From the hills you can see the whole mess of it: the spare parts from cities past and future strewn unceremoniously into the basin to rot in the sun. Tony avenues rub with tired industrial areas–ghettos clustered around smokestacks. They are tired from the labor of dreaming that one could make an "honest living" doing "honest work." Foxes dream of well-intentioned cocaine pontifications. Some are going to hell. Some are always running; from Metro line to Metro line, off the bus and into traffic, looking for God knows what. All they know is that it's here in California. Here in this bathtub made from mountains and ocean. From here the ocean isn't the ocean. From here, the ocean is a wall to stop the onrush of bonebleached stucco and one-story porn superstores, the misconceived malls and the baked, glittering pavement of the freeways. If not for the ocean the city would go on forever.

I remember standing on the hills watching it burn. A patch of flames here. A Korean grocery store. An outsized smudgepot. A Bob's Big Boy. A whole bunch of people saying: Why the fuck not?

Los Angeles.

Cover Art: Michael Aghajanian