In one of the many pieces of writing that has crossed my desk this week about the LA fires, “gangster wind” was the term that rattled me. Janice Harayda uses it to describe the Santa Anas that blow across Los Angeles, hot and dry, on their riotous journey from the desert to the sea.
For those not living in LA, we’ve had a temporary lull in the wind, which our meteorologists assure us is merely a deferral of the inevitable. The Santa Anas will kick back up again, sending their hurricane gusts over our chaparral, our water starved trees, our mountains and urbanscapes, our power lines that crackle and spark, ready always with their pyrotechnics. These days, I find myself obsessively checking the trees outside, watching the palm fronds for movement. Some harbinger of what’s to come.
Joan Didion writes, “Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse.” To live in the path of that desert breath is to understand, deep within our bones, the impermanence and fragility of human life.
Countless friends and family members have lost their homes this week, every possession they own, the material details of their lives, big and small, now reduced to ash. These last seven days have been a reminder that for all our industry, mastery, technology, we are at the mercy of the elements. It’s hard not to attribute malevolence to them in times like these. To imbue them with intent, to blame. But fire does what fire does. It consumes. That is its only job. And, wow, did it put on a performance this week.
In between my obsessive consumption of the news, I am doing interviews about my book, which launches in three weeks. I had no idea that the fires would be raging in the background, but in a way, The Department has always been speaking to the experience of loss.
At a critical moment in the book, one character says to another:
We lose all kinds of things. Objects. Fantasies. The future. The past. Things we can’t get back. We lose things we never even had. We’re shaped by those losses. In a way, they belong to us.
On the surface, The Department is about a college girl who goes missing and a philosophy professor who becomes obsessed with her disappearance until it leads him back to the halls of his own department. But underneath all that, it is a story about our strategies (both successful and doomed) for living with our losses.
First and foremost, I hope all generosity goes towards those who have lost so much. There are countless ways to support families displaced by fire. (And I’m currently working on a book drive…more information about that soon.) In the meantime, if you still have energy left to give and want to pre-order The Department, perhaps consider shopping at your local bookstore. We realize now more than ever how vital our communities truly are, and our purchasing decisions directly impact their survival.
If you’re in Manhattan Beach, you can buy it here and select “pick up in store.”
If you go with Bookshop.org, be sure to choose a bookstore. The books ship directly from the distributor, but your bookstore of choice will earn money on the purchase.
You know the deal with this one.
Thank you, as always, for reading.