I can feel all of LA, the widespread cloud of horror, all of us poking the blanket we're crowded under, everyone huddled in clusters of sadness
It was Monday like three years ago, it feels like. Monday before there was even a fire. I went to Costco and got a pizza, it would last the whole week. My brother was here to help with my mom. It was just a Monday. On Tuesday I got hay because it was supposed to be windy, in fact it was getting a little windy. I was worried about the hay falling off the golf cart. But the wind wasn't really supposed to be bad until that night.
That night Pacific Palisades burned to the ground.
That night the wind blew fire through Patrick's neighborhood burning all his neighbor's houses to the ground. He got woken up at 2 am and ran out of his house filled with smoke, with only his charger. He drove away with his family, seeing his neighbor's houses on fire. He wrote me i think it all burned
Bess got up for school Wednesday and didn't want to go but she had a game but then texts were coming in, none of her friends were going to school. There's a fire. None of the teachers were going to school. As we stood there, everything that was regular life started to just fall away, Wednesday morning. Life shedded us. We became emergency.
We sat with our dead Christmas tree, staring at the tv.
We stared at it until now, Friday.
It has been three years since Tuesday, it feels like.
We just keep watching things disappearing. People scrambling, everything turning chalky white. Cars piled up. People on the news talking and then dissolving into crying. Because Tuesday everything was okay, there was just a little wind. Then this line of fire, then this other line of fire. Right near us.
Nathan's work was evacuated. Nathan showed pictures of our passover friend's house in Alta Dena. It was a driveway and no house now. It was a driveway now.
That picture is when time stopped totally. Wait, people we eat dinner with can lose everything? And the panic of feeling Patrick's heartbeat in my head. His house is right near there. What if it all burned. What if it's gone. What if he loses everything. What if we all lose everything.
What do you do if you lose everything.
What are we living for?
A house is where you rest from the world. What if you lose your place of rest. The world is already harassing you to your very doorstep. At least you have your house, to shut everything away. And deal with what you can. At your pace.
It is a question no one can fathom. What happens if you lose everything.
Patrick and Nathan went back to Patrick's neighborhood. Everything was destroyed. But - Patrick's house was still there. The fire had burned right up demolishing the yard. It skipped the pig in a pen. It got to the wall of the house. It left black marks around Patrick's window like it was banging to get in. The wind must have shifted right then.
It blew to the left, it jumped the street and burned down all the neighbor's houses. It left Patrick but it destroyed the neighborhood. It broke all those people's hearts. That doesn't feel better.
The neighborhood is flat.
We sat by the tv watching the newspeople in weird yellow rainjackets like they're faking being firemen. We watched as no planes could fly because the wind whipped hurricane strength and the fires ate house after house because like the ocean it didn't care, it was fueling itself, doing what it was made to do. We sat with tiny arms at our sides, a whisper, not big enough to fight this monster.
All the pain of our city raining down on us. Every person who lost every thing they cared about and their safe place to belong to. They are standing in ashes.
All of Thursday felt like an entire year, like feeling every step of a hundred legged caterpillar, just trying to get across the sidewalk and not getting anywhere.
There was not any good news. Patrick had a house. I kept thinking. Patrick who had nothing, he had a house still.
The smoke is lessening, it is Friday. There were other small fires, fires nearby, fires that made us stop and undecorate the christmas tree and throw it out of the house. So we have the homemade ornaments in a box in case we have to put it all in the car. We would let the horses loose in the neighborhood. Leave and come back to nothing.
The passover friends whose house burned down, they were eating dinner somewhere on Tuesday. My niece called them and said hey I think you have to evacuate. The friends were annoyed. They went back to their house. Packed an overnight bag. It's probably nothing. They took their papers. Everyone's always overreacting. We'll be back in the morning.
They packed an overnight bag. Not even all the way full.
They came back to nothing.
I saw one old guy on the news who said what do you take when it's all going to burn down. You take nothing. All this stuff we collect it doesn't mean anything. It's not the stuff.
We need to belong somewhere. He said.
We kept hearing total loss. It's a total loss.
Widespread total loss. We kept looking at each other, wondering what happened to Monday. When it was overfull. Life was messy and full, dripping. Did we have too much?
What happens now. This is so long, staring into this flat razored land. Everyone's clumps of nothing next to everyone else's clumps of nothing, stretching to the ocean. How do you live when everyone around you has lost everything. You feel their pain.
Patrick's house is still standing.
Nathan and Patrick said they just grabbed the one hose that was working in the neighborhood and started putting out tiny fires. A guy in a car detailing van stopped and was spraying water out of his van to help the neighbors. The powerlines were down all over the street like a basket of electrified yarn had spilled and rolled all over.
It's only Friday, and what do we do.
You stare at the mess and feel burned down. Now there is looting and anger and curfews. Now there is scrambling and people parched with loss and devastation. There is going to be so much upset because no one knows the next step, things are still on fire but everything is still gone. There's too much sadness and not enough bags to gather it all into. How do we help our people suffering, this is our city. On the streets in our neighborhoods, right across the street from Patrick.
How do you start over when you were just in the middle, living your life, you weren't even anywhere yet.
