Nobody Knows Anything I Have To Remind Myself

On Los Angeles And What It's Like Being Back In Therapy Full Time

A shot from Robby Muller and Wim Wenders Until The End Of The World

Here’s the thing. Nobody knows anything. I have to remind myself.

On the same panel someone says Los Angeles will be toxic for 2 years, another person says 6 months to a year, another person says it depends on which way the wind blows after the fires are out. They all say if you see ash or smoke or it smells like fire stay inside. The internet once again seizes on either the dramatic or the mundane. But I can only think about my daughter, so a few hundred miles outside of Los Angeles, I start looking at houses in upstate New York where I once lived, route 9 seared into a section of my heart.

You must be in shock. My new therapist who doesn’t know me all that well yet says over Zoom. But my house is still standing? I say back, though it filled with ash, 9 miles from the Eaton fire. But this is your home. She says, of the city. You have to feel your grief. And it is true that for days I could not stop crying. Driving down to San Diego. The only way to describe it to people was gone. And that’s where the shock lay. The city I grew up in, that my daughter was growing up in, is gone. And what a word, gone, how accurately it describes what is happening. Gone.

There has to be an in between. My mother says, when I call her, sitting on the ground outside and crying because a few years ago we moved into my dream home, just before the baby was born. Green kitchen, huge picture window, owls that lived in the trees, an office made for me. Wooden built in bookshelves. Reminding me of Wyoming. One could close the door and dream. And I had been dreaming.

I’m not leaving. One of my girlfriends says. My mother says. Another friend says. All of our scripts still undone. A friend who I always think of as having an answer says Maybe it’s okay to keep carrying on. (Because what else is there to do any way?)

Praying for rain. But not too much. Because in California where there is fire, there is also mud. The winds coming back again.

And once when I was still an actress a young woman in my acting class said, What is it with all these people and the wind. They are always saying something is happening because of the Santa Anas. It’s the Santa Anas, it’s the Santa Anas, it’s the Santa Anas. She mimicked.

It is the Santa Anas. I told her because I was the only one in the class from Los Angeles.

Is there a chance for you to just sit still? My new therapist says. From what little I know about you, you always have to have an answer. What if it’s okay for you not to have one right now. Is there a chance for you to just sit still? And oh! The discomfort!

I know, often when there are no answers, there are still signs. And I don’t travel light. Dreaming of water and broken glass. My daughter’s eyes sometimes catching me by surprise, how when I look into them I am also looking into mine, my heart, and her little hands holding up a pair of dominos.