There's nowhere to run
Gruesome Details
On Monday, my husband turned to me and said, “As long as we can stay together and in this apartment, I think we can get through anything.” We live in a rent-controlled apartment which we both plan to die in, so this seemed doable.
But Tuesday, however, it was less certain.
Packing up all of my most important belongings on Tuesday morning, as fires raged and friends texted to say they had been evacuated, I felt like a child. I packed important documents, an excerpt of a diary my relative wrote en route from Ireland to Boston, a cup which made it through the Russian revolution, a first-print record my husband bought me, and several love notes he’d written me at my request. I considered taking a painting of my parents (colloquially referred to as “Woman in Crisis”) off the wall. It was the suitcase of a woman who didn’t plan on wearing clothing.
It sits, still packed, by the door. I am writing this wearing a mask indoors. The fires are still burning. I’ve lost nothing, except an illusory feeling of safety. When the fires stop burning, I will emerge from my apartment into a different city than the one I was in on Monday.
I will drive around a city I once knew and it will be different. It will be a different Los Angeles, for better and worse.
It was not only my suitcase of sentimental items which made me feel like a child, but my profound hubris. Humanity is full of hubris. We are sure we “mastered” the elements. We have cut through mountains to build roads. We felled trees and “conquered” wild landscapes. We have reached into the earth itself to drill out sludge to power cars. We are kings. But, in the face of the world we’ve changed, we’re children. A hurricane doesn’t care about your bachelor’s degree, a fire doesn’t consider your net worth.
I am writing from my present, from your future (or your past). Climate change is here and, like the global rise of fascism, there is no way to escape. The only way is through.
Your city may be whole. But you, too, live in a different city than the one you lived in last year or the year the before. We have all felt the pains of climate change, even as we try desperately to ignore them.
The borders are as imaginary as they always were. The class war is heating up along with the planet. None of us are immune to the effects and, to think you are, is to court disappointment, if not devastation.
The only thing upon which we can reasonably rely on is one another.
GoFundMe has put together a list of fire victims who need your help: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/wildfire-relief/california
The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank is looking for volunteers and donations: https://www.lafoodbank.org/fire/
The Mutual Aid Los Angeles Network has put together a spreadsheet of mutual aid groups in LA looking for donations or volunteers
NEVER DONATE TO Salvation Army or American Red Cross.