Burning down the House:Wildfires, Psychoanalysis, Tumult1^,2

August 2021

Yes, we will all pass, everything will pass. Nothing will remain of the person who put on feelings and gloves, who talked about death and local politics. The same light falls on the faces of saints and the gaiters of passersby, and the dying of that same light will leave in darkness the utter nothingness that will be all that remains of the fact that some were saints and others wearers of gaiters … One day, when all knowledge ceases, the door beyond will open and everything that we were—a mere detritus of stars and souls— will be swept from the house in order that whatever remains may begin again.

Don't worry. I'll take you there, into the lie that is the story. I'll leave out what is most vital by way of telling you what to pay attention to. I'll keep a line going that you can stick to, that will hold you as you hold it, but know that this too adds fuel to the fire. So, follow me, but hurry. The roof is already caving in. The smoke makes it difficult to even remember what you or anything else used to smell like. I've been told that the scent of things is the first to go….

She booked the trip. I was too busy. She's good at it, as were her parents. She can set up shop anywhere. Mantling, dismantling; her hands achieving a simultaneous shrouding and unveiling. You know people like this, don't you? California abounds in them.

Inching upwards and to the east, to where the true southernmost lip of the Sierra Nevada begins. Straight line north from Los Angeles when seen from above. Family crests mean almost nothing here. But this place, this crest, does mark something on the map. It's where the Southern California glitterati-adjacent come to look at where they drove up from, imagining themselves looking at themselves from on high. What do they do with their gazing when they return?

We were exhausted. A year plus of this increasingly stupid and thoroughly insipid pandemic (amongst vari