger, there needed to be, many tests, from many taps, and all, inside the homes.

But, in the capitalism, testing ranged from that recommended by Melissa and the Purdue cassandra, which could run into the thousands of dollars, to sending some guy out to turn on the water on an outdoor faucet, sniff it, and then say: “shit howdy, seems okay to me! How ‘bout we say fifty bucks?”

Seems like the latter, that’s what here we’d got. But I was tired. I’d been away a long time. And so I said: fuck it. And went to the benzene. But only for me. Not for these animals. If, in going to the water, I would sprout some benzene manitou from my forehead, that’s one thing. But I am not doing that, to these cats. These birds. These dragons.

My neighbor, he still steers, all the way, clear. Drinks only from the Crystal Geysers. Hauled in by cab. Twice a week. From the PID people.

You get imprinted, and you don’t even feel it. Once upon a time, my mother, this was many years ago, was up visiting, and, kindly, set about doing the dishes. And I caught her carefully washing out the paper towels, and hanging them up to dry. Because, she a child, in the Depression. And you didn’t just use a paper towel once! Who could afford that?! You washed and dried them, and used them again, and again. This, she imprinted. And held. Forty years on.

The other night, Heather, fire companera, was up here, with the pizza from Mountain Mike’s. As, in the hours, she was preparing to go, I was eying the paper plates. Because when you are Mike’s, and you serve pizza to go, you provide paper plates. And, when you are burned, these paper plates, they are like gold! Because they don’t need washing! Don’t need water! And, so long as you are careful, they can be used, several times, before you stray into the realm of possible ptomaine. Just like my mom. With the paper towels.

Since Mountain Mike’s reopened—and waiting for that was long, and long—Heather has regularly cycled by, with the pizza. And, sometimes, she leaves behind, the bonanza, of paper plates. But: not this night. This night, noticing my attention to the paper plates, she smiled, and she said: “I need these.” Which is: of course. Because Heather. She’s burned, too.

Before the fire, I liked buying dishes. From the antique stores. The thrift stores. I wouldn’t get sets or anything. Just ones that were pretty. Because I like pretty. Because without pretty, there is nothing. Do you see? Though I did get, for $20, a set of 20 plates, pretty, from Jeannie’s, just before it burned down.

But dishes want water. And water I do not have. Or at least, now, it remains so, in my mind. Imprinted. And so , tonight, I was cooking up soup. And, while waiting, I thought I’d dip some chips in the Salsa Brava.

Used to be I’d put the Salsa Brava in these cunning little bowls. But they would want water! And who has water! So I put the Brava in the bowl where soon the soup would go—which can go many uses, without washing, so long as I wipe cleanly right after with paper towels—and ate it from that. Feeling quite proud of myself. Citizen of Arrakeen! Waster of no water! A man of his stillsuit! Double-using the bowl! Take a bow! For, when you are of Arrakis, you have one bowl. You have Mountain Mike paper plates. You have one fork. You have one spoon. And you are Crystal Geyser. In the water.

Bobbi’s, that’s less than two blocks from here. But it’s a hard walk. Because everything from the feed store, to Bobbi’s, is dead. As much as the chorizo-delivering policeman and I used to grouse at Frank’s, all those months when it was there, burned, a mountain of twisted agonized debris, right across from the bus stop, where I would have to go, and the exit from the police station, where the chorizo-delivering policeman, he would have to go, and together we would deepest darkest Celine-like, demand, audibly and rudely, that Frank's stop being so burned down, we like the town now less, with most all the burned hauled away, and there is nothing but bare barren red flat dirt, maybe rounds, here and there, of burnt black trees, because when they hauled away the burned, they took the ghosts, too, and so now, in all these all and everywhere, there is no longer not any living, but not even any dead, either, it’s fucking depressing, beyond my ability to even want to explain; which is why none of you want to come up here, which is understood, and it will be that way. And for many, a many, a many. A year.

Bobbi’s didn’t burn. Sited next to the antique restoration place, which in the CVS chocolate communiqué I mentioned. You flail from the door through the tightly-packed racks of women’s clothing till you get to the counter in the back, where are the fire cookbooks. They are $20. All of the monies, to go to the burned. You open one, thumb through it. Here it is. You watched it: impregnated, gestated, grow, a-borned. Now, here is the child.

“I saw this happen,” I tell the clerk. “I need one.” Trying not to have the crying. A constant hazard. But seems I need cash, or a check. And I don’t have those. I just have the ghost money. Insubstantial. Os and 1s. In the tubes. But these, for the fire book, are not accepted. So I will have to come back. I will have to wait. And that, is that.

I’d intended, this morning, when in the Plans, to end this piece, with a report of obtaining, and perusing, this book. But then, Reality, it got in the fucking way. And isn’t that always the way of it? Reality. It is always, getting in the way, of the writing. That is why, we in the writers, we eventually just say: fuck it. And make it up.

But I can wait. I’m used. Now. To waiting.

There are various places you can buy the cookbook. But I think you should come up here. Buy it in Bobbi’s. Burn.

I kept waiting, for there to be some end, to appear, where I could stop start breaking down, here in the fire book. Some: natural: end: point. But now I know. That will not be happening. It’s just going to be “and the days go by/water flowing underground.” Because the water, it didn’t flow enough overground, to stop the fire. And that’s just the way. It is.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEOKXZFV8i4]