A Kingdom of Dust
Life Without Possessions
The Los Angeles fires are devastating on every level. In the general sense: Climate change unleashed on a society unable to handle the danger. And on a personal level: Friends who’ve lost homes and businesses, everything they owned reduced to ash. You can read Michael’s stark and wise assessment of what his family went through here (this was not his first evacuation drill, alas). The rest of us send sympathy and money and love, knowing that’s not enough.
To complicate this we watch videos and struggle to come to terms with horrific information in real time. Nobody’s equipped to comprehend tragedy in an endless high-definition scroll. It’s probably best to read the newspaper in the morning, get some public radio state of play during the day and then watch the evening news. It worked for our grandparents during various wars. Not any more. Who can turn away from drone footage and fearless reporting when it’s near at hand?
So here we are. We’ve all had friends who’ve had their lives upended or worse. What can you say to them? Offer vague reassurances or recycled wisdom? I honestly don’t know. Money only solves part of an immense crisis, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing what we can. If we don’t meet a rhetorical high point any effort is better than nothing.
Seeing these houses are gone and everything in them makes me think of possessions. Objects. Accumulation. What we surround ourselves with. They are the evidence of life and yet, in the context of the safety of your family, meaningless. But only meaningless up to a point.