I am overwhelmed. I am craving time alone. My mom wants to buy jeans. Blaze’s boyfriend from LA is visiting again. They are making a truly disgusting mess in that room. So many dirty towels. A burrito apparently exploded. The Airbnb host texts - the water has been running for 24 hours. Is it Blaze’s showers? Serena, my German Shepherd shadow, keeps wanting to make eye contact - what is happening?
George wants to talk “rooms” and show me his spreadsheets. He follows me around with his open laptop - or shouts at me from another room.
“Haven’t I told you already I’m doing a sick sad slideshow?” I say. George doesn’t want to look at my sick sad slideshow. He only wants to show me tables and tabs and spreadsheets. He loves spreadsheets. Always has. If his mother were still alive she would compliment his brilliant engineer’s mind.
“Well, MY mind doesn’t work that way! I’m a visual person. Let me just do it my way! And then we can compare!”
George doesn’t like that I am also clearly spending some time writing this. I tell him it is helping me. And people are reading. And maybe helping them, too? (That feels like probably a stretch.) Honestly, it just feels like something I need to do. To process this. To remember this. To tether me to something that hasn’t burned and is sort of moving forward.
I told George yesterday that I wrote about him. “Oh no . . . oh noooooooo! Did you make me out to be some crazy old man?”
Um. I did mention the water thing.
“Uh oh,” My mother chimes in - having just finished a cross word puzzle. “George wouldn’t want anyone to steal it! Maybe just add one of those “(tms)”?”
My mother and I laugh. A lot. More than we should. Definitely at George’s expense. Which is not nice. He has not read any of these posts yet. George goes to get his laptop. He is pretty quiet - he’s okay with it - but hates to see himself in those PJs again.
Eventually we will have to “blend” our methods – of inventory, of coping - which will likely mean me sitting beside him while I read off things that I have remembered we used to own. He will slowly add each item into his spreadsheet - and then tell me to wait - and then tell me that he needs more information - a brand name I don’t have - and then we’ll be interrupted by a phone call. We will likely do this spoon by spoon, plate by plate.
Our neighborhood has scattered far and wide. I am seething because George gets all these calls and talks with them all much longer than he is talking with me. We get 45 seconds here; 45 seconds there . . . and only talk about rooms.
Yesterday, George got a call from our former next door neighbor who has moved to Idaho with his family, because the rents in LA are getting sky high. George talked to him for a while. Asked for another neighbor's number. The guy sounded really shell shocked on the phone. Even though he works in construction - no, no - he has idea if he’s going to rebuild. We all lived on a hillside. We have to do grading, erosion control. What if it rains? We are all still in the mode of - “we just left a burning building.”
There are people who apparently help you with receipts and inventories and accounting. It’s a whole industry - who knew? They take a cut (5 - 10 %) of what you are able to receive from your insurance company. I hear George talking to some of them. They all sound like they are selling you a car. They all TALK A LOT. Many, many words about things I have never heard of before – things I really DO NOT want to understand.
I don’t want conflict. But I don’t want to do these inventories anymore. I want a day off. I told George yesterday, “Tomorrow, I need some alone time.” But then I felt guilty and got up in the middle of the night - not to cry, but to do more inventories. I remembered I had just purchased a new salad spinner!
Yesterday, we took a walk on the beach in Carpinteria (“Carp,” now that we are local). We got the dogs in the car - the first time they’d been in it since the day after we evacuated when we moved from George’s youngest sister’s home to this Airbnb. “I wonder if they think we are going home,” I say.
We were not. But the beach was great. Our dogs, who are often not terrific with other dogs, got to run free and did beautifully. Serena even rolled on her back when a dog tried to kill her - which is honestly an improvement as she is mostly very, very dominant. We met up with old friends who have not lost their home but come to Carp a lot. All we did was talk about the fire. George recounted his brilliant fire fighting idea - the one that shoots out millions of gallons of water from the ocean or the top of a mountain ridge - only now he added drones to the mix. Lots and lots of drones (™).
We had a beer after our walk. Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” played in the bar. Shiiiit. That song is haunting us. We told our friends about the time it played when we were dropping Catherine off at the airport a few days ago - has it been a week now? - and we all got quiet in the car. We all get quiet with our beers, too. I can tell we are kind of freaking our friends out. They didn’t know what to say, listening to those lyrics.
We both feel guilty afterwards about monopolizing the conversation. Other people - non fire people - have lives, too. They have feelings about the election and the inauguration coming up. They have troubled teens. Elderly parents. They are approaching menopause. They have their own life crossroads. We only talked about ourselves.
