The Relentless Sun and The Need for Clouds

People who grow up in Southern California and those who migrate here tout the sunshine as its greatest enticement. Okay. I understand that the sun is god. And I honestly believe that it may be the only true god that exists for humans - all the others simply concoctions and projections of our own egos and desire for immortality. 

The sun is ever present, it nurtures life and if it should ever disappear, so would we. That defines god for me. But like any decent god it is unrelenting. It beats down upon our existence and when it is present day after day with no clouds to cover it, no rain to shield us from it, no eclipses to make us think for a moment that it may have gone forever, it becomes, well, just too much. It becomes oppressive.

The sun is unrelenting in Southern California. And other places as well. Places like Florida. And parts of Arizona. You know the states we often read about for abusing immigrants or Blacks. So I wonder if an unrelenting sun, like an unrelenting god, does not contribute to isolationism, solipsism, narcissism and selfishness masked by cheery platitudes handed out like free samples at Costco. 

Something about Southern California in particular troubles me. It always has. I've lived here off and on for years. And I almost always end up escaping back to Northern California and occasional side trips to Massachusetts where I grew up and where there is snow and clouds and rain.  

I think a lot about rain now, its purifying life enhancing qualities and how lacking in rain Southern California is and how that fact, made worse by current trends in climate change, will eventually do this part of the world in. The fires are coming. I sense that. All this will one day be dust and grime. Perhaps it already is when you scrape off the surface.

I like cool weather, warm weather, sunshine. Clouds. But what I love the most, what brings hope into my heart, is waking up before dawn and wondering what today will be like. What darkness will I be dealing with. What cloud cover will protect me from skin cancer. What rain will wash away the world for a day or two while I nestle down into my bed and type away on my computer or scratch away on my yellow legal pads. What novel will I tackle. What meal will I concoct on the stove to sit and simmer all day long. What red wine will I crack open tonight. If I know with almost 100 percent certainty that it will be sunny, that there will be no clouds, no hint of ozone, no wind, no movement...then I feel somehow out of synch with life itself. Because there is limited life in such an environment, isn't there? At least not life conducive to the purported Southern California "lifestyle" touted in all the advertisements.

And that is why Southern California, particularly Hollywood, exists at all. To create the facsimile of life on sound stages. In studios. In coffee shops where thousands of screenwriters sit and sip, as they type away their notions of what life looks like. Somewhere. Out there. In a real world. 

I can think of no other reason a desert that receives water pumped into it has such an other worldly feeling all the time.  And why so many people, basically decent people, native Southern Californians in particular, have this same unreal, other worldly quality about them. So many Stepford people smiling, asking you how you are as they look over your shoulder to that other person, the one who may be a celebrity, who can maybe help them get a break. So they too will have that perceived life that never quite exists except on a sound stage. 

It is no surprise that a cult like Scientology would be so powerful in Southern California. It feeds the need for meaning in life in a place where there is essentially no life at all without water being pumped in 24/7 from someplace else.  Scientology feeds the illusion that you are in control and if you can just climb those steps up to that next level, you will be safe. The rain will never reach you, will it? It is the perfect religion for a place with a relentless sun that demands of its people a relentless pursuit. 

No surprise the man who concocted it was a cynical genius. He may as well have been Louis B. Mayer. In The Master, a thinly veiled treatise on Hubbard, Philip Seymour Hoffman, nails the ego, the will, the narcissism. Hoffman and Hubbard, now both dead and buried and eventually forgotten. Don't kid yourself. We will ALL be forgotten. That's the price of standing too long in the sun.

Such is god that it devours everything exactly at the same moment it is feeding you. It is an unrelenting entity that breeds and then kills. There is in humans a need for cold, rain, snow, clouds. Wind. There is a need to feel discomfort in the bones, chilling us, causing us struggle. Anyone who tells you differently is selling you something.

I am reminded of a scene in a Woody Allen film when a character dons an  elaborate helmet and goggles, climbs into his car and says to Allen's character with total certainty when asked why...

"Keeps out the alpha rays, Max. You don't get old."

But you do get old. In fact, without cloud cover, the sun is speeding up your demise. I can't help but feel a lot more human, sometimes more alive, when I'm in my other home in Northern California. 

It must be the rain. Right?