It’s 7:18 AM, Monday January 20th, 2025. I’m sitting on a sage-green couch in the home of my good friend Alexia. To my left is a rather noisy heating duct. To my right, a door that leads into the greater world. And directly in front of me, the closed door of Alexia’s bedroom.
An hour ago, I lay in this same spot, eyes covered by a blanket, shivering not from cold but from free-floating anxiety. Knowing that soon my host would leave her room and tip-toe across the squeaky hardwood floorboards of this little wooden cottage, lest she wake me.
And that is just what happened. I feigned sleep for another ten or fifteen minutes while she hid in the bathroom reading. Trying her best to give me just a few more moments of quiet privacy.
This is another item on the long list of what the fires have taken from tens of thousands of us. The simple ability to disappear from the world behind closed doors, and to do whatever we please, or nothing at all, without being observed.
This does not apply only to the tens of thousands who’ve been evacuated from their homes and neighborhoods, since the Palisades Fire, and then the Eaton Fire waged their war on normalcy. This applies just as much to the countless families who have taken us in. Alexia’s door isn’t closed for the sake of her own quietude, but for the sake of mine.
But I’m not foolish enough to think she isn’t also beginning to chafe at my presence here. This is an 800 square foot house. Two small bedrooms, one bathroom, a nice modern kitchen and the combination dining room and living room where I now sit writing.
The other bedroom door is closed. Alexia’s daughter spent last night with friends, but will soon be back here, coping graciously with the old guy who’s colonized the common area.
A couple of days ago, I took on the job of sweeping up the dust and leaves that Santa Ana had deposited on the front porch. It felt good to do something purposeful. With the household broom, and a shop-brush that lives in my van, I rehabilitated that little space, and spent much of yesterday there. Just to not be underfoot. When the thermometer hits 50 this morning, I’ll head out there again to finish this post.
I struggle to express how lost I feel right now. It feels pathetic to express it at all. But, as a witness to this enormous tragedy, it’s my duty to try.
There is a truism about having your house robbed. It goes like this “I feel violated.” It’s something of a cliché. But no less true for having become one. That is exactly how you feel when somebody sneaks into your house and steals something dear to you. Something of value, whether monetarily or sentimentally. Or both.
Some years ago, a bass-player beloved in Los Angeles had his number-one instrument stolen. This was a bass guitar that he’d played on thousands of gigs and recording sessions. And somebody simply took it from him. Chad was heartbroken of course, but everybody who knows him, and hires him, and loves him … was outraged. Without knowing it, many hundreds of us had attached a little magic to that old four-stringed Fender. We ALL felt violated.
Multiply that feeling by about a million and you’ll have some sense of what we’re going through here in Los Angeles.
Think for a moment about an object that is precious to you. Let’s just say … an antique rifle with which your dad once taught you to shoot, and which came to you when he passed. Only an object. But an object infused with meaning.
You come home some evening and find your door jimmied open, and that precious heirloom removed from it’s rack over the mantle. Gone without a trace.
Now imagine that, reeling from that discovery, you turn to see that every stick of furniture had also been taken. And staggering into the next room and the next, you find them all stripped to the walls of everything you owned, large and small, new and old, beloved and incidental.
Now imagine that when you came home that night, and turned into your driveway, The whole house had been stolen. And the garage and the sheds and everything in them. And the roses you’d planted, and the Adirondack chairs and the deck they sat on, and the lights twinkling in the oak tree, and even the stupid garden hose with its perfect, rather expensive, spray nozzle.
Everything … robbed away while you were elsewhere.
Now imagine that you then looked around and saw not one porch-light shining. Because every single house on your safe quiet street had also been taken.
Saturday January 18th, the lockout orders were lifted in my section of Altadena. We went up and looked around. I again tried to document my own loss on video. Then we went walking the neighborhood. We talked with various other homeless homeowners as they wandered the burnt wreckage of their lives, poking and prodding is search of what they knew they wouldn’t find.
It was a lot to take in. We didn’t stay long.
Then yesterday, the 19th, Alexia was off visiting her mother. I drove back up to Morada and Lake, where we’d been admitted the day before. This time though, the the barricades had been moved farther up the hill and many of the streets were open. I drove every one of them.
Here’s a screen shot of the damage map. A story told with little icons in the shape of houses. The black ones are the ones that somehow miraculously survived. The red ones are those completely destroyed.
When I was a boy, a house burned down just around the corner. My dad walked us kids over there and we stood across the street as the firemen tried in vain to save the home of neighbors we didn’t know. The older couple stood there watching, clinging to each other, surrounded by neighbors that they did know. Many of whom said some version of this: “At least nobody was hurt. You’re both okay, and that’s the important thing.”
