"...I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again."
— Joan Didion

I can't stop thinking about California. For weeks now, walking to work, the snow-streaked wind whipping off the harbour in my small hometown and striking me repeatedly in the face, I am thinking about California. I am sleeping like I've been sedated and dreaming about it. It follows me around. This is not the first winter I've suffered this affliction: I still remember shivering under heaps of blankets at sixteen, sifting through an endless stream of photos of the Golden State from a different time and listening to the Mamas and the Papas. If I didn't tell her / I could leave today...

To truly be able to say you have succeeded as a writer, to me, is to be able to get through any door simply by saying so. I'm with so-and-so magazine working on such-and-such a piece, and, I'm on the list. This was the other thing I dreamed of, and in the moments I'm not paralyzed at the thought of word counts and deadlines and schedules, I still do. When I was California Dreamin' at sixteen, this was truly the fantasy I yearned for. To be able to do what I loved and leave today. Didion is always doing this: to Las Vegas, to Hawaii, to the Mexican desert, to New York for what was going to be six months, which turned into eight years, because when she wanted to get out she could always just leave today. And when she came home the heat would always have its tired arms open. I think of another famous California—one that also follows me to work, albeit in my headphones: that of Joni Mitchell. When Mitchell sings, Will you take me as I am? / Strung out on another man / California, I'm coming home, I know in my heart that she doesn't sing of a past lover. She sings of all the places she's left her home for. She sings of them with intrigue, and sometimes even appreciation, but never the devotion she saves for her California. Didion does the same.

In this way, Slouching is a love letter on every page. Even between the lines about the state itself, you can still read its name. It's in everything, even when it's not.

My best friend went to California just a few months ago to visit a childhood friend for the first time ever. She calls me, swept over by its sheer scope. "It's the center of everything." She tells me that everywhere you turn, you become bombarded with images. "So many iconic images." I close my eyes and try to see it. I see the Hollywood sign. I see boardwalks and beaches. I see Joan Didion wearing a bikini to Ralph's Market on the corner of Sunset and Fuller. I have never been to California. Joan's vision is my vision. I like to imagine a place where streets are called things like Sunset and you can wear a bikini to the supermarket. But I can't leave today. I go on imagining.

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