FIRE: THE FIFTH SEASON

After I evacuated from the Palisades fire, I found myself living in a time warp, a continuous present or one long day where I waited until the National Guard allowed residents back into neighborhoods, to stare at ruins, discard damaged property or attempt to rescue smoke-damaged possessions – some furniture and clothing if the house still stood.

Now I am trying to recover my writing life – via what my daughter and son-in-law and I, with a couple others, managed to salvage of it – hundreds of boxes of ash-covered books and art and many jumbled files containing letters, documents, poems & random writings.

If you’ve read my earlier post about saving the Cookie Monster jar – you may recall how, as I watched houses on my block engulfed in flames under a black sky, I left nearly everything behind on January 7^th, grabbing one or two things then joining the panicked traffic heading down the Pacific Coast Highway.

Now I’m re-settled in Santa Monica and I’m still unpacking paintings and boxes and boxes of books (I’ve donated many boxes to libraries here and to a foundation in NYC, but my core library pretty much remains) and often finding surprises in letters and signed books and loose poems.

Some of these findings will end up in my archive at USC (which you can find on-line). USC paid handsomely for everything that pertained to my writing life some years ago – poetry & prose drafts, manuscripts, correspondence, press, publicity, awards, etc. – memories – and all that is to come – back when I was “golden” there.

Back before I was cancelled and a (let me hang fire here) a “negatively-motivated” colleague initiated a kangaroo-court investigation against me that resulted in my disgrace and severe sanctioning. Since my lawsuit against the school “settled” and since that suit is part of my writing life too – my archive will include these pertinent documents that also escaped the fire. (As per the agreement, I cannot discuss the terms of the settlement but I am free to write about the investigation itself.)

In a way, that crushing cancellation prepared me psychologically for the devastating fire to come. I have, post-fire, watched the flames take friendships and professional connections and achievements – now turned to ash.

I have felt almost nothing as I “walked through” both seasons ablaze – though, for now, (to borrow from uber-cancelled Henry James) I am “hanging fire”.

I had worked tirelessly for my students, I’d singlehandedly founded (years ago, as a retainment incentive, when I was offered another university. position as chair & director of creative writing -permission to “create”) a PhD program in Creative Writing & Literature. I also invented graduate courses like a poetry and art semester at the Broad museum, I set up a scholarship in my late husband’s name at the theatre school – (as well as his archive at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in NY) and more. I was building a science writing masters program when I was cancelled.

But a handful of my best and closest students were turned against me and I was not allowed to defend myself. Private universities like USC are not required to provide First Amendment - or due process protections to their employees, unlike state schools like UCLA, which are entirely federally funded.

I should have been warned -- back when one of the program’s most gifted students, now a nationally-acclaimed writer and professor, dropped out of the PhD program. Her departure was due, most notably, to the “negatively-motivated” colleague and his associate, a disturbed professor. She testified at the meagre “grievance” hearing I was allowed. She was a witness for me – and named these two professors as creating “a toxic environment” on one hand and the associate “mentally unfit” to teach. She spoke out for me later, as a witness, because she knew the truth and was not afraid to be on record, on my behalf.

Her testimony is in my archive.

Climate change, in concert with home construction in unsafe (fire vulnerable) zones where dry vegetation had overgrown, not to mention sparking power lines -- caused the devastating wildfires all over L.A. What is termed “fire season” is now a fifth season in Southern California, here where it may seem like endless summer to outsiders. Longtime residents come to know that there are, in fact, four (subtle) seasons here – or were - before the fifth. About which I’ve been ruminating.

In unpacking a box of random papers related to my writing life, I found a couple unrelated documents entitled “Fifth Season”. My life has been full of coincidences – here were others, oddly connected to this theme of a terrifying “extra” season – made of fire.

Watch this space, as they say. As I reclaim my writing life.