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Chimneys. Chimneys piercing the skyline. Seemingly endlessly. Who knew there were so many fireplaces in such a warm place? Not me. Beyond them, in the distance, the ocean. An ocean view from just about everywhere. The waves aren’t that remarkable from this distance today, yet this is where my gaze keeps returning and eventually fixes. I am afraid to look down.

No, this isn’t a vertiginous cliff’s edge affording me a view of an idyllic coastal town. I’m standing—I think, at least—in my parents’ living room. Or what remains of it, which is very little. In the absence of walls or other context clues, it’s difficult to place myself in a particular room. I can sort of make out a bathtub, but that should have been upstairs. This room, the rest of their home, my childhood home, everything they left behind when evacuating, everything their neighbors—the parents of my childhood friends, crushes, frenemies, left—ashen. Save for the occasional steel beam that resembles a waving-arm inflatable thing frozen in one pose. Accumulated 20th and 21st century heirlooms, knick knacks, half-finished sandwiches, books, toothbrushes, dinnerware turned to ash, ignited in a literal hellfire. The fruit on the trees is still there. The lemons look tip top. The oranges shriveled and looking like they’d puff into a cloud if perturbed. The mangoes charred. The Alphabet Streets, Pacific Palisades, CA. 1921 - January 7, 2025. 2025 - ?? What I’m looking at is breaking my brain apart. Previously rote pathways untethered, the National Guard are everywhere. It’s all just gone. Both unrecognizable and heartbreakingly familiar. I’m trying—and failing miserably—to keep from crying.

I’m not suppressing tears from misguided attempted stoicism or toxic masculine brainwashing. No. If my goggles fill with tears and my respirator gets clogged up with snot I’ll need to take them off. And I’m not ready to leave yet. Fuck, now I’m bawling inconsolably and my throat is catching. The sounds of my sniffles muted and my tears relatively invisible wrapped underneath layers of Tyvek and 3M filtration. This may be the most alone I’ve felt in my entire life.

Alone, surrounded by my family, standing in my home. At the same time, I feel a strong sense of connection. To what, I haven’t a clue. Maybe nature? My dad, sister, and brother-in-law saw a coyote in our neighbor’s lot when they arrived. Something is there in this wasteland. 

I also can’t help but think of an acquaintance I made recently, likely half a world away by now.  Perhaps I’m just zooming out and spinning the globe to another part of the world so that I can mentally escape from the present. A Bedouin woman and all-around badass who is working to preserve her family and society’s way of life in a changing desert under constant threat of destruction from the Israeli government. Not Palestinian, not Israeli, not altogether unwelcome in their homeland, equally not welcome to live as they’d please, the Bedouins are flying under the international news media’s radar. And from what I’ve gathered, they have the choice to abandon their semi-nomadic roots and live in what resembles Israeli settlements, or have their homes destroyed over and over any time a local elected official needs a win. They choose destruction as a form of preservation. Carrying out their lives accepting that their homes may be destroyed at any moment. With all the intergenerational stress, trauma,  uncertainty, and quite frankly inhuman treatment they’ve experienced, one might expect to be met with a monolith of sadness. What you’ll get instead is a knowing smile. The resilience contained within those communities is stronger than one physical place. If Lubna can do it—grow up in it, envision a better future, stand up to many forms of administrative evil (as Alexis Madrigal put it)—there’s hope for the rest of us.

After we got home. Home is, I suppose, the wrong word. After we got back to the apartment my parents were able to rent after a clutch tip from a family friend and my sister and her husband got back to their Airbnb, my sister shared a near-perfect encapsulation of our visit to the Palisades in the family group chat. It’s from the artist Mark Clennon: “You will experience climate change as an escalating series of videos until you are the one recording.” Accurate, man. Too accurate. I do not want to be in this movie anymore.

