Living with the Santa Ana

It's another spring day of glorious, sparkly light but the Santa Ana winds make me uneasy, nervous. I can hear them stirring the palms right outside my bedroom. There's a space between the rustle and the fall, a crack, a bird stops singing, a thump. I feel the winds inside, brushing against my stomach. Joan Didion said of the Santa Anas that the wind shows us how close to the edge we are, and I suppose there's some comfort in knowing that this element has a history to it and that little of it is under my control. I ceded control a long time ago -- somewhere around year six, I think, of Sophie's troubles -- and can't articulate exactly how I am, in fact, comforted rather than terrorized by that surrender. I am made of bone and tissue, sinew and fat and muscle but mainly water, the fluidity of chaos and the absurd. Today, I think that these winds that disrupt the palms are the outer version of the fluid inside. Like the palms, we are forced to let go, shed bits of ourselves, usually the dry and dead parts, but mostly we bend.