Fire in the Southland!

Oh wait --- maybe it's fire in the Northland!


Aw, hell --- with over 1000 fires going right now, you can just say the whole damn state is going up. Forget "The Golden State"; we're soon going to be the "Crispy Burnt Toast State."

Out here we don't have weather --- our seasons are broken out by disasters: Mudslide Season just ended, now we are entering Fire Season (with Incredifuckingunbelieveably Hot Season wedged in a week between there.)

Once again everything is smoky and horrible here. I'm ok. I think everyone I know round here is ok. Do not worry. (Although, we had some power out and if something terrible happens, this blog will just never get updated again, eh? You'll just have to remain in suspense. Or assume that the worst happened. That's what I always do.)

That second photo is actually my beloved Big Sur, neither the north or the south but smack in the middle of the central coast, which makes me incredibly sad. For now, it seems as though they have saved Deetjens and Nepenthe, some of the swanky, hippie little tourist spots Dissertation Buddy loves and introduced me to last year (or was it the year before?). But many homes out there have burned, and some people are missing, and who knows when or if it will be possible to go camping out there in the woods. It will certainly be transformed.

But that's what California, Land of Apocalypse, is all about, eh? The place of the instant makeover, of moving out west and starting anew, a place where history is bulldozed and botoxed under and made afresh, the land of the comeback and the second chance. It's fitting that our landscape has a similar outlook on radical transformation and phoenix-like rebirth. No gradual change for us! We move between unchanging placidity and explosive crisis. Earthquake and aftermath.

By this point, we're kinda inured to ash falling from the sky and the smell of brimstone; we're waiting for some sort of real catastrophe. (True story: there's a row of houses near the freeway by my parent's house that has regular mudslides from under them, sometimes so much as to close a lane or two of the freeway. Whenever we pass them, whoever's in the car comments, oh there's another couple pilings wedged under the far house, oh look, that one has slanted left by another degree. They are all still occupied and still get bought and sold regularly. That's how blase we are. Did I say blase? Stupid could work there too.)

In other news, other than the impending end of the world and potential fiery death, not much is going on here. I'm a little bored, little tired. Been avoiding the diss, nagging my students, the ones who weren't evacuated, doing a little cleaning, loading up my car in case we have to make a run for it, sweeping up the ashes, toads, and plagues of locusts ---- you know, the usual.