Was There Ever In Anyone's Life Span

California Is A Place In Which A Boom Mentality And A Sense Of Chekhovian Loss Meet In Uneasy Suspension.

As It Happened, I Didn't Grow Up To Be The Kind Of Woman Who Is The Heroine In A Western, And Although The Men I Have Known Have Had Many Virtues And Have Taken Me To Live In Many Places I Have Come To Love, They Have Never Been John Wayne, And They Have Never Taken Me To The Bend In The River Where The Cottonwoods Grow. Deep In That Part Of My Heart Where Artificial Rain Forever Falls, That Is Still The Line I Want To Hear.

Grief, When It Comes, Is Nothing Like We Expect It To Be.

A Pool Is, For Many Of Us In The West, A Symbol Not Of Affluence But Of Order, Of Control Over The Uncontrollable. A Pool Is Water, Made Available And Useful, And Is, As Such, Infinitely Soothing To The Western Eye.

For However Dutifully We Record What We See Around Us, The Common Denominator Of All We See Is Always, Transparently, Shamelessly, The Implacable I.