04/07/2026
There’s a fire in Baix Empordà he says. We drive home as fast as we can, moving closer to the big orange cloud of smoke that piles up in the sky. Everyone seems to have forgotten about the speed limits. We spend the afternoon watching the fire from the terrace. It eats the green hills one by one on the other side of the bay. The beach is dotted with colourful umbrellas.
“It’s rampant” I say, “Maybe it will come here.”
“No, there’s nothing to burn here, only stone.”
Never did I think that the insistent construction of segundas residencias in our small town would feel reassuring.
I pile all my bottles of pigment. The oldest, Ultramarine light, is from 2014 and the most recent, golden amber, from today. What does it say about time passing? I paint without any plan or aim. I feel better even though I’m certain I’m living in the time before the ending.
We go to bed to the constant update of news. 700 hectares of forest burned, then 2000. Before I fall asleep, I look for words about the fire in the Swedish newspaper. Breaking news: a man got bit in the foot by a shark in New Jersey I read.
I dream of glowing bits of charcoal dropping from the ceiling.
“I don’t understand, I say, I have locked and sealed everything and still it’s burning.”
In the dream I collect my dearest belongings: My computer, a few paintings, my haute couture creations from Paris and some photographs.
In the morning we open the windows and the tramuntana feels fresh as it makes the curtains dance. How can it be? Or is it that my nose has already gone accustomed to the smell of burning wood?
I sit by my painting. I’m looking out over the burned hills. There’s still some smoke, but no flames.
“Will creation save me, I wonder, like it has so many times before?”
It saved me from illness, from poverty, from becoming a version of me that I don’t like.
It is the time before the ending, and I want to believe that what I leave behind matters. It’s a fool’s thought, and a self-absorbed one at that. The kind of thought that started the fire. Still I wet my brush and dip it in paint. It’s all I got.