Certainly, George and I are coming on “hot.” We are intense in our memories - our grief. The photos with their timestamps on our phones - January 7 was an ordinary day! I was walking the dogs, there was a little smoke on the ridge. No, we didn’t know! I grabbed the dogs, dog food, and toilet paper - that was it! George describes his evacuation in the second car with Blaze - how Catherine and I kept calling as we drove down Temescal - the traffic is really bad - you gotta get out, get out now. How George wishes we had had time to make that list - take photos - anything - if only we’d known.
We also ask a lot of questions. George gets pretty angry. What happened to the water that should have been available to fight the fire? (Was it available?) Why was Karen Bass in Ghana? We haven’t been sleeping enough. We are going on adrenaline and it shows. It was an ordinary day! I was walking the dogs! Who knew?
It’s just that anything can happen. To any of us. At any given moment. We sort of knew. But not really. Now we REALLY know. And it’s like we want to spread the news - no, seriously, everybody - it can ALL GO! IT ALL BURNS.
The Police Department calls George on his mobile to ask if everyone in our family is alive – everyone who lived in our home. Yes. They are trying to determine if there are more bodies to be found. They are doing a headcount. I remember this from filming in Paradise after the Camp Fire. They couldn’t let residents back into the remains of their homes until they had made sure it was safe – and also until they had recovered all the bodies.
The call with the police is fast. We don’t mention the frogs. They were part of our family.
George and I argue on the way back to our Airbnb from Carp. Have I done my closet inventory yet? Fuck. George is always “on me” to inventory something else. He can’t do it alone.
I wake at 2 AM again despite taking Unisom, adding to my sick sad slideshow of photos, receipts and a household inventory - kitchen scale, tongs. Oh wait - remember that really expensive pair of shoes I bought to wear to the Emmys? (I call them my “Emmy shoes.” I think I’ll remember later in the day who made them - I don’t yet).
I was the only real cook in our house - except for Catherine, who was a baker, and is now back at college and has gone a bit dark (and has stopped contributing to the sick sad slideshow). Strainers. Mixing bowls. Wooden spoons. I turn off the light and then I remember - the rice cooker! The hot pot! What about those shoes I got for Tribeca? Those snowshoes for Sundance?
My mother asks, “Is Catherine still doing Zooms with her therapist?” Yes. I am a bit annoyed as mostly Catherine seems to be doing “shopping therapy.”
My mother seems to be doing some version of that, too. Yesterday, she ventured out to the village in Montecito and bought more cosmetics, jeans, and a sweater. She tried to get a crate for Sparky but they are sold out at the pet shop. All the evacuees who have been staying in hotels for the past 11 days have needed them, the friendly clerk explains. My mother recounted her conversations on her outing, including one at the bar where she stopped to have a cocktail. A couple there had also evacuated from the Palisades fire. “Did their home burn?” I asked. My mother said she didn’t know, she had only listened. The bartender said there are so many folks up here, getting away from the fires - but all from the Palisades. He hasn’t seen anyone from the Altadena fire. He wonders where they have gone…
I am jealous of my mother’s time. To walk alone. To decide not to talk. And only to listen. She may have had shitty renters insurance who will end up writing her a small check for the value of about 1% of her stuff - but still. She is handling this well. Which I expected. She is handling this better than the rest of us.
Someone is always talking to me in this house. Blaze presenting more dirty dishes or towels to be washed. What should I do with Sparky? What are we having for dinner? Did you do the laundry? Have you inventoried your dresser yet? We are out of toilet paper. Sparky peed on my bed! What the hell? Serena, what is that? She is eating the crotch out of Blaze’s new underwear.
There is too much clutter and questions and interrupted thought. And still, I am supposed to think about inventories, rooms - morning, noon, and night. I have not gone shopping since the Genius Bar - I can’t stomach it. Plus, I don’t actually have any money to spend. I am “covered” - but the coverage (money) only kicks in (gets deposited?) when I do the inventory - and the inventory is approved. I need to value my lost media, too. I need to prepare footage logs. Go back over all those Amazon orders. It’s a process . . . all kind of cyclical and related - and certainly tedious and painful. And I want out. I want to go home. I am done “producing” this thing. I quit!
