Embers

I’m in a strange state to be writing, and for your sake and mine I’m going to keep this short. I started an essay yesterday morning, and it feels like an entire lifetime has happened since. The essay I began then doesn’t make sense anymore, and there’s a good chance I don’t make sense anymore because I didn’t sleep at all last night. I don’t expect to sleep tonight. It’s wildfire season in Los Angeles, it happens every year at this time - but not like this.

This time we have drought conditions, exceptionally strong Santa Ana winds, and low humidity all at once. Embers are being carried far and wide, multiple, raging fires have broken out, and the destruction is hard to fathom, even when a close friend sends you a video of what used to be his house. What was his house yesterday, a place you have been many times, and is now a giant hole with exposed steel beams hanging toward the earth, and the remainder of a staircase going up to a floor that is no longer. The charred hedges and front gate, burnt but still standing.

I am crying as I write this because there aren’t words to say to your friend after you watch the video. You cannot make sense of it because it doesn’t make any sense. Every house on the block looks the same as your friend’s house, meaning it exists as the absence of itself. A block, a neighborhood, a community that was just yesterday, but isn’t now.

Some of you may live in places where it is not uncommon for the force of the wind to break the trunk of a tree, but in over twenty years living in Santa Monica, I never saw that until today.

People make comments and they mean well. They say, “things can be replaced, things can be rebuilt, thank god everyone is alive,” and yes, there isn’t any question that’s the case. But also, there are memories in a place, things that happened there, and the echoes of those things live on, and you have a feeling of home when you walk through the door even decades later, so let people grieve. Let people mourn for their childhood home or the last place they ever saw their mother, or the living room where their baby took her first steps. Let people have their feelings about a rug they bought on their honeymoon in Mexico or love letters they couldn’t save or the wedding dress they wanted to give to their daughter.

And if it occurs to you to start talking about the governor you don’t like, or how California should stop spending its money on all these woke policies so things like this don’t happen - shove every sock you own in your mouth and tie the other ones around your wrists so you don’t say or type something so utterly lacking in decency or compassion you won’t ever recover for the rest of your shocking life. I blocked someone instantly today because I cannot take any further horror right now. When Texas has power outages and people suffer in extreme heat because the governor doesn’t care about the people who live in Texas, you know what I would never, ever do?

Entire neighborhoods have burned to the ground. Thousands of people have lost their homes and been displaced - five people have lost their lives. Restaurants that have been famous since before I was born are nothing more than burning embers on the PCH. Pali High is gone. It’s apocalyptic out here.

Yesterday when I started the essay that doesn’t make sense anymore, the winds were so strong I saw a palm frond fly past the window as I sat writing in the den, and thought I’d better collapse the big sun umbrella that usually covers the outdoor couch in the backyard. When I opened the side door, the wind was whipping through the trees so hard there was dust flying through the air, and I had to close my eyes and squint-grope my way to the back. I felt like Dorothy, only I don’t have a Toto anymore, and mine would never have fit in the basket of a bicycle, anyway. The fact that he isn’t here with me makes as much sense as anything else, which means no sense at all.

When my daughter got home from school, she said she could see the smoke in the mountains, so I went to the corner, and down the block, and sure enough, there it was.

This morning when I finally gave up on trying to sleep, I came out to the den and pulled the curtain back and the sky was filled with smoke. An hour later, after I’d checked Watch Duty for the eleventh time, a Military Osprey flew over the house so close the windows rattled and the floor beneath my feet shook. It’s a strangely beautiful day, and I realized this thing that’s been hovering just outside my consciousness - this is all reminiscent of New York City on 9/11, and I would not say that lightly.

The world feels impossibly fragile and yes, it always, always comes down to the people we love - the people we call when we’re scared, the people who text to check on us. But as the evacuation line creeps closer and closer to our house, I have filled my trunk with photo albums, my children’s artwork from when they were tiny, my grandmother’s journal - carefully handwritten in a marbleized composition notebook - and the wee little shirts my children wore home, stamped with Property of St. John’s Hospital on the back, even though they have never been anyone’s property, not even mine.

Hold your people close. Hold your memories close. Be kinder than you need to be. That’s all you can do - nothing else makes sense.

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Friends, I am very close to the evacuation line in Santa Monica, and don’t know what will happen at the moment. The winds are supposed to die down in the morning, and I hope with all my heart that they do. If I am home, I will be here 1/10/25 at 11:15am PST. If I have to evacuate, I have no idea what I’ll do, but maybe I’ll do the podcast right here on Substack. One way or the other, I will try to send it out Saturday as usual, but if I don’t, you’ll know why. Please send any good thoughts you can spare to SoCal, people are really hurting out here, and please keep all our first responders and firefighters in your hearts. If you are looking for ways to help, there are some good organizations linked in this article. Sending you all so much love, as ever.