A Love/Hate Relationship With Fire Season

Or "why August has historically made me simultaneously want to fully become a hermit or explode absolutely everywhere meaning it's the perfect time to make a Substack!"

I have been exclusively sobbing to this album after sunset recently so if you want some vibes, here ya go!!!!

1. Hello and welcome to the dusty crevices of my brain!! If you look to your left you’ll see a metaphysical pile of laundry that desperately needs to be put away. To your right, you can pick apart all of the things I soak in Aloo Vodka in an effort to not fixate on them.
   
   That’s hyperbole…kind of.
   
   But welcome to the inaugural ‘Just Five Things’ Substack. I don’t know what I’m doing here.
   
   That’s not true, I’m just uncomfortable and out of practice with the notion of A) writing anything at all and especially B) writing in a way that has any shred of visibility. But this summer has been a summer where I am doing things again to make myself feel like, well, myself. And one of the few things I know I can do particularly well when I actually sit down and make myself is write. But that being said, I am stupendously out of practice. My writing muscle has, at this point, indisputably atrophied.
   
   Which brings us here.
   
   I have no idea where the “five things practice” (if you can even call it that??) stemmed from. If you do, please tell me! Edit: The Five Things Format was started by Ashley C. Ford on tumblr—I am stupidly grateful for it.
   
   What I do know is a former colleague of mine used to do it on tumblr and I liked the format. The format being, just write about five things that have been on your mind. No more, no less. Stream of consciousness. Put the words out on the metaphorical page. See what else comes out. And then do it again, and again, and again every week, until it feels (somewhat) effortless.
   
   I won’t deny that there’s also an element of therapy to this, it’s not not journaling. Just with far more visibility and potential reach and one you put out there for even a slight semblance of validation. Which I don’t care to dive fully into at this time tysm.
   
   However, again, in an effort to do things this summer that make me feel like I’m a well-rounded, fully-actualized version of myself, I need to regain control over the writing muscle that I’ve effectively left dormant since 2020. No, writing witty Instagram captions and exceptional opening lines on dating apps has not counted. I’ve been reading a lot, but that’s not writing as much as I like to tell the procrastination side of my messy brain that it’s helpful. And even though a lot of the writing I’ve been consuming has been fantastic and written by people like Emma Cline, Haley Jakobson, or my super talented friends like Callie Byrnes or Koty Neelis, that’s still not a substitute for stretching my own ability to formulate a sentence that makes me go, “Oh yeah, I do know how to do this.”
   
   TLDR: I am out of practice being a person who identifies as a writer, and I’m trying to find it again.
   
   So here we are. In the messy, winding, rock-covered trails of my brain. Thanks for stumbling along with me. Please watch your step.
   

2. It is officially Fire Season.
   
   As someone who spent several formative years in Montana and has been in Washington for almost a decade, I can confidently (and loudly) tell you that there are definitively not just four seasons.
   
   There is Rainy Season, Spring, Almost Summer, Summer, Extended Summer, Fall, Pre-Winter, Snowpacalypse Week, and then finally Winter.
   
   And smack dab in the middle of Summer and Extended Summer, you have Fire Season.
   
   There’s not a shred of doubt in my mind that the AQI of Seattle’s being the worst in the world on an annual basis is a result of climate change. That the burning ecosystems in BC and Montana are a product of humankind and capitalism’s inability to give a fuck about anything other than themselves. The churn churn churn of the fossil fuel industry (or something else, I’m not a scientist) is to blame for the health advisories appearing in our Weather apps, for the ash people brush off of their cars in the morning as it trickles from the sky, for the bright orange moons we unsuccessfully try to take iPhone pictures of in August.
   
   I, personally, cannot linger too long mentally on climate change. I can only do what I can do, and that’s about it or I’ll start to panic about The Big One that will inevitably send me and everyone I hold dear into the Sound someday. I’m not focused enough to become a prepper. I can’t drive so I’m essentially stuck here, awaiting my fate. And I’ve played enough of The Last of Us to know that if I do find myself in a dystopian narrative, I’ll need to take a brick to the head immediately because I am not cut out for that adventure.
   
