With household gods they venture forth

Only Virgil could come close to bringing words to the scene

“But if you long so much to learn
our suffering, to hear in brief the final
calamity of Troy - although my mind,
remembering, recoils in grief, and trembles,
I shall try.”
-Virgil The Aeneid Book 2, 14-18

I looked out my window tonight and the glow of the observatory has returned to crown Griffith Park. It has looked down on Angelinos for nearly ninety years. It has seen many things, but nothing like the past six days. Or five. Whenever Tuesday was. Which was forever ago.

The observatory had been dark since Tuesday night because its power was cut as a preventative measure, but it was also spared from having to look down, powerless, like the rest of us, to have to witness her city burn.

Fire is unlike any other disaster. Each has their own particular brand of terror, but fire, driven by wind, draws its horror from chaos. A fire can starts weeks before it starts. It can change directions, it can end, and suddenly reignite, it can even create its own weather system. It also lends a terrible beauty to the night sky. But these days are too short still for poetry.

Fallout settles now on the wicked and the just. Even if most of us can’t quite comprehend what has happened or place in context, we can at least see it at our feet when we can’t quite look up to see what the sky looks like today.

The dust reminds us of what has happened — as we wander, like touchy ghosts and stare into nothing. Waiting. For the devil winds to pass. To leave us alone. And that is for those of us who haven’t had reality forever changed.

It expresses itself in so many ways. Some scurry to keep from feeling powerless to do something, anything, to not feel the thing. And then the front door steps of empty fire houses get overloaded with our guilt and shame, our remorse, our gratitude. Our love is so big it spills out onto everything. It can’t quite contain itself.

And we burden our helpers because we can’t quite contain it. This thing in us.

Some of us need to lookeloo. Or maybe want to help. It’s hard to stay out of the way when every instinct is to do something. Others yell at strangers in the parking lot of super markets or eat Rice Krispie treats. We do mad things when we get burned by chaos. We ask questions that have no answers and generate answers to questions that have none simply to keep from feeling it. But first, we have to stomach a few more days of red flags. But we must deal with it.

Eventually, the things we try to harness to reclaim a sense of control fail us. For example, I now know more about the science of fire than I ever thought I would. I can recognize the difference between wind driven or terrain driven fires. I can delude myself into thinking I understand these days to try and recapture some control and avoid feeling it. I can even recognize the ding of an alert from the app Watch Duty and wonder, read the face of the friend to see if it is news.

I keep hearing people try and describe it as a war zone and it is. It is a war against an earth that has declared war on us. For we are the enemy. We have crossed too many thresholds, ignored too many warnings, and still some point the finger at anyone and anything that isn’t the one thing we cannot comprehend:

That earth, our mother, has declared war on us. She has had enough. Fire is her only recourse. I hope we can do what many outmatched armies have done in the past when faced with a far superior force. Surrender.

For we cannot win, fighting her.

All the might of our human everything will continue to have to stand down when she rages the hardest. All our best and most sophisticated weapons of survival will be no match to the force of her ferocity. We must, must surrender.

And change.

I had a dream the morning before the fires started. I was chained to a street lamp in the middle of a global protest. The streets were filled with so many from everywhere who had finally figured out it was human greed that was destroying us. There was a child with a sign that read, “we are not gods.”

And no my Christian friends it was not a vision of the end of days generated by some god, some absentee landlord of the heavens, what we just experienced was the direct result of our ignorance and inability to collectively do something to reverse this path we are on.

As a Chicagoan, for many generations, rebirth is in my DNA. Our city reinvented itself when it burned to the sea. After, it became the gold standard of living or a new world. Our structures that rose up from the ash are visited by those all the over the world. And I hope that our planners will take all of this into consideration. We can be a symbol. Of cooperation. For California is the promised land after all. And I am proud to call it my adopted home.

And I will weep in her gardens till the rains return. Till then I will wait till I know how I can best be of service to her. And look up to the Griffith Observatory and watch her shine when the world is darkest.

Thank you for those of you who chip in a few bucks so I can keep paying the rent. And to those who read for free, thank you in advance for repaying my faith by sharing and subscribing so I can help this grow.

Chekhov and I up above June Lake after the year we had all the rain, so much it made the world fill with waterfalls.