Weekend Edition nattering pleasantly, I cruised up the coast to SB, two bags of donatable items in the back seat of S’s infuriatingly sparse, no-frills-whatsoever economy car (that he adores), a low quilty helmet of marine layer overhead from NoHo to the piece of coastline actually flanking the ocean, past La Conchita and its deadly sagging cliffs, past the pier leading to the faux island hiding oil derricks, past Rincon Point and its diehard surfers and the sweet, many-windowed house there I privately covet, through Carpinteria, Summerland and voila: fire? What fire? Not a burn area was to be seen, gray sky gauze medicating old mountains and foothills. It was as if gargantuan flame-walls had never terrorized the city.
I stopped off to see Gallerina Sister. Bleary-eyed behind the counter, surrounded by amazing paintings, she was dressed in the same jeans she’d been wearing for 3 days and a borrowed tee shirt. On the computer she showed me photos of fire-ravaged neighborhoods (“here’s where so and so’s house was, and here’s so and so’s and here is so and so’s house standing, but look—next door the so and so’s lost theirs and here…let me know if you come across any furniture or other big homey items in LA so I can pass the info on, look–here was so and so’s home…”, etc.). She confessed she was nervous about returning to her home once the evacuation order lifted. “Yeah, I do need clothes,” she said, slumped on her seat, “but smoke damage, rubbled houses on my block, worrying about the displaced—all the damage is exhausting.” And it was basically the same with everyone I spoke to—the red, bleary eyes, the exhaustion from monitoring the fire, from avoiding falling ash and heat, everyone wrung from the shock and empathy for those who had lost their homes. “The newspapers and TV are alarmingly non-informative,” Blood Sister told me when I stopped at her house. We were standing amid the ash coating her lawn. At the house behind hers, we heard water running and splashing as neighbors hosed off their patio. “They’re not supposed to do that,” Blood Sister said, concerned, rubbing her eyes. “We’ve been asked not to water outside until the fire is more contained. People have been really great about it.” Startled, we noticed sun on our arms and looked up. The marine layer was melting. Not enough, though, to see the mountains. Helicopters muttered in the distance. Yesterday, Blood Sister delivered Costco vittles in bulk to the local humane society overrun in animals, some boarded, some separated from their owners and dropped off by good samaritans. Then Blood Sister made her way to the local pound and scrubbed bunny cages and helped cool the rabbits down with “ice pillows”, baths and soothing combings of ash from bun-fur. “There are plenty of volunteers,” she told me with a sudden smile. “That’s the good news.”
Later, after delivering my donations, heading for LA, battling paranoia about being away from my baby for so long for the first time ever, SB glinting in the sun, beginning to emulate its most charming picture postcards, becoming once again the terminally pretty toy-town I grew up in—I missed, in my LA residency, the sense of community so prominent in SB, where despite a lack of information from the local news media, many residents—displaced or not, homes destroyed or not, exhausted from damage or not—roust the good samaritan inside and become proactive in a time of crisis. They open up their shops and hotels and homes to shocked tourists and the evacuated, down to the smallest displaced bunny. It occurs to many residents to reach out and help. In comparison, LA in day-to-day life often feels stuffed with the types that, no matter what crisis is going on around them, will hose off their lawn chairs. All I wanted to do was get to the condo, grab my husband and child and return, once and for all, home.
PB! That’s not very nice to say about LA types, that they don’t rally in a crisis. You have some very nice neighbors and know good samaritan types in various pockets of LA. Are you trying to alienate the world? I mean, yeah the one neighbor slams her door at 6:30a.m. every single morning and once you had to ask her to please not smoke pot unless she closes her door because it was wafting into your condo and you groused for a while about that one because she takes care of a special needs child and like what are you supposed to do about that and yeah the neighbors across the way are all about 19 and partying every night and you may actually alert the authorities on that one, but STILL—despite the street sweeper who yelled at you while you talked on your cell phone and walked your baby, there are PLENTY of nice people in NoHo. You’re moving to the suburbs anyway, PB!
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