An Ode to Pacific Palisades: the Fields of the Town

Dearest Palisadians,

A year has passed.

Long enough for the adrenaline to fade. Long enough for the shock to turn into something quieter. A low, constant hum in the background of daily life.

And a new feeling.

Uncertainty. An uncertainty about tomorrow.

And it’s impacting the choices many are making about whether to move back. Whether to rebuild. Whether to buy. Whether to encourage our kids to buy in town.

Uncertainty swims around questions like, “Is the Palisades going to be like it was?” “Are developers going to start buying multiple properties?” “Who’s going to be moving into town?” “Is the value of homes going to go up?” “When?”

Because the hardest part of “after” isn’t only the loss. It’s the not knowing what the loss will turn into.

We’re standing in that strange hallway between what we loved and whatever comes next—trying to reach forward and touch the future. Trying to grab a handle. Trying to feel something solid.

Let’s switch gears. Talk about one of the most beautiful words ever…

Fields.

Invisible influences that permeate everything. Everything.

Not a “thing” competing with other things—more like the universe’s rulebook.

Gravity. The baseline that lets there be “down.” It holds oceans to Earth, air to our lungs, and all of us to the ground. It’s the quiet agreement that keeps the world from flying apart.

Electromagnetism. The touch field. It’s the invisible backstop that lets you hold a mug, hug your kids, and build a house that stays a home. It’s how your body turns the world into feeling.

Light. Waves crossing space, carrying color, warmth, and the story of the world arriving in our eyes.

And the mother lode. Quantum fields.

Our universe’s exquisite operating system. Invisible fabrics, speaking a language we’re nowhere near deciphering. The engine room where reality gets assembled.

Peek under the hood of quantum fields—wonder will welcome you at the door.

Take superpositions, where an electron can be in more than one place at the same time. Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.

Fields. Our everyday, rain or shine, mysterious, dependable playbook.

And how often do any of us think about any of this?

We just live our lives—while something unseen draws the roadmap, all behind the scenes. Holding the world together, setting up todays, and making room for tomorrow.

Back to our Palisades.

Because our town has fields, too.

An earned foundation—invisibly, quietly threads through every decision, every move we make today—or will make tomorrow.

A kind of home language you can’t photograph, but you feel it in the first five minutes: the tone, the eye contact, the way people make room.

And it feels good. It feels like what home is.

A way, a spirit, a heartbeat of a town—born from the belly of who we’ve always been.

It’s the instinct of how we’ve always coached each other’s kids at the park. Let folks step in front of us in line at the grocery store. Knocked on the doors of older neighbors. The learned way a toddler bike gets handed down, then handed down again, until a kid rides off like they just won the Tour de France.

It’s the way we show up at Little League, school plays, and scout meetings. The way a bocce hug turns into an unexpected lifeline. The way help travels in this town—a ladder, a number, a name—like lifejackets passed hand to hand.

The way a neighbor’s porch chair feels like a welcome sign.

It’s the thousand small, selfless moves—unphotographed, unposted—that say, “We’re all a part of something pretty extraordinary.”

If we can trust nature’s unseen fields to keep tomorrow behaving like tomorrow—sunrise, tides, seasons—maybe we can trust the fields of this town to shape what comes next.

And to that question of what will tomorrow bring.

A year ago, the town was blanketed in a shroud of ash and grey. I was riding my bike around town today. The parkways, the mountains in the distance that tuck us in at night—they’re wearing green like a promise.

Homes sprouting out of the ground with the stubbornness of a crocus—up and down the Alphabet Streets, Huntington, El Medio Bluffs and Lower Marquez.

Six thousand Palisadians are already back in homes, condos, and apartments. Every week, more storefronts flip over their signs to “We’re Open.” And behind every one of these signs is a story and a brave yes.

Grade and high schools are opening their familiar doors.

I drove my bike into the park as a January sunset was about to show us its latest original painting. The parking lot was packed. Parents and little kids swinging in the playground. The bocce courts filled with every age.

In the little gym, sneakers squeaking like a town’s heartbeat.

We’re already back. We’ve already shown our hand.

And it’s a winning one.

Do we have a long way to go? Sure, we do.

But if we listen to those fields all around us—the ones in nature, and the ones in us… They’re whispering something simple.

The space between isn’t empty.

So yes, new faces will arrive. Change will happen—because nothing alive stays frozen.

But here’s the thing I believe.

The Palisades isn’t held together by the houses. It’s held together by the unseen structure underneath them.

That’s our field. Not mystical. Not abstract. Practical.

A lived code of decency—so consistent it becomes an atmosphere.

So strong it draws the same kind of people in, again and again. People who want to belong to something that behaves like this.

And right now—in this long, uncertain moment—it can feel like we’re standing on air. Like we should be able to touch the answer by now.

But maybe this season isn’t absence. Maybe it’s formation.

Maybe the field is doing what fields do: holding things in place while the next chapter assembles.

Holding us back from panic. Holding us back from rushing. Holding us back from turning fear into a blueprint.

Because what we’re rebuilding isn’t just buildings.

We’re rebuilding meaning. We’re rebuilding identity. We’re rebuilding the feeling of home.

And those things don’t respond well to being grabbed. They respond to being carried. They respond to time. They respond to listening.

They respond to the kind of patience that trusts something real is happening, even when you can’t point to it yet.

So to the question underneath all the questions—what will tomorrow bring?

It will bring us back.

Old settlers. New pioneers. Good people, drawn by what this place has always been.

And we will welcome you. Introduce you to your neighbors. Hand you a number. Offer you a chair.

And one night—in the quiet—you’ll feel it.

That field. The thing that never burned.

And it’s the most comforting feeling in the world.

And when the future finally arrives—in detail, in color, in unexpected beauty—we might realize the wonder wasn’t only in the outcome.

It was also in the mystery that we learned to live with.

And one day soon, maybe we find the future wasn’t waiting on us.

It was growing toward us.

The thrill of life, hiding in plain sight…

In the space between.

(Editor’s note: Jimmy Dunne is an American songwriter, recording artist, composer, film and television producer, and entrepreneur. His songs have been recorded on 27,000,000 records worldwide and over 1,400 television episodes and film scores. Palisades residents know him as the man who brought bocce to the Palisades. He was a Pacific Palisades Citizen of the Year in 2018.)