A New Home

My apologies, friends, for falling behind on these updates … a lot has been happening.

Diana and I have found a long-term (one-year) rental—a nice little house on a nice little street, close enough to the burn area for us to be able to stay on top of developments. We got lucky. The owners showed the house only to us; they have been redo-ing it with great care for a couple of years. It’s spotless, sunny, and the neighbors are great.

Our new home in Mar Vista, L.A.

Meanwhile the massive rebuild process for L.A. continues. For our side of town, the first order of business is clearing the debris—i.e., the remains of houses that burned down—along Pacific Coast Highway. This is a world-class disaster area that goes on and on and on. But the crews and trucks and excavators are in there now, behind barricades that have turned PCH (which was a major commuter thoroughfare) into a one-lane road open only to emergency crews, contractors, and residents with passes. The National Guard is still there, operating checkpoints.

Our specific neighborhood, which is a mile up a steep hill off PCH, has had only the odd Debris Removal operation—a couple here, another one there. Our neighbors two doors down had their property “scraped” and another neighbor a few doors farther had a giant excavator digging yesterday. But that’s all we’ve seen. 170 houses on our hill remain piles of junk.

Supposedly the Army Corps of Engineers will phone us a few days before they come out and give homeowners a chance to plead with them not to be too brutal with their clearance swings. We haven’t heard anything yet.

The big emotional takeaway from developments seems to be this:

Don’t get too fixated on news you hear today. Keep breathing, hang onto hope … stuff may change. I don’t want to complain in these updates, so I won’t vent here. Suffice it to say that the idea that local government was going to help victims of this catastrophe and make a rebuild of their lives easier … we have seen pretty much the opposite . I will say no more for now, remembering the mantra above. It may all work out in the end.

Keeping a positive attitude has been very hard for me. I try to keep in mind how lucky we are in so many ways—and we are!—but sometimes three in the morning looks pretty grim.

What’s keeping me together is Diana (who is a champ in bad-news situations), my friends and family (who have without exception been great) … and the work.

I refuse to let this shit knock me off my writing rhythm. I just won’t let it happen. And surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly) I’m stumbling and bumbling and grinding and the juice is still there.

“Don’t got ahead of yourself!” “Don’t be shy about calling friends.” “Keep your head down and keep working!” That’s what I tell myself.

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