My home in San Francisco California of 17 years, (1978 - 1995), burned to the ground on July 5th 1995 @ 4 AM. I was in the house at the time, alone ... drunk.

The home itself and the plot of land it sat upon was a work of art... an oasis of manicured gardens surrounding an incredible structure which I can only describe as a "deco-cubist-50's modernist" retreat. It was built by the brilliant German Architect, Artist, Sculptor and Writer, Professor Earnest Mundt, a mentor and friend of mine for the years that I lived in his creation. When we met in 1979, Mundt had already retired and so agreed to advise me during my earliest days as a painter. Earnest became the only 'Art Teacher' I ever had.

On the morning of the fire I awoke in the chair I'd passed out in to find the room a raging inferno. The ceilings of the house were 30 feet high in places and the flames roiled before me like pillars in Hell. The sound was a deafening, roaring endless thunderclap. My lungs filled with black smoke and my skin began to blister from the heat of the flames. The windows around me exploded as I stood gasping and searching for a way out. I ran naked across a burning floor and jumped from a window which seconds later exploded into burning glass shrapnel behind me. I staggered away from the burning and exploding house covered with black soot and trailing smoke as though I was on fire myself. My feet were blistered from the burning floor.

I looked back to see everything I had acquired and created over nearly two decades burning to nothing. I began to laugh uncontrollably as though I'd gone mad ... I could only think of the great irony. I thought about how important my collection of art and artifacts were to me and I laughed because I could not believe what a tremendous joke fate had played upon me. When the ambulance came and took me away I was still laughing to myself. It seemed so funny to me at that moment, how fragile my existence and all my possessions had become ... in an instant, it was gone.

What was once a masterpiece of architecture, and a home filled with beauty and memories of my youth, had become a smoldering poisonous crater in less than 30 minutes.

My relationship with Earnest made the almost total loss of my vast art collection all the more tragic. The loss of the house that Mundt had built was a tragedy beyond words. Professor Mundt died less than one year prior to the fire. He is survived by his wife, Gloria who was there to witness the burning and the aftermath. I am thankful that Earnest died before the event.

I was hospitalized for smoke inhalation and burns. The collection of art and artifacts that I collected over decades, including hundreds of drawings and many of my paintings, were destroyed. Only the works I had at a downtown San Francisco art gallery survived. Later, some drawings were discovered in a chard box. Most of these have been displayed in the drawings section of the museum.

I was unable to create art for a long time after the fire and was hospitalized again several times for depression and physical ailments directly connected to this occurrence. This included addiction to narcotic drugs, Vicodan, which were supplied in great quantities immediately after the injuries I sustained, but then were suddenly withdrawn by the doctors. When the prescription narcotics were withdrawn by the doctors I went into narcotic withdrawal. The physical pain and depression, (more so the latter), drove me to seek relief from the streets and before long I found myself addicted to heroin. Eventually I kicked the heroin and am now free from it, or as free as a junkie ever gets ...This is another story which is related elsewhere in the gallery.

... Addendum, 09/07/2000 ...

From an entry in my guestbook of this date;

..but r.s. how did the fire start?

medicationtimefuckhead USA - Thursday, September 07, 2000 at 18:40:26 (MDT

... my response ...

To medicationtimefuckhead : How did the fire start? I recall opening my eyes and seeing my little sad eyes Keane doll running through the flames, jumping from place to place, high and low, no longer sad ... laughing and grinning demonically, holding a candle that burned like a torch, with which she set alight the room. I saw this through a sharp fog of smoke, booze, mushrooms and shock. It must have been an hallucination because I know that toy dolls can not come to life and light house fires. Still, I can remember that sight as well as any other from those moments. In addition to this, a day or so later, a friend was contacted by a person claiming to be a psychic. This stranger told my friend that a 'doll' possessed with the evil which I had created around me, and made of the dead things that I had collected, had set the fire which burned my house down. I had not told this friend about the doll hallucination. I had told NO ONE the story of the doll at that time. So, it was either a drunkard with a house full of cheap candles and jars of flammable liquid, or somehow a doll came to life in order to liberate the things that perhaps I had no business possessing. ?

RS USA - Thursday, September 07, 2000 at 19:07:18 (MDT