   Which is why when Fire Season inevitably rears its head, mugging up the air and sending out headaches and coughs in its wake, I instead find myself reflecting on past late-Augusts rather than the apocalypse of it all. I think back to former Leo Seasons and the smoke filled skies that marked them.
   
   The one where I was still working at the pizza shop, and despite health warnings blaring over every radio and local news station, I would not only walk to work through the haze, but would do so smoking an American Spirit like my 20-something lungs contained an X-Men level of invisibility. The one where I was moving out of Missoula, and slept on the floor of my favorite rental I’ve ever lived with someone I’d known since I was 18 but knew somewhere in the back of my brain we were meant to be fundamentally different people. The one where I wasn’t eating; my anxiety was too high because of *things* and I lost 10 pounds in one week. The one where a girl bought me a gas mask, and I was like…. “I think I’m good.”
   
   And now this one, where I’m trying to squint through the literal and figurative clouds of smoke and smog, trying to figure out who the fuck I am. How the fuck I got here. Who the hell I hope to be.
   
   I don’t think it’s original to define your life by seasons. Seasonality is human nature.
   
   But I can’t lie that there’s a certain nostalgia I have for Fire Season. There’s an element about it, excluding the devastation, that makes me feel like I know what’s coming.
   
   I entered Missoula at 18 when Mount Sentinel was on fire. 450 acres burned and it completely altered the terrain around the iconic “M” the University is known for. It was the first time I’d see ash falling from the sky. The first time I’d encountered a “dry heat” like that. I was in awe.
   
   Maybe what I’m trying to say, and doing so in any way that isn’t “direct” or “to the point” is to me, Fire Season means change.
   
   Fire Season means you can watch everything burn and then you can rebuild.
   

3. Does anyone else feel like we live in a horror movie which is essentially a universe of eyeballs?
   
   I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Tiffany Gomas, who went viral for having some level of a meltdown on an American Airlines flight yelling what has been sound-bited to death, “That motherfucker is not real.” Tiffany’s viral moment isn’t new, and it disturbs me.
   
   There’s the couple who had a “love story” that was documented on Twitter only for Rosey Blair (the one tweeting about the pair) to insinuate that they were hooking up in the bathroom and everything culminating in the woman being tweeted about to being violently harassed and doxxed. There’s “Couch Guy” who didn’t give an enthusiastic enough response to his girlfriend surprising him at college leading the internet to accuse him of everything from cheating to being abusive. His girlfriend still gets comments about him on her social media about this two years later. And there’s literally every subject in the best-seller So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.
   
   The court of public opinion these days is feeling less like a jury and more like a guillotine.
   
   This is in no way me advocating for less accountability. When people do horrendous things, or even questionable things, they deserve to have to speak about them. Colleen Ballinger doesn’t deserve a softer approach just because facing a decade +’s worth of accusations is probably uncomfy. Ban.do doesn’t need extra sympathy just because they sell necklaces that say “Anxiety” in a script on them. Predatory actors (I’m not going to link, there are too many) can stay gone as far as I’m concerned. You cannot believe in restorative justice without accountability. The two cannot exist without the other.
   
   But I do not find the meme-ification of people’s worst moments to be anywhere near holding someone “accountable”. It feels like going to SeaWorld, knowing the orcas are miserable and likely experiencing psychosis, and demanding they jump through a hoop anyway. It feels like a sick and twisted circus and instead of shrugging and getting on the Zipper again, our humanity is contingent on recognizing we should stop buying the tickets in the first place.
   
   I think a lot about media literacy, mindful media consumption, and the consequences we’ll all likely face from putting so much of our social interaction online. Inevitably, when I get to thinking about this, I think of the Tiffany Gomas figures of the world and how the internet has effectively changed her ability to control her own narrative for the rest of her life. I think about how…fucking dark that is.
   
   But! Bright side! Tiffany is back on instagram and hashtagged both “self-love” and “empowered” so I have no doubt we’ll be getting a “That Motherfucker Loves Herself” course and subsequent merch from her very, very soon.
   
