March 24, 2024
THE BEACH: WHAT DO THE GRASS AND SEA LIONS SAY?
Back home in the Palisades, I only went to our local beach, Will Rogers, maybe once a year at most. Probably once every two years. Going to the beach meant navigating traffic on PCH and paying for parking. I couldn’t bring the dogs; if I was going for a walk, I wanted to bring the dogs. So I didn’t walk on the beach. I’m not a surfer. I sunburn. So, back home in the Palisades, the beach was not a thing.
The beach here is our new regular routine with the dogs. I really like that. For the first time, I feel like I am a California woman in my flip flops and rolled up jeans. I go to three local beaches: Rincon in Carpinteria; Summerland Beach; and Butterfly Beach just down the hill from us. They each have their pluses and minuses based on a combination of how far you can walk and the tar factor. There is a lot of black tar run-off from the defunct oil rigs that is often hidden in the sand, but will stick to the bottom of your feet and other parts of your skin and the dogs’ paws and fur, and is very complicated to get off (involving Dawn dish soap and a pumice stone). I have not yet become such a California woman that I’ve downloaded the various apps that will tell you what is happening with the tides and tar and all that.
Maybe I should. On a trip to Rincon last week, I thought it was strange there were no surfers in the parking lot (which is big and no-charge). Usually there are loads of surfers getting in and out of their cars. All ages, usually dudes, in various states of undress, their wetsuits open to their waists. The backs of their vans or pickup trucks open. They’re talking to each other across the parking lot. They are polite. If they are heading in or out, they stop to let me pull in. It all feels very local and chummy and beachy and friendly.
But last week, the surfers were not there. The parking lot was virtually empty. Low tide? High tide? It’s basically all the same to me. The dogs like to run in the sand and the tide pretty much doesn’t matter, especially at Rincon where there is such a long stretch to walk. The width of the walk is irrelevant to the dogs and me.
The cliff is high up so there’s a rather steep walk down to the sand, by way of either stairs or a cement path. I do this in my bare feet so I don’t have to deal with leaving shoes on the beach. It also helps rub off the tar as I walk back up.
Usually, at the bottom of the path, I remove the dogs’ choke chains and away they go, running on the sand. It's bliss. Last week, however, things started to go downhill fast. The first place Serena ran was to a large mass: she had found a dead pelican. Gross. And sad. I shooed her on. As we kept walking, there were other dead birds. They were in the sand. They were in the water. White birds with long necks. Black birds. As we walked, more and more dead birds.
It took me a moment to take it all in. It was awful.
A bespectacled kid about nine years old who was wading in some tide pools with his dad asked if he could pet Serena. I said sure and then I asked, “What’s with the dead birds?”
“Toxic algae,” he said, without skipping a beat. Then he ran off with his dad.
After we found a dead dolphin, I couldn’t take it anymore and cut the walk short. It was a horrific walk. In the car, I looked up “toxic algae” but the results were all from 2023 or 2024.
I called my new friend S., who teaches a stretching and circuit class at the Y, “What’s up with the toxic algae?”
She laughed. “What am I? Your new local expert?”
I said “Yes! Yes you are. And there is something terrible happening at Rincon.”
Sasha had no idea.
The next day, I had my narrative grief group. What is a narrative grief group? Hard to explain. I was invited by a friend to participate. The group is sponsored by the wonderful Nellie Hermann who has authored two books largely centered on grief. She teaches a course at Columbia University on the Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine. Nellie was offering this narrative grief group pro bono for those impacted by the LA fires. Since the new post-fire me is someone who tries to say “yes,” more than I say “no,” I decided to try it.
After the first Zoom meeting, there were only two of us attendees who stuck it out. SF and I, and our families, experienced “total loss” in the Palisades fires. Both SF and I love and value this time away from our families, from the work of rebuilding, and from everything else we have going on. Fridays at 10 am for an hour. We read a poem, reflect, and write for five minutes following a prompt inspired by the poem.
SF and Nellie have become my fire friends. We think we will keep our Friday meetups going even though the course was only supposed to last five weeks. The post-fire me has more friends than the pre-fire me.