That’s the important thing. Sure. We all agree that human life is more precious than brick and board and plaster and wire and pipe and glass. But that’s not the whole picture, is it?
For two weeks I’ve been gut-punched twenty times a day. Sometimes it’s just a minor poke. Other times it damn near doubles me over. There’s nothing to be done about the deep blows, like neglecting to pack the only two things I had that belonged to my father. I’ll weep for those some other day. Right now it’s the glancing blows that are demanding my attention.
I need an extension chord to plug in out on the porch, and I realize that nowhere on Planet Earth is there an extension chord that I own. I try to fix the sticking flush-handle in the bathroom and am struck that for the first time in my adult life, I don’t own a squirt-can of WD-40. I notice that the right-rear tire on my van looks low, and I’m reminded that I no longer possess a hydraulic jack.
Hell, I don’t own a friggin’ hammer!
I talked on the phone yesterday with my good buddy, John Zipperer. I mentioned that my sheds had burned with all my tools. How that hurts way more than seems rational. He said, “I don’t know what I’d do without my tools. My tools make me competent.”
Exactly.
It’s only stuff. Stuff can be replaced. When we say that, we aren’t being insensitive. We’re trying to take the focus off of what’s been lost and reattach it to what remains. But we humans make things because things are useful. We invest ourselves into certain objects because - in using them - we access the parts of ourselves that respond to pattern and purpose.
The woman over on Boston Street, that I’ve been passing by on my walks for a decade? Who’s always tinkering with her garden? She’s not only shaping her grounds, but also being shaped by them. My neighbor Todd, has very often stopped me on our long shared-driveway to show me a bowl or a fountain pen or something that he’s carved on his lathe. He hasn’t just changed a block of wood into something useful and beautiful. That lathe and wood have also turned him into something useful and beautiful.
It’s no coincidence that the first things into my van were my guitars and whatever musical gear was already in the four tote bags that I take to every gig. I’m not me, if I don’t have those tools.
But also, I’m not quite me without the red-handled chef’s knife with which I have chopped enough onions and peppers to make the city weep. Sure there’s another knife in the drawer, but dammit … I want my knife. (note: temper tantrum thrown only inside my head)
I know this sounds childish. It probably is childish. But it’s probably also a natural reaction. Humans need their routines and patterns. Our things help us to sketch out the edges of these patterns. And to lend us some individual identity. The woman on Boston is that gardening lady. Todd is that woodworking guy. I’m that dude with the guitar.
Of course all of us are more than these patterns that are tethered to things. But has any of us ever existed as a pure unattached vessel of humanity? No. All of us are human within the self-definitions that we’ve built up over time. Objects are not the full story, but they are certainly part of it. Our homes gradually fill with objects we find useful and/or meaningful. All are parts of the CONTEXT of our lives. And our neighborhoods are the buffer zone between us and the uncaring world.
We haven’t just lost the homes and the stuff, but all of their implications as well. This puts us in peril. This won’t let us rest.
When I’m finished here, I’ll borrow a pen and some note paper, and begin a list. On that list will be all of the things without which I’ve felt stalled and useless over these last two weeks. And I’ll carry that list around Pasadena re-buying each of the essentials that I’ve never had cause to think of as such.
And if I can borrow enough space here in the yard, I’ll also procure one of those plastic snap-together sheds, and a good padlock. My friends have sent me money for the purpose of making me whole, and I’m not about to dishonor their support by moping around feeling incompetent because I’m trying to prove how unimportant ‘stuff’ is.
I’ve got to get productive again. Cleaning up the porch was a decent first step. Meeting up with Paula for a busk yesterday at the Pasadena Civic Center was a step. Each day from here on out will require more steps. I must reclaim as many of my patterns as have proven themselves somehow structural.
And then get the hell on with it. Because there is far too much hard work ahead of me to fall apart now.
Thanks for reading.
If you’d like to upgrade your subscription from ‘free’ to ‘paid’, please choose monthly rather than yearly. I’m trying not to look too far down the line right now.
Thank you for articulating the loss.
We are ALL self made. And we did it with the “tools” in our possession. You are 100% correct, it is stuff but it is the stuff that makes each one of us. DAMN IT, it was YOUR stuff.
Almost all of your content has made me think. This one has me sobbing for your loss.
Stay strong and remember all of your neighbors are in our prayers
Hard to believe the staggering loss of possessions by so many and of course the few that lost their lives ... My sense is that you have internal fortitude to weather this storm, one step at a time. Wishing you the best in getting through this mess. High up on the list of necessities should be stout hammer, I'm sure it will be just a small piece to help release excess energy and build something....anythingj....