California Burning

I went for a long tromp in the rain. It wasn’t unpleasant. I wore a hat. My feet dried off as soon as I got home.

The area around here would be one enormous riverine marsh if it weren’t for culverts and sump pumps:



Later, I chatted with Max for half an hour or so. He noted his mood was similar to mine: not depressed so much as existentially exhausted. Too much external stimuli! Too little focus on the minutiae of one’s own life—which, true, are minutiae, not particularly important, but which, after all, are happening to you-u-u-u and so, significant as a curation device.

Inevitably, Ben’s death became a part of that conversation.

“The memorial gave Robin closure, but it didn’t really give me closure,” I said to Max. “Because the person they were talking about at that memorial wasn’t anyone that I knew.”

“Maybe you should try doing your own personal memorial,” Max said.

###

I’ve also been worried to death about the California wild fires.



Looks like the fires are moving east into Napa and south toward Santa Rosa. The Petrified Forest was wiped out two years ago; I don’t even know how much of her own money on top of the insurance payout Barbara poured into restoring it. I see this morning that the Calistoga/Petrified Forest Road was just evacuated again.

I don’t know how anyone in the East Bay stays safe. Grassfires are popping up in Vallejo and Lafayette despite the electricity shutdown. It’s just a matter of time before they jump to major population centers:



I’m not sure what was crazier: Flames on either side of I-80, lapping at the pilons of the Carquinez Bridge or the fact that the toll collectors insisted on still collecting tolls.

###

I lived in Oakland during the great firestorm of ’91. It was terrifying. Of course, it was billed then as a once-a-century event. Which clearly it was not.

Horrible things are happening the world over. Has climate change accelerated them? Indisputably, it plays a role: The 2007 draught in Syria almost certainly triggered the subsequent civil war there and the flight of its population. Similar climate events and resulting diasporas are the history of the world in these early years of the 21st century.

If I wasn't forced to know about them, would I care about them?

Of course not.

So, I find myself absolutely furious at the 24/7 news cycle that pushes them down my throat.

I totally get isolationism.

Unfortunately, it’s really not an option.