the end of the world

Two years ago yesterday, Tracy and I climbed the endless mosaic-covered steps up to our Air BnB in Laurel Canyon.

It was like walking a staircase into a dream.

Do you have a place like this?

A place that has inexplicably and illogically called to you your whole life?

Tracy had been to LA several times before to play and record music with his brother, but I had never been, only dreamed it, only felt it.

I’d learned to stop telling people about my longing for Southern California, and how I felt there was some piece of me there, how I needed to be there so I could draw that piece back in.

I stopped because Tracy was one of the only people who understood what I meant. Others responded by telling me that I was wrong, didn’t know what I was talking about, would enjoy other places more, or was entirely misguided in thinking that place made a difference at all.

This trip was gifted to us and we poured everything into it - all of our energy, all of our love, all of our hope. This was the trip we’d fantasized about making, and now it was real, which gave it an unreal quality.

Prior to our trip, I read everything I would possibly need to know about staying in house that was perched on the side of a hill in Hollywood. I read about rattlesnakes, mud slides, and earthquakes.

It turns out, mudslide was the fear of relevance. During our stay, the snakes were apparently still asleep, the earth stayed still, but on our first full day in Los Angeles, it rained. A lot.

I can’t really explain the amount of rain - there was a name for what was happening which I can’t remember now - but we turned on the news (yes, we turned on the news - that’s how hard it rained) and listened to reports about sandbags and road closures and the neighborhoods holding their breath in fear of mudslides.

It may sound funny now to think that we were scared of rain, but it was sort of scary.

After all, it hadn’t been that long ago that an entire house had slid of the side of the mountain in Laurel Canyon.

So two years ago today, our first full day in LA (and if you know me, I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I travel with a carefully planned out itinerary upon which the rotation of the planet depends,) we spent inside, occasionally watching these sandbag reports, drinking coffee, dancing to the Byrds, learning about the celebrities who had lived in our house, and trying not to feel disappointed about our unexpected containment.

The thing is, I remember feeling nervous and disappointed, but mostly what I remember about that day is that right before the heavy rain started, we were visited by deer.

In all my research about Laurel Canyon, I don’t think it had really sunk in that despite the fact that Manson killed the sixties, despite all the development and capitalist elitist excess, wildlife still thrived in the canyon.

I’d read a lot about rattlesnakes, but not enough about coyote and deer, so they came as a breathtaking surprise.

We wouldn’t emerge from our little house in sky until the following evening, for Tracy’s 50th birthday dinner. The rain finally eased enough for us to make our way back down the steps and find out if there was still a road. (There was.)

When we arrived at the Smokehouse in Burbank, we found that life was going on. The world was wet, but people were eating dinner. There was a band playing. We were seated in a corner booth. We were back in the itinerary.

That trip was magical and followed up with an even more magical trip to LA last year with our nieces.

What other people think about Los Angeles doesn’t really matter to me.

I know what I feel.

And I’m so incredibly, deeply grateful for those two trips and every meal I’ve eaten there, every ride down Sunset, yes Sunset, in the traffic, and the church services I attended, and every ghost I’ve encountered, the way time there is layered and folds in on itself, the otherworldly sorrow and beauty of it. The darkness interwoven with the light.

As the news about the pandemic began to roll in, changing minute by minute, (I don’t even know - when was that? When did this start? How many days has it been now?) I felt all of my fears and anxieties kick up, my mind began to roll with worst case scenarios.

It finally occurred to me that I could take a walk.

I went out. It was misty. I didn’t see another soul.

The neighborhood was eerily quiet. There was no movement except for the birds and the squirrels, the clouds. The wildlife.

I put on my California playlist because it activates my solar plexus. I realized how little it mattered if I cried while I walked, because I was alone. Young girls are coming to the canyon, and waves of energy and emotion moved through me. Mostly, grief.

But also and odd sort of elation.

I didn’t try to categorize or name it, just let it be, let it all be.

We’ve made our preparations here. We’re self-isolating. We have what we need, even if we go into a nationwide lock-down for a while.

I never imagined this as a possibility, but here we are.

Last night I dreamed a woman I didn’t know brought a broken downspout into our house. She was angry about it, which made me angry. I grabbed her arm then thought, Oh no, I touched her, we’re both going to die.

I process anxiety in my sleep.

Mine, but also everyone’s - the anxiety of the collective.

I’ve been doing this for a long, long time, but it’s certainly intensified lately.

I dream our anxiety every night. I wake up with my jaw clenched tight and have to, every morning, rationalize myself back from that world into this one.

