An Explanation for my Craziness?

It's rained less than .09 inches in nine months in southern California and is utterly and completely crispy dry right now. The Santa Anas are blowing, the palm fronds are swaying, Sophie is having more seizures, and it's time for the Raymond Chandler.

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot, dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that, every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

Raymond Chandler, from Red Wind 

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.

Crazy Beautiful

 I told Mary Moon that it was so beautiful today in Los Angeles that it was almost creepy. The winds are still blowing, and the air seems like sparkling glass, not fit for breathing. It's dry.

I took a photo of a rose in Beverly Hills and wondered whether it had had plastic surgery.

It's the kind of weather that doesn't make one feel grateful, but like something's up or something's going down.

Santa Anas, Cannabis and Dreams

We had Santa Ana winds last night, but the roses and lemons remain intact. Maybe they brought in dreams, though, because I had some intense ones. Houses with rooms, men I once loved, Sophie and bodies of water blew through my night, and when I woke at 3:45 or so this morning, the moon was shining through the slats of the blinds, insistent. I went back to sleep and woke to Sophie having another seizure -- she's having a bunch of seizures these days, again -- but I dissociated myself from despair and remembered I have a small vial of cannabis that I haven't dropped onto her tongue yet so maybe I will, maybe the Santa Anas that drive some mad will drive me to that.

Here's a poem. Don't fall into the abyss of conjecture that it speaks to me today because I read it last night.

Tomorrow I will start to be happy.
The morning will light up like a celebratory cigar.
Sunbeams sprawling on the lawn will set
dew sparkling like a cut-glass tumbler of champagne.
Today will end the worst phase of my life.

I will put my shapeless days behind me,
fencing off the past, as a golden rind
of sand parts slipshod sea from solid land.
It is tomorrow I want to look back on, not today.
Tomorrow I start to be happy; today is almost yesterday.

Dennis O'Driscoll

Seizures, Santa Ana and Raymond Chandler

The Santa Anas blew hard last night, and this morning we woke to giant palm fronds draped everywhere in the back yard and blankets of leaves and flowers covering the front lawn. Sophie has had some very big, prolonged seizures, which I'm going to blame on the hot, dry winds, and I continue to tamp down residual rage. Blame it on the winds.

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.

Raymond Chandler 

Being irked

Really, I'm overwhelmed by cliche of late, including the cliche that is myself, depressed and driving around and knowing that I'll feel better and that Sophie is having so many seizures and really, how many seizures can one have and we are so inured to them, in a sense, wouldn't dream of going to the hospital but watch them and watch them and talk on the phone while watching them and tonight, it's circling again, that helicopter, the LAPD helicopter that circles it seems our backyard looking for what, looking for whom, the sound a dull hum then roar as it nears the backyard, the circle of light the windows rattle then it goes by and there's only the wind with the whir in the back and then there it is again, the dull hum then roar the circle of light and then silence and then the wind the santa ana that makes some people mad with grief with worry with cliche, The Swiss Husband calls it the foehn, said to cause psychosis, madness and migraine.