Fire: 08.16.2013

The alarm. It was so loud. The elevator was deactivated so he headed for the stairs with a small crowd. All scrambling to find refuge on the ground, far away from the smoke and the fire and the eighth floor. Some of them pushing, some of them whimpering and grunting. It was flashes of memory looking back. He couldn’t decide if this was real or if the jet lag from his mini getaway was getting to him.

The alarm.....the group of escapees was growing in number each time they passed a level on the poorly lit back stair case.  Babies were crying. Some people were yelling for help. One guy had a white Persian cat....Its hard to tell which of the two were more traumatized, the freaked out cat or the scratched to hell guy.  The cadence of group’s feet became a cohesive beat as they all had the same goal in mind. To get to safety. To get out of the fiercely burning building.

He could hear the emergency responder’s sirens, and shouting from the outside of the building with each window he passed.  The shock of the event left his tongue quieted and his eyes wide. Fight or flight. Nature versus nurture. Whatever the hell it was....it kept him in a state of shock. The alarm. The time was not passing by. Time was not moving. Why was it taking so long to get to the bottom? The smoke was filling the stairwell. The smoke was filling his lungs. His heavy panting from running and confusion allowing gulps of smoke to fill his every air sac.

Finally, a burst of a door and people were pouring out of the burning apartment building like water from a pitcher. Just flowing out like the water they all desperately needed. His eyes reached up to the sky to confirm that his confinement was over and that he had reached refuge under the sun in the the oxygenated wind currents created by the tall buildings.

Whether it was adrenaline overdose, excessive smoke inhalation or just plain old exhaustion. He passed out......”The alarms” he thought as consciousness left him.....”The alarms”.

And as soon as he burst through the door was about as quick as she was on him. The crowds. The smoke. The sirens. The fire. The alarms. A perfect storm. A calculated perfect storm.

She scooped him up under his arm, hauled his arm pit over her head and headed across the street. With much haste she made way for the elevator, key in hand. Her world, his world were moving so fast. The chaos and confusion that surrounded them stopped as soon as the elevator door slid closed. She buckled her knees hoping that his weight would hold on her for a little longer. And in that 24 second elevator ride she was brought back to that brief moment back in her school days. Back to that toilet seat, back to the spoon, back to her first rush of lust and love and obsession. The smell of him intoxicating, the curve of his lips where they met in the corners, the mess of hair falling in perfect cascades over his strong brows....Sucking in each detail and cataloging them in to her memory files.

….......

The alarms......where were the alarms?  Where was outside? He looked around and could tell that he had just exchanged one crisis for another. His feet and arms were bound.....and he could see her... She was hunched over at a desk pulling her own flesh from her forearm with a wild look he had only seen in movies.....He let out a breath a little too loud.

Her head jerked over in his direction. She smiled over to him. She smiled over to him in the way you smile at someone you‘ve known for a long time. A comfortable smile. “Good morning sweetheart..........”

Fire: 08.15.13

I had fallen in love with ideas before, though none quite this hard. My mind raced to grasp the new concepts sparking light into my pot-addled laziness. Hiroshi, his name translates to "the great one" in English, had been giving his five students daily lectures on the science and spirituality of Natural Food cooking.

Baking, boiling, steaming, frying, and sautéing are the only five possible ways to cook food. These methods can be combined in any myriad of ways to produce various end results in the kitchen. What is most important is to understand how water contained in foods is heated to produce the effect of cooking. To do this, one must learn how to dance with heat as well as gain knowledge and control of fire, the most uncontrollable element and most necessary for cooking.

Hiroshi was an older man already, with over 40 years of kitchen work under his belt by the time I met him. His ability to dance with fire proved unmatched by any line cook I had ever seen before. His knowing of the proper size flame for each specific purpose puzzled us newer students. How could this old man so precisely predict the unpredictable? He had us mesmerized.

As I gained my own confidence around fire over the next year and a half of my life, I began to understand. The more you play with fire, the less you get burnt. Totally the opposite of what my parents taught me. Dancing in a commercial or professional kitchen, dancing with flames and steam and heat, knowing the flame and what it wants to do, all come with constant practice. This is the only way to overcome fear of getting burned. Hours stacked upon hours as he taught us.

High heat and giant flames are only necessary in Chinese cooking. Incredibly fast motions and forethought of my mise en place being the only way to keep up with the flames that produce such exquisite flavors only high heat can yield. Otherwise we generally practiced over medium to low flames, learning the dance slowly as we prepared ourselves to become proper cooks capable of handling the craziest of dinner service rushes. Time and practice are the only ways to gain this understanding. Knowledge and experience are the keys to wisdom.

