novembre

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creation myth take one

In 1966 we were emptied. We took out the past and shoved it north to Santa Barbara. They parcelled marketable bits back to us throughout the following decades, eventually coating our Ventura with a thick layer of pastel stucco --mayonnaise mixed with grit sopped against our buildings-- and cleanly lettered street signs, but that is not then. We were viewing the sandy city as a stopgap for greater things; the cracked twenties bungalos, the sand in our hair and the blocks of famland did not feel permanent to us then. We started building on the hills, away from the ocean, so we wouldn't interrupt the orchards sandwiched between us and the mountains. To sew these bookends together we planted more and more palms along our newly paved streets. This was then, when the palms hadn't yet grown twenty feet tall and didn't yet bow over sadly, subserviently nodding towards the dotted yellow lines they were planted to frame. In the wind their young heads would shake and fronds tore from the new trunks, skating through parking lots and our first mini-malls. That Foster's Freeze which inexplicably sold cheese enchiladas right alongside its milkshakes. The vagabond fronds would skitter through flat, one story schools, taking no note of their fashionably low ceilings hanging like visors. Past the Pic N Save, the park that used to be a cemetery, the bank that used to be a museum that used to be a bank--
and they'd stop, finally, trapped under the whitewashed tires of the first fleets of used cars, lined up as if going into battle. Regiment One prostrated themselves at the feet of shoppers who were waylayed from their usual trip to Hollywood for a car. Just stay here, the sand, the streets, the schools whispered. Just stay here a little while.

1:15 am - 10.20.05

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