Earthquake Weather

Everybody, I'm fine.

Is there a massive wildfire happening right now in a place where I could visually see actual flames from at least one of the windows of my home? OK, sure. And is my backyard covered in enough accumulated ash that it looks like Chris Pratt's stunt double at the end of Avengers Infinity War back there? Also the case, yes.

But those things, while technically facts, can be deceiving. We are living in an age of, and I'm being generous here in my word choice, epistemological and moral relativism. I'm hesitant to give a more on-the-nose summation as that would involve some more fecund language choices unbecoming a gentleman even of my colonial birth, like for example "bullshit hurricane" or "clown-vasion of wankery" or "Charlie Sheen." All unpleasant mental images indeed, but all still evocative of the cultural moment of 300 million people all voiding their dignity bladders at the exact same time. This is not the historical instance for trust, asked for or offered.

Evacuations, mandatory and voluntary, are happening right now just the next valley to the south of me. This would be a great time normally to take a running shot at the community of Lake Elsinore and suggest all the ways a devastating fire might be an improvement, but as the ash continues occasionally tap-tap-tapping on the window pane directly to the left of my Typin' Chair, I grope through my memory for the tiniest battered remnant of the most basic and most powerful of moral codes, given to us by Jesus himself: don't start none, won't be none.

So I forego my normal disdain for a place that is basically four soulless housing tracts pretending the rest of the town isn't camper vans of tweakers and registered sex offenders crowded around a lake so gross fish refuse to live in it. But look, those people don't deserve to be cindered to death in a hellish inferno on the living earth we can scarcely believe we can see with our waking eyes. I'm a Riverside County resident; these are my folk, icky though they may be. I sincerely want everyone to be safe. Even the sex offenders who took the time and effort to get registered.

Yes, I can see the fire from my house. Yes, my throat hurts and my sinuses are kind of fucked up because of the constant ash-haze. But none of this constitutes a crisis at this point for me personally. The fire is around 2,000 feet above the valley floor, on the top of a hill. We can't see the stars at night around here for all the light pollution, but even we can still make out a giant fucking mountain on fire in the dark from 10 miles away.

And the ash cloud is a problem, but even that is intermittent. When the wind shifts off-shore (like today), the smoky column forsakes us entirely in favor of our neighbors on the western slope of Santiago Peak. Just like Ikea and Whole Foods.

What I'm saying is, all things considered, I've been very fortunate. Not everyone in my immediate vicinity can say the same and for that I am truly sorry. It gives me no great joy to say we know for certain that it could definitely be worse. And you know it's bad when a situation elicits sympathy even for Northern Californians.