On Wednesday evening, my partner woke me up and we walked outside. Up the street, hills that had been dark and drowsy when I laid down were dancing: they shone brighter than anything in the heart of Hollywood pumping below. "We're leaving," I said, and returned to the soft glow of our home, grabbing clumsy handfuls of belongings I always said I would take in a God forbid situation; leaving others like my grandmother's silk dress that I didn't think about until later. The day's endless stream of harrowing footage pushed blood through my veins and shook my hands as traffic piled up in the streets.
Some hear echoes of the LA riots in this week's firestorm, but I was only born that year, in a Valley hospital that's no longer here. Some hear echoes of even older fires, for this is a place that burns across concentric rings of time, now more than ever. A place that trembles like a body in flight, where most people fight to have anything at all: A living. A home that can't be taken. Freedom to turn heads as a visionary; not an outcast, or a threat. The same things for which people everywhere fight.
For years, I’ve wanted to live on the edges of this city, as though handling Los Angeles with my fingertips: this thing that overheats every year, every time a tragedy descends, and when the city wins, too. Despite our persistent delusions, this place is never safe from itself, and maybe, I admit, I've always been afraid of it. Los Angeles is one of three places that raised me, and though I often leave, I always return because love outruns logic. This year, I finally committed. I promised myself that I would stay but only if I could live at the edges: by the mountains, within reach of the forests and the rivers and the condors that start where the paved roads end. The motivation for choosing a bungalow so close to the hills was the same: So I could climb them every day.
For this reason, we had to evacuate this week. Our home and family survived; we benefited from slowing winds that allowed previously grounded air support to sweep in. Such good fortune, however, seems beside the point when so many others can't say the same.
The latest fires summon the same questions raised by the history of this place and the origins of Los Angeles: Should we be here? Should we still be here? Where should millions of hungry, thirsty people live?
We are not the only ones asking these questions.
The following comes from a collection of Clarice Lispector's crónicas, which I read everyday (thank you, Julia). Today's was an interview with Pablo Neruda published on April 19, 1969:
"What is the most important thing in the world?"
"Trying to make the world a dignified place for all human beings, not just for some."
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