Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Words Like Water from a Tanker Plane

Time is short and the day will be long, with a trip to the vet, the start of bargaining, some mission-critical phone calls (business and pleasure), and the second of my three voice-acting classes tonight.  It’s enough to distract a fellow.  But this morning’s news puts a different spin on everything.  Growing up in LA (or the SF Valley, which counts outside of the basin anyway, as a sort of Brooklyn to LA’s New Amsterdam), I grew used to hearing about my old stomping grounds on the news.  Major boulevards, neighborhoods, landmarks - they’re tantamont to national property, appropriated by television and movies and almost divested of their locality.  But this morning I am hearing about the sleepy 118 freeway, about fires up near Moorpark (where the Simi valley sign is charred and blackened) and out at Crestline (where my oldest friend, who called me up three days ago, has - or had? - a cabin in the woods), about horses sheltered at Pierce College where so little ever happened that it was still a part of a purely local geography, not co-opted into a placeless place, just a part of my actual home town… All these places are draped in ash and the sun filters red to parched ground where I learned to ride a bike and drink cheap wine.  I recall the fire that hit the Santa Susanas when I was in grade school (it’s described quite accurately in White Oleander) that filled the air in my backyard with tiny white incinerated leaves, perfect to the very veins - artifacts that floated dozens of miles through thickened air to collapse upon touching my outstretched finger.  To all the leaves, trees, homes, neighborhoods, horses, skunks, deer, possums (yes even them) and of course the squirrels and the people who are waiting to return to a home they hope is waiting for them - I know where you live, and I send my strength to the southland.  It is a real place, and I want it to survive.