He is a great friend. I can tell him anything. Most of the time, he listens without judgment. It's only when I pull out my Marya-Facts (that basically seem to be what I heard the story to be about) that I'll hear his key phrase, "you think you know [pause] but you don't." But he calls me Mars with a soft 's' so I forgive him his doubtful nature.

Picture a two-story building, the shape and age of the Establishment, but longer; painted red and with two huge bay windows in the top corners; one of the more notorious bars, Marino's, taking up the bottom floor; a landmark building, strong and proud, dominating the west part of the Arcata Plaza.

This morning I ride my bike downtown. HOLY SHIT! Where once there was this behemoth of a house, only smoldering ruins! Fire trucks everywhere, firemen lazily, exhaustedly, keeping an eye on the merry flames that still pop up here and there in the rubble. Only the front of the building is still up, leaning back at a crazy angle, the two bay windows staring blindly, with nothing behind them, like two empty eye sockets. Townspeople gathered around in little crowds, oblivious to the thick choking smoke that wafts through the street, faces awash with disbelief. Marino's burned down! And took two businesses next to it with it! Half a block of our downtown wiped out overnight!

As a kid growing up in Austria, I dreaded the sirens. Without warning, they would blare, three times, penetrating everything with the panic of emergency. Usually at night, once every two or three months. The houses in our little mideval city were crowded shoulder to shoulder in the winding streets. Sometimes the neighboring houses could be saved in a fire. Sometimes not.

My dad would always get up and be gone before the third blast of the siren. He watched the firemen's struggle, not so much out of a lust for sensation and rubbernecking, but because he was fascinated by the transformation wreaked by the fires: Where once there stood the proud and vain artifice of man, the forces of nature tore down the facade of mastery and left a pile of smoldering rubble, to be cleared away and turned into a parking lot until construction started anew. Where once people had lived humdrum, everyday existances, they were now frantically trying to throw their belongings down to the street to safety, or watching in resignation as their comfortable life went up in smoke.

He would come home with his wry smirk. "That was the third house on our street," he'd say. "I think we're up next." I lived in terror of the day it would be our turn. I never slept naked...

That day never came, but standing in front of the ruins this morning brought back the uneasy feelings of my childhood. I don't know what started the Marino fire, or whether anyone was hurt. To me, it was a reminder that that one little twist of fate can wipe out everything that has become familiar and comfortable. I sleep naked today, and I'm not as scared of change as I was as a lad; But I'm sure that I'll remember, along with everyone else in town, the day that Marino's burned down.

.ste:phan.