“My father says that there is only one perfect view — the view of the sky straight over our heads…” – George Emerson, A Room with a View
In yoga class, I happened to look up. Through the skylight I could see a bird sailing through a sea of pale blue. Air quality was probably quite good.
Not so much in California.
“It was the soot-colored swans, so dark they almost looked black, that first struck Gabriella Asad, when she arrived at the Lake Shrine on the second day of the fire.” – LA Times.
“Just the way the sky was, all the smoke, the way the swans were covered,” she said with emotion in her voice, “it took everything in me to do the best I could.”
Long time members of Self Realization Fellowship, a spiritual retreat in Pacific Palisades, Gabriela, her brother, and her father fought fires for seven hours, pausing “to gently rinse some of the soot clinging to the swans’ feathers.”
Later that evening they returned, using hoses to extinguish consistently erupting “spot fires”. “It was blindingly exhausting work” the Times said, “and they believe it was the prayers and wishes of devotees across the globe who empowered them to do it.”
I see It’s a Wonderful Life’s Mary and George grabbing those hoses and doing what needs to be done. Perhaps Capra’s community is not a fantasy after all.