This week, that re-entry has become a little less clear. No, I’m not dead, but yes, there’s a threat. No, I’m not dead, but the anxiety is originating from a real place. There is, in fact, something happening. What is it? Oh, yes, I remember.

I do not feel further away from you in isolation.

I feel closer to you than ever.

I do not feel masked.

I feel incredibly seen.

I don’t feel this authenticity is a choice, it is the energy of now. It’s part of what’s happening, to the world and to each of us as individuals.

Ironically, as we shelter in place, we expand. As we draw into our homes and avoid physical closeness, we shed the layers of protection we’ve been wearing.

There is nothing to be but our true selves.

There is no way to deny that we are all a part of the whole, that we live and breathe interconnected, that we are only as well as the least of us.

There is no reason for us to attempt to hide our hearts from one another, and it no longer works anyway. That mechanism has dissolved as what we have believed to be reality shifts.

I do not want to get sick. I do not want to leave this body or this planet just yet. I do not want my loved ones to get sick or leave their bodies.

You are all my loved ones.

I do not want people to die.

I also do not want businesses to die.

I do not want the places I love to die.

I don’t want anyone to suffer, and at the same time, I have selfish and personal wishes. I want to be able to go to El Coyote one more time and sit on on the patio and eat taco salad.

I don’t want people to lose everything they’ve worked for and dreamed into existence and at the same time, I don’t want to lose that which I haven’t yet dreamed into existence.

I cling to the material world even though I know it doesn’t really exist, even though I believe that we will come out the other side of this experience and rebuild a world that is more fair, more compassionate, more balanced for all.

While I desire that new world, I don’t really want to go through the collapse in order to get there.

But here I am. Here we are.

And I believe we are each here in this moment because we are meant to be.

Listen, I’m not a big fan of trying to predict the future, as it isn’t yet written, but I feel like we’re standing right now on the edge of something. I feel like things could get really scary in the next few days, a scariness for which we can not prepare.

You think it’s rattlesnakes, but it’s mudslides.

And then, no mudslide.

You’re sitting in a restaurant having birthday dinner.

This morning, a brief conversation with two of my closest friends brought me to think about my life so far. When I look back, I mostly feel regret. Please don’t try to soothe or reframe that for me. It just is what it is.

I regret a lot of things about my youth, mostly the ferocity with which I hated myself, how I held myself a part, how I believed in my unbelonging and feared rejection so deeply, I wrapped myself up in layers and layers of protection and, as a result, made terrible decisions.

I attempted to live other people’s ideas of what my life should be, of who and what I should be.

I wish I hadn’t done that.

I wish I hadn't tried so hard to avoid pain.

Because, guess what? Can’t be done.

I’ve not been a youth for some time now, but whatever vestiges of that old way of hiding and avoidance were still present in me have been swept away by this current energy crisis, this pandemic wave, this fire.

If there has ever been a time to embody the phoenix, it’s now.

If there ever has been a time to hold on loosely, it’s now.

If there has ever been a time to light your candles, sanctuary down into your heart, listen to your intuition, practice what you practice, face your work head-on, it’s now.

There’s one aspect to this collapse that feels good already, the collapse of the space between the scientific logical and the esoteric mystical.

The collapse between the space between us.

The collapse away from greed into generosity.

Just look at the artists and priests and healers and poets and musicians - the creatives and introverts and empaths and entrepreneurs - sharing their work online, just sharing and giving, seeing ourselves in one another, seeing that we are one another.

What’s happening feels unprecedented and maybe it is, but what’s also true is that we never know what’s going to happen.

We never know when we’re going to get sick, when we might die, or what within us is getting ready to die.

It’s always true that the places we love might not be there by the time we have the money to return to them.

Your house might slide off the hill tomorrow, the downspout might fall off, the big one might hit.

And it might not.

This is always true and always has been true.

We don’t know where we’re going, but I do believe it’s good. Ultimately, it will be good.

What’s the point of believing otherwise?

To find comfort in these days of physical distancing, Tracy and I have been watching the live cam from Santa Monica beach. It slowly, slowly pans from the mountains to the pier and back again. I light the pink Guadalupe candle and we sit with California, the piece of our soul that resides on the West Coast. Every now and then we see a tiny person walking alone on the beach. Every now and then we hear a seagull. Mostly, we just feel it. The energy of it. The resilience of the ocean.

God is there.

God is everywhere.

God is Love.

Death and birth are bound together.

As much as what we are all going through right now is death, it is also birth.

We grieve, but we also dream.

We’re sitting a part from one another, but together in truth.

Beloved, we were made for this.