The Santa Anas: a working draft

I sit with my feet in hypnotic sand; black and white morsels of earth shimmy against the blue ocean and I sit, my plastic sunglasses mirror the sun. I'm in Leucadia, California and I can count at least 37 surfers in my distance but other than me, the beach is empty. It's 2:30pm on a Sunday and I've somehow finegled an early-evening check out at the Leucadia Beach Inn, two blocks away, so instead of rushing to the airport, I can sit and ponder the wind. When the Santa Anas blow in California, everyone knows it. And though these mystic warm winds are only inherent to the southern region of the state, the ripple effect can be felt throughout. There are tales and stories of the Santa Anas, steeped in destruction and irrational decisions. They’re enough reason to kill someone, they, like the moon, cause our blood to dance a tango we’ve never before learned.

What also lie in the distance, this particular Sunday afternoon in October, are fires. Malibu burns as does inland San Diego County. But from where I perch and without internet or TV, I am clueless. I do not yet know that Brad's family, the people who hosted me the night before at a wedding, are evacuating. I do not yet know that 225,000 will simultaneously fear for their property and heirloom photos. I do not know these things; the sky is not yet damp with orange haze. I do not know anything of the destruction that surrounds me, I just know that the Santa Anas blow hot from all directions. They are unpredictable; their force streams steady against my skin, they whip your insides out. This wind causes me to imagine the whirring and churning of butter; I meditate on gates swinging open. I think of Torrey Pines housewives lying restless next to snoring husbands, their bodies wrestle with thousand-count sheets. I think of Joan Didion and how she demonized this beautiful mystery saying, “The winds shows us how close to the edge we are.” I wonder if I’m close to the edge and if the wind attempts to take my mind, my self-control, any grasp I have on keeping it together. I wait for something awful to happen to me, I think about abrupt changes and disruption. I wonder if I’ve already gone crazy. And so I do the only thing logical for a situation like this, when sitting on a random beach in California: I stand on my head.

Upside down, I face the wind and decide I cannot be left alone with my mind and the wind. The truth of the matter is that when the wind whistles around my ears, I do ponder my scream; the one that remains under my skin during business meetings and train rides and other people’s weddings. And what would it matter; what would it disturb if I were to unleash my shriek? What influence do I have on the surfers or on the cliff-side homes? What influence do I really hold on the world? I am a morsel of white sand, incomplete without my surroundings. I am a narrator to this verse that’s not about the fires, the destruction, the significance, the story. I ramble in this tangent, without a thesis, wasting attention away from heat and melt and tears and screams; screams attached to a face of someone who’s actually losing something and not standing on their head in a beach town called Leucadia.

Women are akin to these elemental influences. Our hormones creep with time and the moon; the tides, the seasons, they mediate our vessels. I know because I started my period during the last full moon, setting my clock to connect with the spin of our planet. And 19 days later I did a headstand on the Leucadia beach and watched the ocean stand on its shoulders against the perfect kaleidoscope of sand. We ache in 26 to 32 day cycles; we bleed on schedule, just like we know the sun will rise each morning around 7:04am. As women we constantly collide with criticism regarding our irreverent emotions. To some we are are moot mysteries, to others, hysterical tornaedos. But we exist in sync with the elements that dominates our surroundings. We're mapped to the waves, to the woven sand and to the fires that warm and destroy. And the wind, we already know it, the Santa Anas already live in this skin.

So when the winds come right before winter, we recognize their arrival, we feel the pricks of weather and calendars and ticking seconds. We sit like rocks against the tide and time knowing our bodies are clocked to something outside our minds. And there we find eerie comfort in unpredictability.

Mother Earth and Mother Time, the Santa Anas are burning the houses in Malibu and San Diego. The steadfast fires will inevitably run to the Pacific Ocean. And just like I did, they’ll stand with their back to anything they’ve destroyed, and satisfied, they’ll wonder where to go next.