"Unburdened by the Past"
So I was at my temporary therapists chatting with her and Jeanette. As one loses everything one has ever owned, generations of family art, documents tools, collections papers and one’s own stuff, along with a home and studio, the stresses of life require someone outside the hell to talk to. At our last meeting Jeanette and I had an argument. Because we are living in my mother’s spare bedroom with her caregivers in house we really cant have either discussions or arguments where we are.
Our argument centered around rebuilding. Initially after the fires, we both intended to rebuild. As I attempted to design a house for our lot I found more and more County broken promises, more and more rules that were not even in the code were being stubbornly insisted upon, and literally backbreaking financial burdens being imposed. There was just barely enough money to rebuild a conventional house, there was not enough money to rebuild with fire sprinklers (that failed everywhere anyway) solar panels, power walls and according to Chapter 7 Wildland Urban Interface regulations Jeanette kept insisting I would find a way.
I finally blew up at our counselors. “You dont get it! There is no way! I can’t afford to hire anyone else, my brother cant help me his knees are shot, I can’t do it myself, I’m sixty seven and building the neighbors lighting soffits last summer damn near killed me, and on top of that I’m not going to spend five years of the last fifteen good years of my life building a house I despise because it represents the County raping me artistically and financially. YOU BUILD IT.”
It got very heated after that. We finally settled down and heard each other. We both concluded that even if we could somehow by a miracle build a house on our lot out of the kindness of the County’s unmerciful heart, that we had no idea what community that house would be in. Would we be in anything that resembled the Altadena we loved? Would the resultant community also be a disappointment and a heartache as the house would be?
We went to meetings put on by the various not for profits who are attempting with zero actual community input to tell Altadenans what the futurewe must accept would be. That didn’t bode well. Clearly all of our local area not for profits somewhere had gotten all on the same page and that page was the same page as the Department of Regional Planning. Our “local” not for profits (the Scum) now represented the County to the People and pretended to the County that they spoke for the People of Altadena who they will not allow to speak. That pretty much made up our minds. Altadena will not be allowed to be anything like it was. It will be dense. It will be expensive. it will be a town of tattlers and snitches. It will be everything Altadenans spent years resisting because every institution in town has been co opted and is now our enemy.
The Army Corps of Engineers cleared our lot of the foundations and burned trees. There is no evidence of 120 years of human habitation. The Joy of the garden, the quirky house, the studio rebuilt by me and my brother that Realtors often mistook for a Jim Delong or Lloyd Wright structure where I did all my work, all nothing but memories. It didn’t propel us forward to overcome, it made us more disenheartened.
Still, I tried one more site plan. Now the Code Counter Nazi wasn’t certain if the waiving of the Oak Tree Encroachment for previously existing structures was a promise the County would keep after all. Sure, just break them all. Another unjust $16,000 cost to be levied. Sure why not. Nothing more gleefully orgasmic for the swine in County government than kicking citizens when we are down.
It was the last straw. You are not being punked as you drive by our lot. It is for sale. I hope the foreign investor who buys it puts up a nice five story hyper dense building that the Department of Regional Planning will enjoy, because no one else, not Altadenans, not the Supervisor, no one else at the end of the day has anything else to say about Altadena’s future.
As Kamala Harris likes to say we are “unburdened by the past”. It’s not a happy feeling. Our past has been destroyed by government and utility negligence and our hopes of various futures. The road is open, but we are without a map or a destination.
The only thing certain is that home is forever gone.
Whatever you and Jeanette decide to do or where to go, I hope that you do it with your arms locked together. Don't let the bastards take the most important thing you two have: one another.
sorry to hear this Steven. dave