There Was A Level On Which I

It Is Hard For People Who Have Not Lived In Los Angeles To Realize How Radically The Santa Ana Figures In The Local Imagination. ... The Wind Shows Us How Close To The Edge We Are.

Most Death Now Happens In Hospitals. It's Been Medicalized. It Happens Away From Where We Deal With It Directly. And That's A Huge Change. At The Beginning Of The 20th Century Most People Died At Home. Death Was Much More Common.

Once, In A Dry Season, I Wrote In Large Letters Across Two Pages Of A Notebook That Innocence Ends When One Is Stripped Of The Delusion That One Likes Oneself. Although Now, Some Years Later, I Marvel That A Mind On The Outs With Itself Should Have Nonetheless Made Painstaking Record Of Its Every Tremor, I Recall With Embarrassing Clarity The Flavor Of Those Particular Ashes. It Was A Matter Of Misplaced Self-respect.

The Future Always Looks Good In The Golden Land, Because No One Remembers The Past.

I Mean Maybe I Was Holding All The Aces, But What Was The Game?