So it’s after midnight. I’m lying on the couch in my apartment at Pico and 12th in Santa Monica. I just turned off the TV. I think I’ve OD’d on live reports on the fires, and the sad pro forma interviews with burned out victims.. “How did you feel when you came back today to find your house gone?”

I’m alone here tonight – Kath is in a hotel room in Long Beach, having sensibly hit the road when a 75 mph gusting wind was blowing our patio furniture around like an angry demon. She’s coming back tomorrow. I was in the air when she left, on a flight from London, watching the chaos in L.A. on a YouTube feed provided by Delta Sky Club.

I’ve been through fires here before – I moved to L.A. in 1980, in part to exchange the callous Mrs. Thatcher for the humanistic Mr. Carter.  I went to college here, and thanks to the generosity and forethought of the State of California, got my B.A. here up north for very cheap.

Then I went to NYC and because of my own personal abject brilliance as a potential actor, and Zelda’s penchant for funny Brits, did my M.F.A. on the cheap too.  I’ve lived in the United States since then – my life has been lived here, my wives, dead and living, have been American. My kids are American.  Fuck it, I’m basically American – even though I’m a Resident Alien rather than a newly minted Citizen (mainly to avoid jury duty). I primarily play Americans on stage and on TV now – the last time I played a Brit on stage the dialect coach ripped me a new arsehole.

And I’m fundamentally OF L.A.

When I moved back here in 1993 after Acting in N.Y. I simply, as a Thespian, could not get arrested.

So I started working as a motorcycle messenger. Worked, riding around L.A. delivering stuff, back when it wasn’t just food that needed to be rushed around town. My Thomas Guide and I would regularly do 1500 miles a week, everywhere from Ventura to Berdoo to beyond the Orange Curtain. I started my own company in 1995, weeks after my son was born, and kept racking up the miles. I’ve now ridden driven roughly 50k miles annually around here for thirty years and have come to know every street in L.A. on a first name basis. When I stand on a hilltop overlooking the City, I can name every tall building from Downtown to SM and tell you if they have 20 mins free parking. I know this city better than any other foreigner, and probably better than 99% of people who grew up here. Before GPS friends who were native Angelenos used to call me for directions around town when they were lost.  The city is a part of me. Much of my brain storage contains images of addresses – other people with real professions have cerebella filled with tort law, or kidney parameters; I have the geography of Los Angeles.

These fires feel different, and personal. So many friends, and my brother in Altadena, have lost everything.

And so much is gone.  The Reel Inn, Gladstones, Moonshadows..all the landmarks I used to tick off as I rode my Beemer up PCH thinking, “Fuck me, I live in paradise”

When people say “Oh, my city has changed” they’re generally not referring to the consequences of one day’s events.

And it’s not going to stop. The air will keep getting warmer, and the Santa Anas will keep getting stronger, and my ability to deal with loss will keep getting weaker.  The industry I finally broke into is changing. For worse, but also for better. I can audition for anything from anywhere, and I can  get from anywhere to everywhere if I get the job.

 

Plus, not only is Jimmy Carter dead, but it seems that the very concept of fundamental decency in the halls of power will be buried with him. I lived through the last Trump go round. I spent most of it alone, yelling plaintively at the TV.  His last Inauguration was right after I’d moved up to Shadow Hills, and a major lunchtime Santa Ana brush fire found me standing at the top of the driveway while smoke blew at me at 50 mph and three houses on the other side of the street went up in flames. A firefighter in a Fire Tender pulled up, took a look at my clueless English face, leaned out of the window and yelled “Get the fuck out of here!”.

I did.

Not sure that I’m up to waiting to be told do it again. America can survive another four years, but i don’t think I can.

I watch the television and mourn my adopted City, and my adopted Country. It may be time to go live for a while in a small 17th Century market town north of London, where things have more permanence, and people with differing political views are a tad more patient with one another. And lifelong touchstones aren’t destroyed overnight. Because chronic drizzle doesn’t work that way.

Ron Bottitta