It’s now June, and much of this I wrote in late March, at which point I was able to put pen to paper because I was less numb, followed by bouts of inexplicable despair at random moments. Kind of like a hormonal teenage boy who can’t help his boners at the sight of schoolbuses or some other inane distinctly non-sexual object. I still get hit with waves of sadness sometimes. I probably will, at times, perhaps in perpetuity. And I’ll learn to accept that.

The goggles and respirator are still handy, not just for visiting the remains of the Palisades without having to worry about my future health, but for assorted house projects in Oakland and general disaster preparedness. For a while, many folks, it seems, were surprised at how little I wanted to talk about it. Or that mostly what I did when pressed was crack jokes. Well, I did not like to talk about it. And humor is one of my coping mechanisms. It’s personal, and there was only so much sponging up of projected emotions I could handle. But I did like to write about it. Or needed to… None of this means I didn’t feel and treasure the outpouring of care. My community absolutely turnt up and I’m so unbelievably grateful for that. From the food to the texts to the memes to the clothes, giftcards, countless other things for my parents to the understanding and knowing that maybe I just needed some quiet place to cry. It’s all love and I love you all for it.

Even now six months out, time feels more than a bit squishy. Certain moments left deep imprints. I’m reminded of Lenin’s quote about “weeks where decades happen.” 2025 has been full of months of such weeks. For a host of reasons, about which you’re likely all too aware. For me, this is also in part due to the fact that for the first time in a decade I’m not beholden to the rhythm of working for someone else. Topic for another day. Those imprinted moments in the hours, days, and weeks during and after the fires stop by unannounced into my thoughts. They span the emotional spectrum, and like any good host I make space for them to linger comfortably, until they show themselves out. I think of Rumi’s The Guest House.

• Watching the Ring camera footage from my high school friend’s front door around the corner from my parents house. Wondering if the fact that it was still working and sending footage was a good sign. It wasn’t. Love you, man.

• Meeting Ryan Braun. MVP Ryan Braun that is. After driving my partner’s 2010 Honda Civic—zip-tied in more than one place—into a parking lot full of Rivians, G-wagons, you-name-the-$100k-car-it-was-there. At a clothing drive his charity was hosting for the displaced no less. Per Clennon: we were all recording together.

• Marbled Rye, Milk Bread, Gallegos galore, Eclair, Masa Sourdough, Man'ouche, Pizza, Pizza, Pizza. All possibly with a bit of extra saline.

• The guilt of relief I felt that I’ll never have to bear witness to the clutter of my parents’ house again. Until they have a new place to clutter.

• The more-than-human comfort of dogs. And cats.

• Mourning the loss of the trees, likely healthy enough to survive but collateral damage in the Army Corps’ effort to remediate and clean up the neighborhood.

• Pondering what was in the garage that is unscathed. I hope my Sea Crystal Dunks. After of course reflecting on the cosmic joke that I thought I had escaped the need to clear out my childhood junk assembled in the garage because it had burned down. Of course it would be the one thing to survive.

• Immense gratitude at having the opportunity to celebrate my childhood neighbor's wedding while the fire was still raging. We brought down the house, as it were.

• Immediately thinking “Phew, the ignition point is nowhere near where we were bushwhacking!” recalling finally completing the full Temescal waterfall bushwhack only a few months before.

• Getting a hands-on lesson in native flowers and native thistles by Yosemite friends.

• Playing tennis with the octogenarians at a previous fire perimeter ft. Matilija poppies.

• Riding up a dusty Sullivan Canyon with a trooper of a friend thinking how many years this slog might take off my life and being absolutely certain that whatever number it is it is worth it.

• Riding up a dusty Sullivan Canyon with a trooper of a friend thinking how many years this slog might take off my life and being absolutely certain that whatever number it is it is worth it.

• Spending more time than I’d like to admit slaphappily laughing at SNL clips about units of measurement or the British Monarchy.

• Winning the Europa League?!

I’ll miss it.

Not because I want to live there. Or because I have unfinished business or regrets. It’s part of me that now exists solely in memory. Our relationship isn’t finished, just altered.