   Which, let’s call it what it is, is also extremely dark.
   

4. To my core, I reject The Five Languages of Love. Not just because Gary Chapman was a full-blown evangelical Christian, and a homophobe, and an unlicensed fuckwad who originally published the book as “Christian Lit”—although that’d be enough!! I reject it because I reject the notion that the way you accept and show love can be so overly simplified it can be categorized by the fingers on one hand.
   
   Love is shown and received in endless ways. Why would you ever want to categorize it? Furthermore, why would you ever want to limit it?
   
   Love is the little bruises that have dotted my thighs for 13 years because my dog wants to scale me like a mountain the second I get home. Love is my best-friend’s husband programming a code just for me into their front door so I can always come and go as I please. Love is oyster happy hours that my friends drive into the city for because they not only love a raw bar but they also love me enough to commute. Love is letting people borrow books on their to be read list. Love is sharing the Netflix password (or it used to be). Love is sending Blizzards during a heat wave. Love is 2 and a half minute voice notes and you listen to every second. Love is putting the duvet cover on together because it is like running a marathon to do it yourself. Love is cooking asparagus for someone even though you hate how it smells because you know they love it. Love is “let me know me when you get there” texts. Love is Facetiming me when I have Covid because you know I could use the company. Love is flash tattoos and spontaneously buying plants because you want to make each other laugh and who couldn’t use another sign of life, love, and said laughter in their apartment.
   
   It’s uncategorizable. At least to me. At least I think it should be. At least I hope it always will be.
   
   Anyway. It doesn’t surprise me that Gary Chapman was a terrible straight man.
   

5. I finished the book Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield in one sitting, which on the surface level isn’t saying a ton because that’s how I have been reading all month.
   
   My reading style lately is akin to binge watching. There is no savoring. No lingering on paragraphs. No re-reading or avoiding the last page because I can’t handle something ending. It’s more like devouring. Like turning every crack of every spine into a challenge. Like expecting finishing yet another 250+ pages will give me some sort of clarity about something, about anything.
   
   Despite devouring OWUTS in this same “finish it immediately” type of way, I can tell this novel is going to haunt me. Which I have no doubt was part of Armfield’s intention with the story of Miri and Leah. She wanted them to clasp onto you, to make you want to not let go.
   
   This is the type of writing that seeps into you. It’s not for everyone; but historically that’s the type of novel I gravitate towards. The weird, semi-gritty, raw, femininely unhinged story. I want to bathe in it, pun fully intended.
   
   I could write at least five more five things solely devoted to quotes from this book, but I know this one in particular will stick with me for a while:
   
   "I used to think it was vital to know things, to feel safe in the learning and recounting of facts. I used to think it was possible to know enough to escape from the panic of not knowing, but I realize now that you can never learn enough to protect yourself, not really.”
   
   It’s been recently brought to my attention (hello new therapist!!) that I am afraid of being in the moment. I exist and survive by thinking ahead. By looking for exits, memorizing menus, rehearsing how I’ll have a conversation, predicting every possible outcome for even a potential scenario. Unknown for me is simply not an option. Is it unavoidable? Of course. Which is why it paralyzes me when it occurs.
   
   I’m trying to find the exciting in the unexpected. The allure of the what if. I don’t think I’ve ever been a person who has known how to exist in “maybe” but I’m trying to not only rest there, but appreciate it for what it is. I’m trying to stop rushing to the ending, trying to stop looking to beat my own best time that doesn’t even exist yet. I’m trying to savor, to sit with, to let something linger.
   
   Maybe I’ll figure it out. Maybe the present will stop feeling so uncomfortable.
   
   Or maybe I’ll get swept up and away, completely taken by the sea, and I’ll have never seen it coming.
   

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One last thought:

If you like good writing and substacks, you should check out my friend Koty’s who I mentioned previously. Koty is an insane writer and someone who has continuously lived a life I find myself envying. I think you’ll like it.

Read ‘Character Study’ Here.