After the Fire: Rebuilding in 2010, By Whitney Farmer – Un-Pop Culture

December 30, 2009 Whitney Farmer 5 Comments

Some farewells are painful. Others take too long to arrive and they feel marvelous when they finally happen. But both kinds of goodbyes can walk us through some type of symbolic doorway or into a new land or away from shore to begin a voyage.

It is possible that we don’t say goodbye enough – to bad habits, bad jobs, bad thoughts, bad loves, and bad hair. Just because something has become familiar to us doesn’t mean that it should remain a part of our lives. Whatever is our strength is our weakness, and the accommodation that allows us to adapt and thrive in the unknown is the same that allows us to stay in the cooking pot until we are slowly poached to death.

This is why there is a beauty that we must acknowledge in farewells. It is the moment when we say a yes to one, and a no to another. In that moment, a life can be saved or a new life begun.

My father used to work around boats when we were kids, and a practical love of the sea is something that he and I have always shared. I remember being told that a safe harbor is only meant to be temporary. Ships must be pushed away from the dock, or risk being called a houseboat. And only the big ships can sail in deep waters and bring back treasures from the Earth’s end.

Our modern calendar celebrates the New Year in the dead of winter. It’s a time when everything seems to be darkest and coldest. What a perfect time to decide what will live and what will die in our lives.

I’m not going to miss 2009. It was a year that saw firestorms ignite around Los Angeles. There was some political discussion that the devastation was due to a newer U.S. Forest Service policy that had let the underbrush grow more than had previously been allowed. This accumulated debris became food for the flames that devalued everything in their path to strictly becoming a fuel source. Homes were eaten up with the same respect as rotting tree stumps. Maybe the scope of the damage was caused by a flawed ecological stewardship policy, but in the end it doesn’t matter. Very simply, now is the time to rebuild.

I almost died when I was about three years old, when I was given baby aspirin for the flu. Two days after I was released from the hospital, our family home burned to the ground. I remember watching from the top of a hill as my mom disappeared into a wall of smoke and being terrified that she wouldn’t emerge. She did, but my parents were only able to save some family pictures. We had nothing left, but they decided to look at it as having Nothing Left Over. We had a clean slate. My parents piled us into our Oldsmobile and we headed to California. Here, we found a new life.

I’m going to look at this New Year as closing a door behind me, stepping into a new land, and pushing away from the safety of the shore all at once.

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Whitney runs a rock music venue in Los Angeles. She has an M.B.A and no one cares.