In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

ELSEWHERE Before sleep last night I laythere in a reverie over LA,and dreamt of it all night and put off getting up for fear it would go away. All my fears of flying dissipated at the thought of cruising in the air to Los Angeles. I was happy there. I said (in my dream) to M., "I know it's too late to go anywhere"—we had arrived at dusk— "but let's take a spin through Beverly Hills anyway." My eyes hurt. I thought a drive through the quiet green world of Beverly Hills would be a cure. And I was back in the silenceof the receding houses broken only by the ticking of sprinklers. Paradise was a rugged garden compared to this. And then I thought, "No, I'd rather seek out my cousin in the Korean restaurant above the bookstore near UCLA." The part of me watching the dream thought Butyour cousin is no longer there. She was never there. So it wasn't my cousin. It was a phantom. So what. I wanted to go. It was no phantom. It was a girl named Beverly from Burbank from whom I mysteriouslydrifted away. Gray-eyed, olive-skinned, mindful, she wore horn-rimmed glasseseven at fifteen. But the quality of the light at the end of the street— the ineradicable smog-tinge that almost made the sumptuous plush excruciation of the sunset more bearable, like the fumes hovering in the clement evening and theflow of traffic down Laurel Canyon from the valley to the sea, the people getting out of their cars to chat while waiting for the light to change, for the traffic to move, the horns as if scored by Gershwin, and I remembered the letter I receivedyesterday from a friend who was on his way to LA,and what could be better than to be in LAwhen it iswinter here, and the predictions are so dire 144 I cannot listen to the weather or the threats of war. My mother tells me I loved flying as a child. "But," I wanted to yell out of sleep, "it's becausewe wereflying to LA.I liked the people there. They werehappy. They didn't quarrel so much." Now those same people may be gone or dead but that sunny mood must have something to do with the place. I envymy friend's journey and sojourn there. I can seemyself,in Malibu, draw the drapes of a glasshouse on stilts as the dawn slides from gray to honey and feel my dread ebb away as the breakers make their wayup the beach. And it seems uselessto go anywhere, to do more than stand in the motel lot, in the sulfurous haze, one hand on my suitcase, the other still slamming the door of the rented car. 145 ...

Share