My little MP3 player has such a small memory that it stores only 8 or 9 songs at a time. Since I'm too lazy to cycle new songs onto the chip very often, certain tunes [1] have become oft-repeated staples of my morning run around the city. I usually get through most of them twice; one play in each direction. In the peculiar way that we are sometimes aware of our own underlying psychological processes, I can sense that these songs are becoming suffused with this particular moment in my life. They're undergoing evocativation, becoming prenostaligized. They are taking root, being fused with the times in a way that charges them with meaning even while it will someday limit my ability to listen to them unfettered by a connection with the past.

The feeling that's being engraved into the songs is this moment in which the fire class is changing my life for better and worse -- the sensations of struggle, physical exhaustion, determination, frustration, waking up in the early morning to run ever farther from home and then run back again, heat, a sweet perpetual soreness, refusal to give up. I can't honestly say it's a completely enjoyable time. All my available energy is focused on the goal of getting through the class. It's taken more out of me and my relationship than I had prepared for, but I haven't given up, and that's got to count for something.

The morning run takes me farther and farther afield, often to the point that I wish I'd just brought bus fare to get home again. Today I went to the huge graveyard in Georgetown. At intervals in my run I speed up and go flat out, run-from-the-cops fast, until I simply can't sustain it any longer, then I return to normal running pace and try to catch my breath without throwing up in a passing yard. I like the fast intervals because I get such odd looks from the people I pass, who are probably trying to memorize my features in case I've left a tourist crumpled in a pool of his own blood a few blocks back.

To warm up in fire class we went up that external metal ladder again -- to the seventh floor roof, straight up the side of the building. I was amazed to note that I was hardly anxious as I waited my turn. Having accomplished this task once before, I now had few concerns that I would freeze partway up.

Susan and I watched a show about phobias recently in which one man, desperately afraid of heights, underwent a type of treatment known as "flooding," in which he was escorted to the tops of tall structures and made to endure complete terror in an effort to confront his fears. Many phobias are treated using the technique of "Progressive Desensitization," in which the patient is slowly introduced to increasing dosages of frightening stimuli, while consciously monitoring their own levels of anxiety. Over time, this technique often allows them to overwrite their phobic responses with healthier ones.

"Trevor" opted for the opposite strategy, and went to a clinic in (of course!) Germany, where an earnest man who hadn't updated his clothes in about twenty years informed him that once he committed to the Flooding technique there would be no going back. Trevor signed on the dotted line, and was promptly taken to the top of a cathedral, weeping with each excruciating step. The flooding technique, I suppose, is designed to expose the patient to such an extreme fearful period that s/he sees later exposures to the phobic situation as relatively mild. It may be a little bit like people who live through a terrible trauma and thereafter possess a bit more perspective on what's important in their lives.

The following days saw Trevor in a radio tower and ascending on a firetruck's ladder. Trevor moaned and quivered, uttered foul sacrileges, and tried to chicken out, but his cold-blooded therapists didn't back down. By the end of his treatment, he returned to the cathedral again, where his anxiety appeared somewhat tempered by the experiences.

This seemed like a pretty sadistic method of treating a phobia, but I had to admit that my early "flooding" experience on the ladder -- which was far beyond any experience I'd had confronting heights -- substantially suppressed my fears the second time around. Of course, I'm not afraid of heights to begin with, and maybe the psychological processes involved in phobias differ substantially from the ways we "normally" construct what we fear.

It's not about whether I can go up a tall ladder, carry a stand pipe pack up seven stories, advance a bulky attack line, or approach a fire -- although I must be able to do each of those things. I've been nervous before each one of these tests, and I've passed them all. Once I've accomplished something, I don't worry about it next time, but I can't seem to trust myself on the next new challenge. The hardest part of this whole experience is not slugging weight or swinging an ax, it's learning what I'm capable of, and not forgetting it when the next test comes around.

Now Playing: Change (Deftones) I Saved the World Today (Annie Lennox) UFO Religion (Lost) Good to be Alive (DJ Rap) L'accord Parfait (Auteur de Lucie) Bad Reputation (Freedy Johnston) She Sells Sanctuary (The Cult) [top]

Observation tower at the training academy