From afar, watching California burn, has been surreal.
The stereotypical association is Hollywood, LA as the capital of movies, of fantasy.
Yet, this incomprehensible fire has been nothing but devastating reality.
To see nature in its powerful essence, like a beast, devouring and ravaging entire landscapes. To see the desolation in people’s lives, many neighborhoods — villages of lives — reduced literally to ashes is devastating.
The eerie shades of glowing orange skies that seem to be hovering over the haunted desolate landscapes feel apocalyptic.
Sunset Boulevard. One of the most famous boulevards in all of America. The whole area now seems to be enveloped in a spooky kind of sunset oranges golds and pinks; only now, not a distant beautiful golden sunset, on the beach, signaling the conclusion to another lovely California day. Now, these colors have been transmuted into the formidable presence of destruction, the licking flames that closed in on Pacific Palisades and Pasadena.
To read of people frantically abandoning their cars, running for their lives, trying to outpace the force of nature, is simply shattering. You could almost feel the animal desperation, you could almost feel the sting in the nose and eyes from the smoke, the blurriness, the heat rising, the winds billowing, the menacing crackling noise of wildfire . . . the urgency and stalking threat, mercilessly coming closer and closer.
What should we save? What should we grab? What should we take with us? Split second decisions. The Torah scrolls saved just in time. Passports, birth certificates, medications, cherished photographs, sentimental mementos . . . all the pieces of our lives that we weave around ourselves and call “home.” We become attached, we become one with them, and the connections and memories they evoke, or because of the people we received them from, are what anchors us in place.
That has all been upended. Wiped off the map. For thousands of people. For a community.
Suddenly the old school type of towns and communities we thought were a thing of the past, well, we see they’re alive and well. Out in California.
A village — burned down — evocative of one of Hollywood’s most enduring and sentimental holiday movies, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” George Bailey describes the people in his town as “they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community” in his impassioned speech to Potter, defending his benevolent and compassionate father’s devotion to building homes for the folks in town, who make the town. “It’s A Wonderful Life,” where we learn how “each man’s life touches so many others,” where we see Mr. Martini and his bustling family’s joy at owning their first house, as he is presented with George and Mary Bailey’s housewarming gift of “bread, that this house may never know hunger; salt, that life may always have flavor, and wine, that joy and prosperity may reign forever.”
The endless stories of anonymous kindnesses, the stories of neighbors looking our for neighbors, for children, for pets, the stories implying the pre-fire connection that existed between neighbors, the com- munity schools, library, clergy, the “helpers,”as Mr. Rogers said, they’re all there interlaced within the story of this great smoldering destruction.
The firefighters’ heroism, and the regular folk who rose to the occasion to help out, at times even at great risk, are the vignettes tied side by side with the stories of those grappling with unimaginable loss, their lives, scorched. Gone. In an instant.
It’s hard to watch the footage.
The grieving and mourning of losing house and hearth and all the layers of seemingly insignificant inanimate objects that each have a story, lending them a certain emotional value. All of them together make up the places we go through in this world and become our daily horizons, our history.
At the heart of it all, of course, is shelter. Our homes, for those of us blessed with homes, are the physical expression and embodiment of our essence, bringing that protection from the elements, that measure of intimacy, a place and peace of mind.
Starting life over from scratch. Seeing one’s life burnt to the ground. It’s not something anyone ever thinks will happen to them. There is no mental preparation for this. It’s not like these people are living in a war zone with even a subconcious level of preparedenss.
These survivors sadly have each other. They have this shared experience with thousands of others who, without a word uttered, understand one another.
Most important of all, most of these residents, of this community, have survived, have remained alive.
Confronting one’s home — and all it encompasses — going up in flames, confronting a staggering destruction and erasure, is life-altering, existential and lonely and terrifying.
The fortitude that this journey of healing will demand will not be simple. Wounds are seeping. Yet also, it will be a journey on which many will no doubt take on a Peter and George Bailey-esque approach from “It’s A Wonderful Life’s” Bailey Building and Loan Association.
Only this time, in 2025. The spirit of this cherished movie about small town kindnesses, care and friendship for neighbors and the people who make up our community will come to real life. In time, it will hopefully be a process that can meet the moment from the movie, bringing the threshold of new homes, a loaf of fresh bread, some salt and wine.
© IJN 2025
