The Santa Clarita Diet

It was hard to miss the picture of Drew Barrymore, her mouth dripping with blood, on the back of my Men’s Health.  I assumed rightly the topic was cannibalism, and the “humor” the juxtaposition of fake friendliness, fake happiness, with authentic emotional hunger and inexhaustible rage.

I have felt, in times of extreme tension, the urge to bite someone.  I know the feeling.

And the Bay Area is fucking psychotic.  It was bad when I was there several decades ago, and I’m sure it has gotten worse.  You might have seen the picture of some home in Oakland with most of the roof missing that was for sale for $367,000 or something like that.

When you crowd rats into a cage, they get mean.  They get nasty.  Fights which would not happen with space become continual.

So mythically, they are expressing something real.

The question remains, though: how do we best build and support mental health in all circumstances?  More concretely, how do we build and support authentic, deep relaxation?  India is overcrowded to a much greater extent, but they deal with it.  They do not feel, I don’t think, the need to kill and eat each other most of the time in most places.  They have an intact–or largely intact–culture.  They have meaningful family relations.  Everyone has a place and a role, at least in theory.  They are not, yet, on this manic American quest for authenticity, permanent happiness, and material plenty.

Look around you.  Learn.  It is a start.

Edit: I seem to have confused Santa Clarita with Santa Clara. My point remains. LA is if anything worse. And all that mess is LA as far as I am concerned.