»In which the sacrificial bonfire must burn

Last night, Aram drove down in his big old ford pickup and we filled it with discarded xmas trees, proceeded to Ocean Beach, and set them all ablaze. Unsuprisingly in the town that inspired Burning Man, a whole festival devoted to incendiary pyrotechnics and bacchanalia, several other folk had the same idea, but I think that we were the only people with smores (and whiskey)! Anna and I had made a last-minute stop at the exquisitely depressing supermarket adjacent the very depressing 70s condo development that faces the beach area (and replaced Playland, the amusement park that occupied the beachfront for most of the twentieth century) and picked up skewers, marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate bars. The harassed cashier looked dejected in the yellow-green hues of the flourescent lamps, and the floor manager kept popping up behind her to ask: "Do we carry mops? Do we carry cleaning solution?" And, overwrought, she answered, "I do'n't know. I do'n't know." We skedaddled over to the OB, where we lit the fire, watched the needles burn and send sparks high into the still evening air, and then handed over the embers to an erstwhile arriving group who had even brought some hardwood to get a real bonfire going.