Last Friday, SF, Nellie, and I read a poem that was largely about the natural world and how the natural world would speak to us if we listened. The last stanza was about grass. Grass only knows one word or something. But it says this word over and over again. (The poem was “Evening” by Charles Simic.)
I have turned my Zoom self-view off after having to apologize for wearing sunglasses which are the only “readers” for a computer screen that I have at the moment. Some of the more complicated personal rebuilding has been around my glasses of various focal-lengths that I lost in the fire. I look like a real asshole in the Zoom window with these prescription sunglasses on and I find it distracting to look at myself but I want to be able to see SF’s and Nellie’s faces and read the poem on the screen. So I wear them.
I write a lame, pompous, disjointed 5-minute response to “what the grass says” which I will share verbatim here:
WHAT THE GRASS SAYS -
The grass says no more war. The grass says there is enough for all. The grass says I grow on top of everything. I grow and grow and grow. I am in the green parkway in front of your burned out house. I am on your gravestone. I am food for the dogs. I am on the ground to step on. I am egoless. I am undeterred. The grass says the world is messy. Pee on me. But not all in one place. I will grow and be cut. I will blow in the wind and fire and rain. I am here. The grass says all this. The grass says enjoy me. Eat me. Sleep on me in the still summer.
After sharing it with Nellie and SF, I apologize. But I can’t get out of my head this song that went viral a few years back, “What does the fox say?” I ask them if they remember it. Neither of them ever heard of it.
I find it and I say, “This is really good.” Once I get sharing permission, I play the music video for them. I’m watching their faces. They’re not laughing. I’m thinking uh oh, so half way through, I stop.
“Is that meant to be serious?” Nellie asks. I can tell the Zoom sound must have really been messed up. I assure them that no, it’s not serious, and tell them I’ll share a link later. Which I do, along with another link that explains it:
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/what-does-the-fox-say/
Thankfully, neither of my fire friends is judgmental. It’s good to have fire friends.
I reread the poem. The Natural World - the stillness. It makes it all seem good. Stable. All knowing. But mostly, when rereading the poem about what the grass is trying to tell me, all I can really think about is a toxic algae bloom and what those dead creatures on the beach are trying to tell me, us. The natural world is speaking VERY loudly in its stillness - i.e. death. I tell SF and Nellie about my visit to Rincon.
SF sends me an Instagram post:
And then I find this news report that goes into more detail:
SF has relocated to Ventura while she does the work of rebuilding in the Palisades. She chose Ventura because the rents are cheaper than in LA and because she and her family have been going there for years. SF knew all about the toxic algae bloom and has volunteered for a mammal rescue organization here. I told her to count me in. I want to join. I want to help. Anything I can do to help after seeing what I saw. I cannot unsee it.
In other alarming news, apparently there are some plans to restart oil operations off Santa Barbara? https://www.independent.com/2025/03/14/i-can-smell-a-rat-julia-louis-dreyfus-blasts-texas-oil-company-at-packed-town-hall-in-santa-barbara/
Catherine is home for spring break now, and she wants to go to all the beaches I’ve been talking about. I have to break the news - toxic algae bloom, dead animals. The more I describe - It’s like the Natural World’s Beaches of Normandy! Catherine puts her hands to hear ears and tells me to stop. She can’t listen.
Catherine asks about sailing and Catalina. I’m, like, it’s the SAME OCEAN. Toxic.
In an effort to get Blaze out of the house, I took Blaze to the beach a few weeks ago. I picked her up from schooI. The dogs were already in the car. We went straight to Rincon. Blaze saw a sea lion. I kept the dogs away, while Blaze got a bit closer to record a video (but followed the guidelines and didn’t get TOO close). Blaze was excited - we both thought the sea lion was healthy and happy. When Blaze posted the video to our family text thread, Catherine answered immediately, “WTF, stay away.”
Blaze replied, “No joy + no whimsy.”
Catherine asked, “Is it injured?”
Blaze wrote back, “No girl, it’s washing itself.”
I am haunted. Was it okay? What was that sea lion, a week before the “official” toxic algae bloom, trying to tell us?
This is becoming my favorite read of the day. Thanks for your candor, your pathos, your uncertainty and most of all your humor. If I am ever in a grief group, I pray you are there to pair 'What the Grass Says' with "What does the Fox say?."😂🦊