Look at all the fancy folk of La Cañada Flintridge worrying about their expensive homes in the foothills. Yes, the cost of proximity to the forest is the very wildness that draws them – nature, in her sheer spontaneity may bring bright flames just as well as she might bring songbirds, but I cannot say that they are taking the good with the bad. The good and the bad are the same substance. To love nature is to love her for all her “faults”, for you couldn’t love only the parts of her that aren’t so destructive anymore than you could only love certain parts of your friend or lover. If you only love parts, you have no relationship to the whole. I like Lewis Black’s comedy, but that doesn’t mean I like him as a person, for I do not know the person except through the comedy itself.

Okay, great, so the wealthy fools really just love greenery and hummingbirds sipping at their invasive backyard plants. They also like coyotes and cougars (when they keep their distance) and rivers and steep terrain. How could they like so many things that spring from nature and not nature herself? No, they must have an admiration for nature (the biophilia we all have in us), for I even see them admiring the same fire that even still threatens their homes. Part of them may see the fires as a mistake – a threat to the stasis that doesn’t exist they erroneously equate with the “balance of nature” and a threat to their investments – but at the same times I see them walking along foothill with cameras. The spectacle of the fire is beautiful in itself, even as it destroys so much beauty. Even as it may hurt people and destroy houses. Even as it surely is bringing countless forest creatures to a twisting, agonizing end, their only crime being being at the wrong place, time.

My ambivalence towards forest fires is a reflection of the paradox (not struggle nor contradiction) of when we materialists try to be spiritual. There is a sense of awe one can get from the natural world, but at the same time, there is also surely a sense that the world is deficient (surely it isn’t made with us in mind). Both sides of this coin are very eloquently and hilariously, respectively, pronounced by negro Carl Sagan, a.k.a. Niel DeGrasse Tyson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJOpDLjpSYI

a final “sermon” on cosmic perspectives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_nqySMvkcw

stupid design

I heard that 3 homes burnt down that were “deep in the … forest.” I wonder what it’s like to have such a home. I would love to have a cabin in the woods. The cost of such would be the possibility of having to build it again if a fire goes through. I surely wouldn’t be foolish enough to put more possessions I care about in it than I could fit in my Corolla. Actually, being required to keep it simple sounds fun. Hmmm…

Oh, lastly, here’s a crappy view of the fire that’s currently blazing near my place. Psh.