Memes

This is impossible.  No one could do this, ever.  It’s impossible.  Fuck!   The news station says the inferno is coming closer.  Why didn’t we vote for the goddamn water reservoir.   That would have solved this.  Dumbass tax breaks from Republican morons.  Oh, no, let’s not spend money unnecessarily on fire safety in a place that has fires every fucking year?   Why do that?   The insurance companies fucked everyone over, including me, but I can only take one box to remember our lifetimes.  

    Looking around, I remember things.   Or the things have memories that they remember.  Psychometry.   The inferno’s rising.  I have 20 photo albums, but they won’t fit in the car with my wife, kids, and the dog.  At least the dog’s shit can stay.   It’s easy to replace stuff for dogs, but not the dog itself.   See, there are shirts which each have a memory.  Like the “Oasis” shirt from the band “Oasis” when I saw them in concert in Hollywood and that’s when my wife and I met and there’s her jewelry and all the memories she has from them.  It’s not jewelry, it’s family heirlooms.  Why is God doing this to us?   What did we do wrong?   Or the kid’s baby books, the hand made gifts given to them by our family.  

    I’d take a deep breath, but the air is toxic.  Already have our N95 masks.  We got our meds.  Gotta go soon.  Memories, CD’s, tapes, VHS tapes, signed books, everything.   It seems like the only thing I don’t care about is the expired food in the fridge.  

    Gotta make sure we have our cellophanes, chargers, stuffed animals, clothes.  Too late to get a U-Haul, right?   Goddamn it.   And even if I can figure out what to take and what to leave, everyone in L. A. is trying to leave, we all might wind up burning in our cars or on the road if we escape our cars.  This could be the last day of our lives, but that’s true of every day.  

    Maybe this is God’s way of keeping the ecosystem in check?   Thought that was war?   Can’t waste time thinking.  What’s going and what’s staying?   My wife and kids got their bare minimums, but I couldn’t, because everything’s bare minimum.  I’ve had this bed since I graduated from college.  Why do us Americans make our houses out of flammable things?   My wife and kids are calling me, telling me to hurry up.  I know, just.  My wife says photo everything on your phone, take what’s needed and get the fuck out of there, before the car explodes.  

    I take out my cellphone, which is at 48% and turn on the camera.   I take pictures of the bookshelves with books, some signed,    L.P’s (the 33 1/3, the 45’s, the 78’s), the 8-tracks, the cassettes.   I’ll remember them, but know they’re irreplaceable.  How can God be so cruel?  And the animals will be homeless, too.   I photo the TV, VCR, DVD-R, the beta player.   all this time it took to find and obtain these things.   Did you know you can’t play a British VHS tape on an American VCR?  The kids are telling me to hurry the hell up, too.  I go to each room and photograph each wall.  I can magnify them later.  I open all drawers.  Take pictures of what I can and put the bare minimum in the suitcase my wife said to use.  A few signed books, some CD’s and 3 days clothes.   I get in the car.  We’ve soaked down our house with a hose, but so did everyone else.   Fat chance it’ll help.  This was impossible.  I know in thirty seconds I’ll cringe remembering something irreplaceable.  

    But we drive, or rather, my wife drives   She drives like we have a plane to catch, like she’s pregnant and her water just broke. You get the picture.  There are abandoned cars morons left.  Maybe they ran out of gas or got grid locked too.  She made it seem like bumper cars at amusement parks.  One suitcase.  Who fits a lifetime into one suitcase?  

    We somehow make it to B.F.E. and no, not the restaurant.   There are no cars, no street signs, the gas gauge is at 1/8 a tank.   Assume all gas stations are closed and shut off.   We get out of the car to stretch and took out small portions of the food we’d brought.   We don’t see any restaurants, gas stations, not even a fucking vending machine.   No toilets, just dust and ashes.   Damn.  The air is better than before, but monoxide is scentless    I ask my wife where we are and she tells me we’re out of the fucking fire on planet Earth.  

     I thank her, but tell them how hard it was to say goodbye to all our memories and the feelings I got by being around the objects with memories.  My wife rolled her eyes.   She just saved all of our lives by driving like a monster mash at an arena and I’m bitching about what I lost.   How about being grateful we’re all still alive you son-of-a-bitch.  I should have expected this and she’s right, but I wind up crying and then our children cry, and she cries, but at a lower volume.  

      See, we hope our heirlooms will last forever, but four generations from now, they probably won’t.   It’ll be put in an attic somewhere our great, great, great grandchildren’s home, they’ll open it up and say, “What the fuck is this?   Why is this wasting space in our attic?” and they’ll either throw it away or sell it in a yard sale.  But, we hope these memories and the objects from the memories will last forever, or at least I do.  But, they probably won’t.   But, at least we hope we can enjoy our memories and our possessions and vice versa during this lifetime.  

       But, “What makes God laugh?   When you tell Him your plans.”   So, after we’re done crying, hugging, and the dog licks all of our tears, we talk about where we’ll go from here.   None of us know.  We can’t go back to our roots, since our roots were destroyed in the fire.   Then, one of our kids says something simple, but wise; It’s ok, Daddy.  I know we lost our memories, but we’ll make new memories.  

      I took a beat to think about that.  What does she know at her age, but maybe she’s right.   What other choice do we have.  Yea, we could curse God for the rest of our lives, but that would just make us miserable.