Well. It remains steadfastly true that SoCal is another universe which we can only hope to skim the stratosphere of in our quest to understanding. I love your vignettes of weirdness there! I don’t remember any of these tales; you should write them down since they’re so evocative of the slightly sinister lurking in the SoCal-signifying palm trees.

I can’t believe this is the first time you’ve written here on the Rabbit! What, you shy???

Thanks, Mom. I love you so much.

Nathanael West was right about the milieu. Even the plants are sinister.

Palm trees that rattle in the sandy, siccative wind like myriad venetian blinds falling from windows. Crows and pigeons that set fire to the same trees by carrying lighted cigarette butts to their nests. (I know that was in a movie, but it really happens, once right outside my apartment.) A non-native species of conifer imported to SoCal that is called a bunya-bunya tree. It produces seed cones the size of a regulation football. In season the trees regularly bean unwary passersby and very occasionally kill someone. This causes an outcry in the editorials pages but nothing is ever done.

I saw a thing I strolling in a leisurely manner across the path one night as I was going to the laundry room; I stamped my foot to make it dash off. It didn’t. It wasn’t a mouse at all, but a huge ant-like creature that was young rat-sized. Dashing for my insect guide (I’d already looked up palmetto bugs,) I learned that it was a Jerusalem cricket, a revolting-looking but inoffensive insect that lives mostly in leaf litter and munches on roots. What the hell an evolutionary monstrosity like that has to do with Jerusalem, I don’t want to imagine. Maybe you can tell me, since you visited the West Bank.

Maybe Southern California is the United States’ Gaza Strip. In which case we need to keep our shoulders to the door to keep out all we can. They have their own gods down there, so to hell with ‘em.

Bless you child. Your old mother is truly proud of you.