Fire and Skeleton Rain
Los Angeles has been burning again. I returned a week ago from a spell of tranquility and awoke the next morning to hear that the overly dry brush had ignited once more and an uncontained fire of several hundred acres was roaring into life up the road. Schools were closed and the acrid tang of smoke and ash hung heavy in the air. My husband had departed for London the night before and the children and I settled into a strangely cocooned existence for the next few days. We didn’t venture very far from our apartment and never came close enough to the fire to see any real flames unless you count those conveyed to us digitally.
Living just south of the evacuation zone it was possible to go about most of one’s daily business as usual. We were never under any threat of evacuation nor did it become a reality as it did for several of my daughter’s friends. It was almost too easy to carry on as if nothing out of the ordinary was occurring. I caught myself thinking about Pompeii and Herculaneum at some point during that first day. Did the Pompeians living in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius behave with such insouciance before she erupted in 79 AD, vaporizing them with her pyroclastic flow?
The regularity of these fires is just one of many reasons why people are leaving the golden state of California in their rearview mirror. I gazed wistfully at a friend’s Instagram feed at some point this past week. Recently relocated from Orange County to Michigan she takes evocatively crisp photos of the autumnal hues and frosts she is now encountering. And I wondered silently, what is the tipping point? At what point do people decide that a place’s problems outweigh its attractions? Once a normality of sorts had been restored on Friday, I drove up to Beverly Hills to collect cupcakes for my daughter’s school carnival. As I enjoyed that sense of the day just unfolding in this beautiful neighborhood I was reminded of my affection for the city of angels and yet it’s a question that is at the corners of my mind.
Sometimes it is all in the timing. I was lucky to have been able to enjoy a stay in Mexico City before returning home to the flames. It was a wonderful few days. With grey skies followed by heavy shower bursts the weather was just perfect. Dia de los Muertos was approaching and the ever colourful city was festooned with skulls and skeletons. We spent some beautiful hours at Sakya Dolma Ling Buddhist Centre studying Atisha’s Precepts, a detailed and practical presentation of Buddhist ethics. After dedicating time to a work such as this I am always left with the recognition of how far I fall short and yet how the possibilities for true expression of our humanity in all its simplicity and splendour are everywhere if we have space in our hearts to see.
