Gatay, humans. Let us interrupt the normal programming of this podcast to say a thing or two

about the Los Angeles fires, or maybe not directly about the Los Angeles fires, but about

fire and life and trauma and what matters.

There's very little that can be said looking at the images out of LA and if you're listening

to this in LA I really am thinking of you and I really am sort of feeling your situation.

It's become a trite cliche whenever there's a catastrophe for people to say,

I feel your pain.

But in the specific case of wildfires, Australians really do feel the pain of wildfires

because there are very few Australians who have not found themselves

confronted by the exhausting trauma of that particular natural disaster.

I look at those images out of Los Angeles and look, it's sheer, I suppose, prejudice on my part

that the proximity emotionally of that place to my heart, to my life

rips me up. I sometimes jokingly tease Los Angeles for being a gigantic car park or a bunch of

freeways connecting some charmless strip malls. But I lived in Venice Beach for a year.

I lived in Hollywood for a year.

I go there a lot.

I know the place.

I have very close friends there.

And it just hits you differently than a place you don't know.

Instead of trying to fumble my way through trite bromides about this,

I thought what I would do here is talk not about the LA fires,

but about a fire that I knew very well.

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