Episode 15: The Infernal Season
How it Burns
For three weeks in January, our family sought refuge from the burn of the Los Angeles Fires. We stayed indoors, sealed our 1950’s era windows with cheap masking tape and cranked up the air filters (we have many because fires come every year). But electricity soon grew evasive, subject to the whims of the winds or the power company. As our days filled up with horror upon horror about friends relocated and homes gone, I feared losing even more than I could have imagined.
The morning after the fires started, our children went outside and they said “it smells like India.” That was my first thought too. But that wasn’t my first fear. I was genuinely scared that the hillside near us, dense with pale yellow husks of long dead vegetation, would catch. And when it caught there would be no end. With many such hillsides nearby, and the air quality remaining at New Delhi levels, we resolved to escape to San Diego for a few days.
The fires were a reminder that tragedy could take hold at any time. Yet, much was already burning at home.
At the time, my partner A and I were going through it. And the question about what we would do about our relationship bisected me in more than one way. So the chance to get out of town was a welcome change for the family, and for the two of us.
This happens every so often, enough for us to recognize a pattern and get some help, but still I’m not prescient enough to avoid it. Because it is inextricably tied to my depression, which can be inexplicable.
The ghost of depression savors me in its grip. Its talons take me further into isolation and worlds away from those I love and that love me.
This took me a few years ago into the world of crypto, which I dove into during the pandemic and continued until I lost a significant sum of money during the crash in May 2022. Before the loss which left me in a kind of vacuum, I spent the days and some nights moving funds, buying or selling, and annoyingly, talking about it all.
A was not pleased. But more than becoming a crypto bro peddling the gospel of blockchain to whomever lent me their ear, there were significant moments of self-isolation. In my obsession, the connections between my partner and I frayed.
I ignored her details: the turn of her lips, the blankness in her eyes, the flat dead tone of voice. They would appear in direct proportion to isolation until I created rationalizations and emotionally fled: taking longer to wash the dishes because I was listening to a Twitter space about the latest shit coin; seeking that one thread/answer on a discord group where they discussed whether the Bitcoin chart with 200 day simple moving average was better than the exponential moving average for predicting where the market would go; endless scrolling for that one cryptofluencer who touted a revolutionary new automated trading service that would change my fucking life.
And in the ignorance, in my isolation, that meant that A was isolated too. Along with the sheer amount of work of raising two kids and maintaining a demanding job and keeping up house and everything else that comes along with a full life.
A thriving life we built together, and all the fun we had and could have, became mere subsistence when we each went it alone.
By the time we booked our escape to San Diego, I had done all of that, but with my latest obsession: writing. I was done with crypto but I had focused in on something I’ve been doing on and off since middle school - where I scribbled in my yellow legal pad, imagining myself a brown version of Leonardo Dicaprio in Basketball Diaries. I attended a prestigious speculative fiction writing workshop in October 2024, and was amped up after having found a community and gotten good feedback on my work in progress. And right after I returned home, I had resolved to submit to an anthology and just like my crypto bro days, each day started and ended with ignorance of those around me, all along rationalizing it as “focus.”
And what followed was thick with regret and argument, a burning off of trust and vulnerability in exchange for a hardened husk of a relationship that needs time and love and care to grow again.
When we got to the clean air of San Diego, at an interstate highway-side hotel with free standard breakfast where our children could clamor over their own waffles and the TV remote control, when we took the air in at the beach and felt the spray of the ocean and smelled the salt, I felt a glimmer of something new.
Because for me, when I get this way, I need to radically shift out of my routine to be able to see myself. And to see A.
LA has always had its wildfires, and homes built in impossible places, lurched over gaping yaws of rock, shrub, earth, or ocean, were always subject to the whims of frenzied wind and sparks. And it happens like clockwork, hence the “infernal season” that Mike Davis refers to in his book the Ecology of Fear where he advised us to let Malibu burn.
And maybe that’s what my obsessions come down to: fear. Fear of not having enough, fear of not being a success, fear of having squandered my youth when I didn’t focus on writing enough so feeling like have to double down on it now. So much so that I miss out on life’s moments.
In the middle of the day at the hotel, while the kids watched Bluey, A and I spoke, but with a bit more softness.
When we came back, our fears had not materialized: our house was still standing and the lights were back on. And even though there’s much still to be done, the fear burns me just a little less.
Thanks for reading, friends! I would very much appreciate it if any of you experience the same as me - if so, sound off in the comments
Writing Updates
I am still working on a few WIP’s, namely a novella dealing with migration in India as well as a story dealing with prisons in Sugar Land (where my family is from.
I took the month of February off, and honestly its been a challenge to get back into my writing routine. I took that time off because I felt I could work on my relationships when I’m not constantly obsessing about fitting in writing into my day. So instead, I decided to bundle my writing time into two 1 hr 15 min shifts a week. I am hoping that works for me, but so far its been a challenge.
AWP
Is anyone going to AWP this year? Its in Los Angele, so I’m looking forward to going for a bit.
What I’ve been reading, listening to, watching
I just finished reading Loot by Tania James, which was an absolute pleasure to read. Its a lush story that explores Tipu Sultan’s rule in Mysore and wretchedness of colonialism through the lens of a young desi craftsman, who ends up in Europe. Its such a refreshing read.
I just listened to Flying Lotus’ new track from his film Ash, Oxygene. I always love Flying Lotus.
I finished watching Mo, Season 2. Beautiful and hilarious.