Not to make the fires about me but

i'm going to make it about me for a second

Greetings from a post-fire los Angeles. The Eaton and Palisades fires are 100% contained as of last week, but of course the city will be reeling from the effects of these fires for years to come. Luckily my home in East LA was unaffected. While the first 24 hours of the fire were spent hopping from one LA refuge to another, the other 72 were spent at a luxury home in Healdsburg, CA (friends of ours we’d planned to visit that weekend anyways). I’d refresh the watch duty app as our host refreshed my glass of pinot noir. I felt the need to let people know I was safely out of harm's way, but also self-conscious about our opulent accommodations. When I texted a friend that I'd arrived along with a picture of the state-of-the-art home gym, she replied with “I’m so glad you guys are safe and have access to a reformer.” Our fire experience in a nutshell.

The fires have brought up a lot of unresolved grief for me. 10 years ago our family lost our home in what I call the “slow moving fire of bankruptcy.” I promise this isn’t an entry into the trauma Olympics, having your home burn to the ground and your community disappear in the span of 24 hours is a specific kind of trauma I have no claim to. But grief is complicated, and I’ve found myself strangely jealous of the camaraderie and out-flowing of support that comes from such a communal and public tragedy. When my dad’s business went bankrupt and my parents had to move out of our home that had been put up as loan collateral, we suffered largely in isolation. Our wealthy neighbors bought the house we grew up in for next to nothing, and razed it to make a larger front yard. The property that was supposed to function as a savings account was used to pay back loans, and my parents moved into a cramped apartment with whatever furniture they couldn’t sell. It was a financial disaster, and incredibly traumatic for the whole family.

Again, I don’t write about this to co-opt anyone else’s pain, but to say that I understand hosting holidays in a space that doesn’t feel like home. Where little things like the light switches and window blinds feel like strangers. I know the stress of watching a family navigate financial ruin- endless phone calls and stacks of paperwork from banks, lawyers, accountants, even doctors to prescribe sleeping pills and anxiety medication. And how for years to come, there will be references to things that were “lost.” Sometimes I dream of hunting St. Louis thrift stores for items that were given away or sold in a blind panic. My father’s paintings. The hand made doll house I used to dream about passing on to my own kids. My mother’s clothing from the 80’s and 90's that would be so chic right now. I know the sadness of not being able to introduce a partner to where you lived, and who you were “before.” Years after the move I showed the grassy lot where the house used to stand to my boyfriend and told him through tears, “This is where our house used to be. This is where I grew up.” I’m lucky that I never had to see it in ashes, but it felt like a gravesite nonetheless. When something like this happens you lose the future you hoped for and pieces of your past all at once. It is disorienting and devastating, and you are forever changed.

I think about “home” a lot for this reason. And how it’s a privilege to even have a long standing childhood residence. I’m lucky to have had such a nice childhood that I even miss it at all! Plenty of people are thrilled to never return to the site of their painful youth, and many families move and downsize with little fanfare. It’s just different when you feel like fate and bad luck conspired to take something you love from you. I lost count of all the families I saw posting GoFundMes after the fires, and each one reminded me of the pain of seeing my own family displaced and under extreme duress. If there’s any silver-lining, it’s that people want to give, and want to help. Here are lists of families who have been affected by the fires, and if you can give anything it’s much appreciated.

As a transition to something media related, (since that is the premise of this substack) I’ve found that in the wake of losing many physical representations of childhood, certain films have taken on even more nostalgia. We might not have room for a full Christmas tree in my parent’s apartment, and our old collection of ornaments is long gone, but we can still put on THE SANTA CLAUSE and it instantly feels like the holidays. Whenever I watch the LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS I get a visceral memory of laying in my living room with three other girlfriends, rolled up like sardines in sleeping bags, giddy for three+ hours of freakin’ magic. While watching THE PINK PANTHER this weekend, I started to nod off at exactly the same timecode I used to growing up. I half expected to wake up on our old green plaid couch with the old cat scratching at the armrest.

And I thought a lot this month about comfort watches. My friend who was so relieved I had access to a reformer shared that during the first 24 hours of fire watch she and her wife had put on CLUELESS, “the only film we could even think about watching at a time like this.” Just the image of it projected in her living room lowered my blood pressure. I got into “The Traitors” this month and Alan Cumming’s outfits and wee dog have personally brought me a lot of comfort! “Onyx Storm” the third book in the Empyrean series couldn’t have come at a better time. Nothing like dragon smut and book club group chats to soothe the soul. My boyfriend has been watching a lot of “Seinfeld”, and dammit if that “bum buh-dah, duh, duh” bass line doesn’t cheer me right up. He’s written and produced a really fun series called PRETZEL that is similarly light hearted and absurd. The actress who plays Gladys in the “Book Club” episode has a friend who watches her episode every.day. and says it brings him so much joy and comfort. Isn’t that just the whole damn point of doing anything?? That it bring someone joy and comfort?? Let me know what you’re consuming, a new Traitors ep won’t be out till Thursday and I need another show! xoxo

the two things getting me through the fires