Cerebral Flatulence

2008 was a tough, tough year for me personally and for my community. Major fires, a flurry of deaths, evacuations, and financial disruptions piled on to the stack of mundane concerns that are part of every life. The hardships produced a response often experienced, yet curiously hard to remember during the blues — a creative eruption of energy, ideas and action.

Here in Big Sur the locals dove in to recovery mode even as government agencies dithered and blithered. The Coast Property Owners’ Association rapidly organized a relief effort that led to real money and processed paperwork for dozens and dozens of residents. My landlord Jali Morgenrath and his son Tevye went to town on the property; before they were through they and their crew built reinforced concrete bunkers, hung steel shutters, piled earth berms and stacked 40-foot containers like so many Legos, on their own time and nickel, to prepare for potentially catastrophic landslides. (I live literally on Ground Zero; my apartment sits next to flood-prone Pheneger Creek, on the site of a building blown away by a post-fire slide in the late 1970’s.)

Fact: I’ve yet to receive a dime from the governments I pay for, for two weeks evacuation and loss of business and income. The Bush Administration never declared California’s worst-ever fire season a federal disaster, and the nincompoops in Sacramento have no money or interest for the rest of us anyway. NOTE: The government scientists and surveyors have been on the ball and full-throated in their response, including advanced slide and flood prediction from the USGS and a portable Doppler unit from NOAA, to help us through the winter without our forests and shrubs.

In my own affairs, I responded to the discomfort and disruption of last year by returning to some pleasures of childhood with a man’s spirit and focus. I rediscovered the stimulation of tactile crafts, of sanding and filling and carving and painting scale models; and I reconnected with a world of popular culture, of pulp magazines from the 30’s and 40’s, of sci-fi paperbacks from the 60’s and 70’s, of classic American films from the past century. And I did all this through the Medium of our time, the Internet. In our era we, the aficionados of whatever, can find each other across the developed world and convene in online communities to rub our enthusiasms together and foster growth in our chosen passions. Who knew, for example, that so many other people besides me are enthralled by Clark Ashton Smith? Or stop-motion animation? Or retro tales about Mars? Or highly-detailed model kits of fossil spacecraft?

In the process of feeding my head I reconnected with my own Muse, and transfused an old project with fresh life and spirit. Look for a five-minute trailer at ComicCon 2009 in San Diego this July.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 7:16 am and is filed under Blather, Noise, Truth, Wonder.
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