For the past two days I've wanted to write a post about how I feel as I watch Los Angeles burn on my TV. I lived in Los Angeles for over 30 years and, as the saying goes, I LOVE LA, I really do.
But I've been numb, such a strange feeling. I no longer live there, it's been 20 years, I think my boss and other high earners at UCLA lived in Pacific Palisades, but I don't know anyone there anymore.
I'm sure the fires will not reach the house in Los Angeles where we lived, but I'm less sure about the house in Pasadena, which was in the north end of the city, a few blocks from Altadena, where the Eaton fire is now raging. This was the first and only house I bought alone, with my own money and I still remember how proud I was of that accomplishment.
But a house is still a house. The people in the fire areas also lost their communities, their schools, stores, Starbucks, libraries, doctors' offices, and so much more. When disaster strikes, community is perhaps more important than anything else and the people in that part of Los Angeles lost both. My heart goes out to them.
I will write another post about how this has reinforced my desire to move from here.
Preferably to a place where it rains, but I'm sure I'm to old to move that far away. So my plan is that we will move to our town. In advance of such a move, I want to downsize to the bones of my stuff.
I am so tired of stuff!
It must be a strange, almost disembodied feeling to see somewhere you knew so well being destroyed. I feel incredibly sad for those whose lives have been turned upside down. Where do you start again, after something so cataclysmic?
ReplyDeleteYes, I feel numb and it's been 20 years since I retired from UCLA where so many of my coworkers lived in the Palisades and we lived right below Altadena in North Pasadena.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteHaving become all too familiar with wildfires in Australia, I have a sense of what you're feeling. ... and I too am a bit over 'stuff'! YAM xx
Being over stuff is a very good thing, I think.
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