Notes from the Apocalypse

Blue heron on a neighbor's chimney

Parts of Houston are still underwater. Many Texas towns have been washed away entirely. California is on fire. The rest of the West is pocked with similar wildfires. A 2700 year old grove of Sequoias near Yosemite is burning. One of the longest-lived organisms on this Earth, the Sequoia has seen centuries of man's folly. The freeway in my old neighborhood is closed due to L.A.'s largest-ever wildfire. A dozen cites in California recorded their highest-ever temperatures yesterday. Today's temperatures may beat that.

It was 86 here in paradise on Friday. Yesterday's high was a little higher. The temperatures aren't dropping much at night. I turned on my air conditioner before going to sleep last night since it was in the high 80s upstairs. Right now, it's already 92 outside. Probably a record. When my mom first arrived here in August of 2012, one of my first tasks was to buy her some long underwear. The fresh breeze from the ocean blew right through her. It was perfectly still here this morning.

And I'm wondering about how my front closet would fare as a fallout shelter. Sometimes the skies around here rumble and roar with military activity. At night it makes me uneasy. There's something going on, but I don't know what it is and probably don't want to know, really.

But the un-knowing of what we know doesn't serve us. I want to hold fast to what I know and let it propel me toward change or insight or something.

I hope you are well, dear everyone. Stay safe. Don't breathe the smoke. But breathe.

Mother Nature and Rejection

There's severe weather honing in on the San Gabriel Valley again. As I was checking my email only to find that I did not make it into a writers' residency I'd been hoping for, my entire house shook and rolled. That was too loud to be thunder--or simply the shock of rejection--I thought as I saw the flash. I waited for smoke or a fireball thinking that maybe a plane had crashed, and then the rumbling began again. Two more crashes came in rapid succession. Two more flashes. It rained enough to get the pavement wet on my patio, then stopped. It's deathly still now--like Mother Nature is holding her breath. Not one leaf is moving. The birds are mute. But there's a low growl from time to time as if some beast is crouching for an attack. Batteries? Check. Phone charged? Check. Water? Check. Ipad charged? Check. Computers unplugged? Check. Disaster plan? You mean like a plan for my future? Um. Well, no. I don't have one of those.

Water

I don't know what it is about me and water.
There are sandbags outside my back door and it's been pouring so hard for the last couple of hours that it's like looking through a scrim.
I can now claim that two men have crawled around in the water to rescue my abode. Mr. Ex was the first one. Several  years ago after a pipe burst in the middle of the night and flooded our downstairs, I walked into our kitchen to discover him on hands and knees, wearing only a t-shirt, sopping up the mess with pool towels. Then came an invasion of mold that required a re-do of our entire downstairs, and we ended up moving out--or, more accurately, our daughter and I ended up moving out. Mr. Ex elected to stay at the house. Which I find very interesting in retrospect.
This morning the man I love lay on his belly on a tarp on my sodden patio in the drizzle, a hammer drill sheltered in a plastic bag as he bored holes into my patio wall so the water could find its way to the slope on the other side.
It was water that called my name after the divorce when I thought my life should end. Bridges were so enticing that I kept my curtains drawn during one entire stay at the St. Paul Hotel. At night when it was quiet, even with the windows closed, I thought I could hear the rushing of the river. The sound of the water was like a voice asking me to come to its side.
I love the water. Traveling by boat. Swimming in a pool or a calm sea.  I recently purchased a travel snorkel that curls up into the size of a bagel. I have a special bath mat with a pillow for soaking in the tub--but I love long showers so much I hardly use it.
I'm just not sure how water feels about me.

Why I'm not too keen on living here......

We Southern Californians are living in a disaster zone again. Last week we had the drill for the "Big One," and then the place went up in flames. Monday twilight was at 3:30 in the afternoon and the moon that night was more brown than yellow. Like a broken Vanilla Wafer.  You can't help but wonder at every siren when there are fires burning all around. And when your neighbor barbecues you have to go outside and be sure it's kabobs you're smelling and not the wood shake roof. 

I had to go out Monday night and I drove 7 miles an hour for a good portion of the trip because that's what we do when we go out in the evening in L. A.  Rush hour crushes your soul if you're not in the mood to have your foot hovering over the brake and even NPR can't save you.

These slow drives are the worst. The litany is longer and more detailed then because there's more time to look around.  He drives this freeway twice a day.  We went to a party somewhere on that hill. There's his building. There's the Staples Center--wow, I thought we were having fun at those Clipper games we saw last year.  If I exited here, I'd could find my way to that hideous duplex we rented in Culver City.   This is how my divorced brain works and I don't know how to stop it. At this point in time, I no longer feel the debilitating heartbreak, but the memories are there just the same.  Why, exactly, am I living here?