The Flame Imperishable

Well, everything is on fire.

The sad thing is, I can't tell if I'm being literal or metaphorical. The good news though is if you can't tell, I guess it doesn't really matter. That means you're already definitely completely fucked, one way or the other.

I shouldn't be so melodramatic, coy or glib. I'll just say: I am not actually on fire. I do live in Southern California, which is objectively the best place out of all the places available for humans to live... except for the occasional visitation of the Biblical conception of hell upon the earth. Earthquakes can be a nuisance* as well, fine. And the obscene imbalance of population vs. viable potable water table is something to note, I will grant you that. And the cost of living even on the outskirts where I live outstrips just about every other place in the country, if not the civilized world, that's largely true. But other than those things (and the smog and the traffic, which causes much of the smog in the first place, and the pockets of exceptionally high murder rates and the epidemic homelessness and the existence of Los Angeles Lakers fans), it's great for a lot of reasons. Like, you know, the weather.

Ah, the weather. Our vaunted Mediterranean climate, with our long, dry summers unblemished by anything so tiresome or plebeian as humidity and our short winters that are less of a rainy season and probably best described as "moist," conspires every hear to hunt each and every one of us down and kill us. With fire.

As I said, I'm fine here. SoCal is a big place. I'm several dozen miles (in several directions!) from the mightiest of the current conflagrations, I'm relieved to be able to say. In SoCal, though, it's never "if" it's always "when." It's others now, but it will be me (or people I love) at some point. I've watched giant tanker planes drop red fire retardant on hills above my house, more than once. Luckily it's been several years, but it likely won't be several more. We've built a civilization on top of dry, scraggly, ubiquitous sage and other brittle, low-water brush shrubs all growing on top of the kind of lovely hills and canyons that afford excellent sunset views and, simultaneously, nearly impossible access for firefighting personnel and vehicles. All this chaparral rolls along, unbroken by any sort of handy thing like a river or a lake that would provide a natural barrier and--EVEN BETTER!--an abundance of nonflammable liquid with which to fight fires. I'm not going to say fire season is not scary, but one gets used to it.  It literally goes with the territory.

The pictures are absolutely horrifying and the accompanying maps are even more so. The situation has gotten so bad, I can't even bring myself to make a joke about how burning down large swaths of Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley is going to come out as a wash at best in terms of quality of living.

I want everyone there to be OK. That's partly because I'm a decent person capable of genuine human empathy. And it's also partly because when it's our turn to run from a smoking, angry holocaust, they'll remember I was nice about it before and they'll let me sleep on their couch.



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*sometimes up to the apocalyptic sense of the word "nuisance," sure.