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Climate Survivor

My World on Fire — So It Goes

Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down!

Cappelli, MFA, JD, PhD
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Published in
5 min readJan 14, 2025

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Remains of Home. All Photos by Author

Three days ago, my life went up in flames when a firestorm swept through my neighborhood, destroying everything in its path — churches, schools, grocery stores, restaurants, yogurt shops, hair and nail salons, and home upon home upon home. My home — wiped out.

Goodbye, home.
Goodbye, stuff,
Goodbye, little old lady
whispering hush.

My life, as I know it, changed forever more.

My spirit is heavy. The weight of my being — HEAVY.

This incredible heaviness of being is taking its toll. I am unmoored, unstuck in time, like Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse Five. I’m living all moments simultaneously, my life jumping between the warmth of a familiar morning, the surreal horror of watching my home engulfed in flames, and the aching aftermath of standing amidst the ashes.

Or was it the ashes, the coffee, the flames?

I’m untethered, caught in a nonlinear progression where a beginning, middle, and end all collapse into one. The Tralfamadorians have arrived here in the Palisades, where “all moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always…

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Cappelli, MFA, JD, PhD
Cappelli, MFA, JD, PhD

Written by Cappelli, MFA, JD, PhD

Top Know Nothing Writer with way too many degrees who enjoys musing on life's absurdity.

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