Far from me to have unfaltering pride for the place I grew up. Far from it. The Palisades is a weird place. Picturesque and prototypically California: where the mountains meet the ocean. Full of entitled people with very poor taste in architecture and with whom I’d generally prefer not to interact. Not to mention the Nazi sympathizers who built Murphy Ranch at the same time European Jews were fleeing to the same place for refuge. Fortunately Murphy Ranch burned long ago. Or at least decayed beyond use. But it’s also a place full of some of the best people. Wonderful, caring, friends who formed a tightknit, supportive community in amongst the entitlement. And that community doesn’t need a place to bind it together. In some ways, it just needs a dance floor. (More on that here). I wouldn’t have traded my childhood experience for anything. 

In the same way I can talk shit about Tottenham or the Yankees, but a Liverpool or Mets fan can absolutely fuck off, you kinda had to be there. I can meaningfully reflect on the multitude encapsulated by this place because I experienced most of that multitude firsthand. And the rest secondhand via creative and hilarious retellings. I know this place. Or knew it. And now I continue a forced exercise in dealing with change.

In many ways I’m grateful to that forcing function. Aspects of it, for sure. Much of that is based on the privilege to not worry about my basic needs, even now. Privilege and proper preparation, I suppose. Check your insurance policies, folks. That isn’t to mask how unbelievably fucked up it’s all been and will continue to be for some time. In a strange way, these tribulations have been tangible, real, raw. Irrevocable and grounding in a way that’s hard to put to words. It’s unmistakable, and it’s going to leave a lasting imprint. It’ll be layered, highs and lows contained within the topographical mark.

Trying to view it through the lens of my parents, the gift of a burned-clean slate at the cusp of retirement age is a dream to a lot of people I’d imagine. I wouldn’t recommend achieving it in this particular way. But still, it’s rare to have the opportunity—forcibly or otherwise—to re-envision one’s life with what amounts to house money. Reality is more complicated: lawyers, insurance reps, friends, friends who are lawyers, bureaucracy, real estate agents, more lawyers. But it is also that simple. My parents get to ask and answer the question of “how and where do we want to spend our retirement?” In time they may see the beauty in it. Maybe not. I do. Hell, my dad even started seeing a therapist. Go dad! Never too late for growth, introspection, and help processing emotions.

As serendipity would have it, the destruction wrought by nature (with some assistance from poor utility governance) on Altadena and the Palisades is not my only excursion into unpacking my attachment to place this year. I’m fortunate enough to be on the precipice of uprooting my life in Oakland and moving to the UK for an indeterminate amount of time. I’m beyond grateful to have a partner who’s as in on the idea as I am. Singularly enabling it in many ways, to boot. This isn’t part of a five-year plan, but we’ve both known for a long time that separately, and now together, we’ve wanted to live abroad and experience another culture for an extended period of time. In a study in flexibility, we ideated for some time, schemed for two-plus years, and then put it all into motion over the past eight months. The logistics required to embark on an international move are mind-numbingly boring. Spreadsheets on spreadsheets, friends. And time I will never get back dealing with some choice individuals while navigating California’s insurance market. Worth it.

Bringing it all back home, it’s often assigned a physical location in space. Which makes sense. Physicality is in the definition of the word after all. This implies a narrow view, or a singular one. Generations ago home applied to an array of locations for most people. And even now, home isn’t constrained to one place for many cultures. Not counting vacation homes here, either.

Home, at its heart, conjures a feeling and emotion, or a host of them. Comfort, security, whathaveyou. Other highly personal indescribable sensations as well. These are often tied to a place. But not necessarily. And not limited to a domicile. Think of being “at home in the wilderness,” or “home on the range,” for a few topical examples. Think for a minute or two. How would you describe home? What would you add?

And so we’re off—not to find home. To take it on the road with us for a time. Further our understanding of home. Painting the picture, adding depth to and finding the right hues for the spaces around the places. And watch a whole lot of soccer.

Cheers,

-Teddy