Up in smoke...

“Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the

reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived

there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire

quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The

winds shows us how close to the edge we are.”

Joan Didion, in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1969, London: Andre Deutch.

When we moved out here 38 years ago, having finally escaped east coast winters, LA felt like paradise, a place where the normal rules of life were suspended or didn’t apply. The sun shined perpetually, people were out and about running, biking, walking, doing all sorts of healthy outdoor activities…in a seemingly successful effort to stay forever young. Those illusions were soon shattered by the realities of life and cycles of LA weather so well described above. Our first fire experience had us evacuate to a local Holiday Inn with our then two little girls. Watching the fires and the efforts to control it the following day up close to where our house hung in the balance was both frightening and inspiring; witnessing our firefighters, our true local heroes, engaged in combat with a monster right that seemed right out of an apocalyptic movie. They won that battle but then came Rodney King and the riots, followed by the Northridge earthquake and of course more fires. When KCBS showed a montage of destruction over Sting singing “how fragile we are” we nodded our heads in agreement.

Nevertheless we loved LA and in particular the Palisades. Despite the urban sprawl that defines LA the Palisades felt like an oasis…removed far enough from the ugly parts of the City and blessed by a microclimate that kept things comfortable almost all year long…”almost” because when the winds came so did our sense of foreboding because we had seen the dangerous fire monsters that they could unleash. Yet those worries were marginal when balanced with the sense of community that we felt living there…in many ways we had the benefits of small town living while still in the embrace of a megacity.

When we first moved here, with our families in the Northwest and Northeast it was difficult to make friends outside of the kind that come with the taint of business interests. When our daughter started school all of that changed and the friends we made became the extended family that we yearned for. Those friendships have endured for more than 35 years and have been an immeasurable blessing to us all. Though we moved out of the Palisades, 10 years ago, the friendships endured and we have stayed in each other's lives to celebrate, grieve and support one another through good times and bad…and now these times seem as bad as we could have imagined as so many have lost their homes, their possessions and memories. In some regard, we feel a sense of survivor’s guilt witnessing all this destruction from a relatively safe distance though we remember well that in our current home in the perfect little town of Montecito the tragic events in 2018 that cost homes and lives at a scale we never would have imagined.

What is also lost in this tragic event and perhaps cuts deepest is the loss of our illusion of control…the illusion that comes with having the resources to live in beautiful homes in seemingly perfect places. We could look at photos of places of destruction and devastation (think Gaza), and while pitying the victims, believe that it could never happen to us…until it did. The total destruction of the Palisades; homes, churches, schools, businesses, parks, the library…all were beyond our imaginations. Young families have had to figure out where to live and send their kids to school and reorganize their normally complicated lives but perhaps the loss to the elderly is even more profound. Will they be able to afford to rebuild even if they’re willing to put their lives on hold for an uncertain period of the time it will take for all of that to happen?

I was taught by my spiritual advisors that behind every loss is an opportunity for grace and redemption. Over the years I have learned how meaningful this lesson has been for me. Losses and reverses of fortune are inevitable and yet with perspective they offer new opportunities, possibilities that might have never been imagined but for the losses sustained. In the midst of suffering and sadness it’s really hard to embrace these possibilities and in truth, I don’t believe that they can be fully accepted without grieving the losses first. But with time when the imperative is to find a way to move on, these new possibilities come more fully into focus if we choose to pursue them.

My hope is that the people of both the Palisades and Altadena come together to create new communities that manage to preserve what was so special, while making the necessary improvements and adjustments that take into account the new world of sometimes terrible possibilities that a climate changed environment will impose. It will be an enormous challenge that will take the help of many of us that are far removed from these losses but yet in our hearts suffer along with them. I encourage you to find ways to be part of that effort. Underlying all of this, will be a collective belief that beyond loss and sadness for what’s been lost there is possibility, that if embraced, will create communities that for future generations will offer a better life. And yet, all the while, they and we will wait for the winds from the east to blow again and hope that this time things will be different and they will be spared... since indeed, “How fragile we are…”.