Awake People Be Awake

Woolsey Fire Lit, early afternoon
11/10/18

A Ritual to Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

William Stafford

Woolsey Fire Lit, early afternoon
11/10/18
photographer: Carl Jackson

Armageddon and Cake

Salted Caramel Cake

I made one yesterday from a recipe in a magazine. It called for 8 yolks and 4 eggs, nearly four cups of sugar and 1/2 pound of salted butter for the cake alone. The icing was three cups of brown sugar and two cups of confectioner's sugar and more than a pound of salted butter. It had five layers with more than a cup of icing between each layer. I know -- that's not even sort of gross.  I felt guilty making it, especially given that it was for a crowd of fifty-somethings. I guess there's a case to be made that given the fires just to the south, the crude oil spillage in a nearby neighborhood (where, evidently an above-ground pipe burst and crude oil was knee-deep in some places), the outrageously dry and hot conditions here, the insistence by many that global warming is a liberal hoax, the Clippers fiasco, the rumors of Beyonce and Jay-Z having trouble -- well, why the hell not eat Salted Caramel Cake? And throw some rose petals on top that you've plucked off a wilting rosebush as a final devil-may-care gesture.

Let us eat cake.

Full Moons and Fires and Seizures, Oh My! Oh, and Earthquakes!

Downtown Los Angeles, 1/16/14
photo via thewire.sheknows.com

No sooner had the ink dried on the two-week proclamation of Sophie being seizure-free for two entire weeks, then I received a text from her teacher at school that one occurred. That was Wednesday afternoon, and yesterday was a bust -- many seizures all day long, the subsequent clamminess and then the combined out-of-it-ness and agitation.

Small sigh.

The sigh is small because Sophie went two weeks without a seizure! I'm going to attribute the breakthroughs to the full moon, the fires burning just outside Los Angeles (the picture above, although not mine, is what most of us saw all day yesterday and then,late in the afternoon, smelled), the incredibly dry air, Santa Ana winds, small earthquakes (so far) and Oliver's Cold That Sophie Might Be Catching.

Medium sigh.

In the meantime, my record of meeting bloggers in person and adoring them stands as perfect. Christy Shake of Calvin's Story was in town and stayed with us last night. She is as lovely in person as she is a beautiful writer online, and I felt as if we were old friends. We talked and talked, ate a delicious dinner at a Korean small plate place in Beverly Hills -- tiny Brussels sprouts, roasted with tiny dried prunes, zucchini and peppers, a seafood pancake with salty dipping sauce, a salad of avocado, tiny figs, crispy rice and pomegranate dressing, and whole grain pot stickers with chicken -- and then talked some more back at our house before going to sleep. I am so grateful for these online relationships that morph into real-life ones.

Do you need a sweet laugh?  Read John Hodgman's New Yorker essay"Downton Abbey" With Cats  for a grand one.

Roses and Thorns

So, I'm finally feeling a bit better. I'm either a giant baby or this virus took hold of my central nervous system and turned me into a sniveling, coughing, whimpering, depressed and irritable old woman. I feel now like I'm one of those cut-back roses, all thorns with no sign of flower. I did rest, though; in fact, I watched all thirteen episodes of the new Netflix series' House of Cards. It was awesome although it made me feel like I should get up and take a shower. Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright play just about the most icy, venal couple on the planet. Speaking of planets, it's pretty cold here in Los Angeles at about fifty-five degrees, but it feels like another planet when I see what some of ya'll are dealing with on the east coast. Even though I'm sick, I'm glad I'm not you if you live in Boston or Connecticut or even New York. Call me cruel when I say that snow is pretty, but it's not that pretty. I guess you can get back to me during fire season or when The Big One hits. 

Combustion

via Los Angeles Times

When I stepped outside today, it felt like I had stepped into a furnace. I honestly had no idea it was that hot outside because it rarely is that hot in my mid-town neighborhood, seven or so miles from the Pacific and way more miles from the deep, dark Valley. I thought to myself that the air was so dry and so hot that I could strike a match in the air in front of my nose and the whole city would combust. Sophie came home from school hot to the touch -- the buses out here in Lala land aren't all air-conditioned -- and while I'm not blaming that for the huge seizure she had at the dinner table (she has them all the time anyway), I'm sure that it didn't help. There are fires burning to the west and up in the hills around The Getty Center, fires large enough to see from my house, the plumes reddish-yellow, the air faintly smoky. I guess the season has begun.