Something's Burning

(October 16, 2004)

It smells like something is burning in here. I'm at the desk. The studio-desk, so the keyboard is right in front of the 16-track recorder and rack. I feel like a producer except I'm writing about Cancun and I don't know what any of these knobs and buttons do.

So it smells like something is burning. I have gone around and sniffed everything that could ignite into a fiery ball of death, but the source is eluding me. It seems to be HERE where I am sitting...but *sniff sniff*...it's not the light. It's not the computer. That's all that's on.

It smells like...

...this one time, in Acton when Hub and I lived in a one-bedroom walk-up, a wasp had gotten in. I was sitting on the bed, he was standing by the closet. We were both looking at the wasp, who arc'ed in through the open window, buzzed gently across the room...Hub and I looked at each other because we thought we could tell where this was going...the damn thing was headed straight for the torchiere lamp. The kind with the bulb that heats up to a jillion degrees.

It kept the same speed and direction from its entry in from the window all the way to the lamp, where it disappeared inside the shade and: sssssssssssssSSSSSSSSSSS *pop!*.

Fried.

We'd watched it fly in, head for the lamp and die. The whole thing took about seven seconds. Then we looked at each other like, "did that just happen?"

It was like wasp suicide by floor lamp. The thing never even slowed down or altered its death flight trajectory!

Then the smell of crispy fried wasp permeated the room.

That's what it smells like in here.