I write a nasty text to my daughter Catherine in the middle of the night - here’s what I thought to write at 3:00 AM:
I’m really sad and upset that all you see fit to do is shop when I have not gone out since our ALO trip and am just trying to find receipts and coverage. And get Blaze enrolled in school and take care of laundry and cleaning and everything here. I have so much to do to take care of everyone here. When you had all so many clothes at Williams! I’m really sad -
I’m glad I had the presence of mind not to send it. We are all being shitty with each other sometimes - or a lot. Yesterday, I asked Catherine why she wasn’t helping with the sick sad slideshow anymore - she said she was shopping for “essentials” - and I said she had essentials in her dorm room already. She asked what I was doing - I said I was busy doing inventory on the sick sad slideshow, plus finding a place for us to live for the next year, and needed her help. “Dad is doing that. Dad is finding us a place to live. What are you doing?”
Catherine has found someone on Instagram who has kindly painted a watercolor of our burned house. The Washington Post writes about it - but I can’t read it because I cancelled my subscription - so my mother sends me a screenshot. The image is a watercolor of my 100-year old burnt home:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2025/01/19/la-fire-painting-jordan-heber/
We are each coping in different ways. I keep getting notifications for doctor’s visits I can no longer keep. I don’t know if I will remember to cancel them or if I will just be a no-show. I am never this disorganized. But I am now letting things drop - dropping a lot of things.
P.S. George is now reviewing the sick sad slideshow on my laptop. In Keanu Reeve’s jeans. “I already did the kitchen,” he says. “But you asked me to do it!” I say. Remember the drive back from Carp?
I give him a look. He gets quiet. He forgot the 50 GoVino dishwasher safe glasses we bought for the Williams College send-off party. 50? Yup. “I didn’t know they were dishwasher safe . . .” he adds. Useless information now. Will we ever need 50 GoVino glasses ever again?
Still, George doesn’t like that I have so many windows and tabs open. “I just don’t know how you do it!” (Not well. I don’t do any of this well.) My laptop goes dead. Our 45-seconds are up.
P.P.S. George has read yesterday's post and has approved my sharing his water ideas for improved firefighting techniques. If anyone wants to get in touch with him directly about any of these ideas (drones, oceans, mountain tops), I can introduce you.
P.P.P.S. My mother suggests I mention the Go Fund Me in today’s post. George overhears and cringes - What? Why? It’s for Tracy’s work! My mother answers back. He doesn’t get it. It’s not about him. It’s about me. It’s about my work.
My mother has sat across from me on many dark nights when I have been really worried that I would not be able to continue to make films, that I would not be able to finish SARAH. And this was BEFORE the fires wiped me out.
George shakes his head. Sometimes I worry whether we (our marriage) will survive this. My work has always been separate. It’s always been mine. George doesn’t know what these things cost - camera gear, drives - I don’t tell him. He doesn’t know how much the work itself keeps me going. Allows me to get up in the morning and to do everything else I do.
So following my mother’s advice, here it goes. Not a pitch or a plea. But a sincere THANK YOU. I am grateful and humbled and moved by the generosity and kindness of so many. Please excuse that this is written collectively and not individually. I hope you understand.
Please know how grateful I am to those who have pledged to my new Substack, which I am still figuring out. And how very grateful I am for the incredible generosity of the doc community, my friends, and my family who have contributed to the Go Fund Me that my mom’s dear friend from law school, Katie, set up. This funding, this financial support, is very gratefully received. It will allow me to continue my work in whatever form that takes.
As grateful as I am, I know there are many others who are not as well off. I am not destitute. If choosing between contributing to someone who is barely surviving and contributing to me - please contribute to them. And please also consider supporting other artists and filmmakers, not only me. Those artists and storytellers whose work has not been lost - but are still struggling. It’s been hard out there - and many of us have been going on fumes for too long. And now, especially, those of us (and there are sadly so many) who have also lost our life’s work to the fire - our films, our notebooks, our sketchbooks, our paintings, our photographs, our ideas written on so many combustible scraps of paper - it can feel really bleak. The loss is difficult to quantify and is permanent. It’s a real kick in the pants to have to say that. To know that. It’s too easy how it all burns. And to cobble “it” back together - our work, our ability to work, and also our WILL to work– is not going to be cheap or easy.
Please know your generous donations and your subscriptions will help me get back on the road as more than a mother and wife and family member. They will help me build myself back as a writer and filmmaker and storyteller - someone who has something to contribute there. I still believe that stories and storytelling matter even if, at the moment, I am only able to tell my own.
P.P.P.P.S - As my former USC students (and my children) will tell you - I’m a big fan of playlists. I have started one for the Palisades…I’m sure it will grow.