The idea of controlling fire in the kitchen has helped me deal with heated situations in the outside world as well. Flammable situations are understood when one knows whether to apply or reduce the heat at a given time. This lesson is a constant even today, eleven years after I first met Hiroshi, and a year and a half since my mentor's passing. 

No matter how hot it got, Hiroshi taught us to deal with fire by showing that it can be done with speed, accuracy, and beauty even in times of crisis.

Fire: 8.12.2013

Slow dancing to Willie Nelson singing “Can I Sleep In Your Arms” in the kitchen, on a foggy Sunday afternoon. We are clutching each other in our pajamas, and swaying in a tight but imperfect circle, barefoot on the cold, black and white checkered tiles. The song’s last beat matches up with our last step, and I don’t think it gets any better than this.

The day is cool and overcast, but we are slathering warm jalapeno cornbread with chipotle butter, frothing almond milk for the tops of our espressos, and I’m wearing fire engine red lipstick.

At 7 years-old, I’m watching dad watch Bruce Springsteen’s video for “I’m on Fire” with complete reverence. Because he asks me to, I’m teaching him dance moves so he can be more like the Boss and gain more confidence. This is the same dad who looked at pictures of serial killers, said he had the power to make the thunder in the sky go boom, relied on his mom for his home perms, and let me set him up on a date in the middle of the cereal aisle at Kings Supermarket.

That time I secretly recorded my phone interview with the head of the radio program at my potential radio school. That part where he asked me if I had a fire in my belly to tell radio stories. He said that if I didn’t have the fire, I shouldn’t pay lots of money, leave my home in San Francisco for 15 weeks, just to live and breathe radio in Portland, Maine. He told me to only commit to radio if I had a real fire somewhere in there... I did... I do. 

Rosy inner thighs burning up on a winter day after snow shoeing up the side of a mountain with too many layers on.

Sitting in a sweat lodge as a teenager and releasing my towel just below my breasts for a few seconds in hopes that he caught a peak in the dim light.

Hot cheeks in pillow forts with hung and layered blankets and mountains of pillows for kissing lessons and assorted follow up dares.

Writing intentions for the new year on scraps of paper, while sitting on a thick piece of driftwood by the ocean at night. Lighting the paper on fire, watching it sear and crumble, and then coming across scattered single stem roses and an abandoned busted up boat freshly washed up on the shore. Hoping that this all meant that in the new year we were destined for surprise and wild adventure.

So much gossip at work last night, I began imagining all of our tongues singed at the tips.


After our field trip documenting nymphs and salamanders at Highland Pond, we nurtured our other side by pretending we were the pink ladies from Grease. We marched passed the boiler room into the girls bathroom and took turns looking thru the hole in the wall that lead to the boys bathroom, hoping we’d see Liam, Robby, or Soren.

Burning with dream residue every morning this week: Dreams of teeth falling out and wanting to string them into a necklace. Dreams of stealing expensive Italian earrings by accident from Barneys. Once realizing I left with them in my bag, I made up for it by asking the parking attendant at the parking garage if I could pay for multiple people’s parking spots for the week. Dreams of interviewing a hoarder with great taste for towels, about her son’s obsession with the apocalypse. Dreams of driving deep into a a big city somewhere in the south to get my favorite pea coat back from a greedy hotel owner who looked like Cleopatra. Dreams of driving thru the desert with some coworkers, and watching flying dinosaurs with dagger eyes scoop down to the freeway to swallow cars and people whole; I watched feeling unafraid and giddy.

Saunas in high school were in the old house with mineral rich well water that was viscous and smelled like sulfur, which always made her insecure and defensive. I always thought it was cool that her family had a well and baked their own bread. In the sauna we’d throw water on the hot rocks, breathe deep, and get lost in the steamy, sweaty cedar, and secret swapping. In the end, we’d release ourselves into dualing snow angels.

On a hot summer night in New England, for my parents 60th birthday party, we all hobbled down the dirt road with our cups of booze and fancy clothes, and made it to the harbor to watch an impressive fireworks show over the Cove. A bunch of friends, family, and strangers, woozy from dancing and pizza, just staring out at the fire in the sky and yelping with delight. We weren't talking about aging elders or what my sister will do when she gets back from her year in Australia. We weren't discussing when we were going to have babies, and if we were going to move back closer to family. We weren't talking about anything; we were just in it together, rapt in wonder.