So I stood at the sliding glass window that used to open to a balcony that, while nice, was in fact filled with stuff that shouldn’t have been out there. Prior to Friday, there were pots of dead plants there, a couple scavenged office chairs, a weird wheely flat panel display thing that I thought I might use but didn’t and that I was told many times by many people to throw away. There was an old, cheap, plastic table with more dead plants on it, too.

After Friday, all of that was gone.

The chairs were now twisted, melted, heaps of stink. The plants were completely non-existent, almost no trace of them save for the puddles of now cool molten plastic that used to be pots. The clay pots were all smashed up, no doubt caused by the NYFD as they stamped out every last cinder.

The giant flat panel display apparatus was all contorted, its thick metal bars scarred with soot and boiled off coating, and the two glass shelves were melted off the frame, now all bent and drooping like something out of the Hiroshima museum.

The entire floor of the balcony was covered in black soot and gunk. The walls were now black, indicating clearly where every flame had licked and whipped the building with each gust of wind. The flames were said to be more than 6 feet high by people on the street.

The giant $1,400 air conditioner that fit into the wall was now out there in the pile of burned trash, all charred and messed up, its cord looking sad and unnatural out there where electrical things should never go, out in the world and exposed.

My neighbor came back over.

 “Don’t go out there, they told me to tell you not to touch anything until they can investigate.”

I said fine. She asked if I smoked and I said no. She observed some cigarette butts out on the tile floor of the balcony.

“They think the fire came from those, do you know where those came from? It’s OK, you can tell me.”

I said that I have had friends over who smoke and a few times people have smoked on my balcony. Those butts must have been in one of the plant pots or something like that, left over maybe from one of my summer gatherings. That’s the last time I can remember someone smoking out there.

She didn’t really look convinced, but it was the truth.

She left me alone after that. The conference at work was still going on, rumors no doubt swirling amongst the staff that my house was gone or something like that. I texted some pictures to coworkers and got many shocked responses. Sometimes when there’s a fire, it’s a small thing– you know,  something burns away. In this case, it was an actual fire, the kind that’s put out with a fire hose and NYFD’s finest. The kind that leaves your door smashed in, the corners of your walls all nicked and scraped and dented from large pieces of equipment strapped to the bodies of professional fire fighters. There’s a black handprint on the elevator button panel where one of them must have touched a large, gloved hand.

I never thought firefighters ever took elevators.

The locksmith was the first to come help me restore normalcy. He came quickly, having just been there earlier in the month to put a new lock on my door. He did his best, but the door was a bashed-in mess. He spent an hour trying to bend it back into basic shape, something that’s only possible with metal doors. After his hour of work and $220 later, my door was closing properly and lockable. It looked like shit, but it worked. I put a fan aiming out from the sliding glass door and kept my kitchen exhaust fan on, and both bathrooms’ fans to help clear the air of burning rubber fumes.

Once things were more or less in place and there was nothing else to be done, I sat in my room and tried to relax. It had been an unbelievably long 22 days of high stress work, both coasts, and I hadn’t any time to myself in weeks. I had rushed back to my east coast gig to try to get everything in shape for the conference, which was extremely important for me to perform well at. I was burned out already and that final, big, culminating day was the day of the fire at my place. It was almost poetic how bad everything was– the timing, the events, the consequences. I had been needing a break from everything– *everything*– and some peace and nothingness, relaxation and contentment. I was feeling like my health was suffering because of the lack of down time. And as I sat there in my room realizing I wasn’t going to have that time, not until after the smoke cleared– literally– and I was able to pay the damages and get everything back to normal, I would continue to be restless, weary, short-tempered and unhealthy. I needed that weekend, for this is going to be another long week, my calendar full daily until about Feb. 16th.

I sat there wanting to forget the fire, forget the conference, forget work. Forget everything. I wanted a pretty girl to talk to and fall asleep with. I wanted everything to be wrapped up so I could leave on vacation, guilt-free and feeling like I deserved it, that the timing was good, that I could leave my computer at home, that all I needed was a backpack and hammock and hatchet, and that maybe out there in the jungle I’d find the girl I needed, and out there I could hang out with her and we could cook together and wake up together. That New York and San Diego and two jobs and everything else wasn’t even a blip on my radar, and it was only me, in the jungle, the mountain, the island.