Noncompliant: A Sunglassed Elegy from Camarillo
The waiting room at Camarillo State Hospital is still occupied by the dead, each of them hidden behind sunglasses and the institutional fictions that once contained them. As one woman moves back through the wreckage of her own history there, witnessing becomes its own form of resurrection.
Writing The California Fever Dream
“Outside, the sky began changing colors like it was unsure which version of the sunset to run. A Joshua Tree caught fire, silently. Beautifully. And then reassembled itself in reverse.”
— Static at the edge of 29 Palms
“She could taste the day. Hot pennies. Sunscreen. The faint chemical sweetness of melted plastic… She told herself this was normal. California normal. A climate that didn’t ask permission.”
— What California Makes
“The heat was biblical and immediate. By the time she had crossed the wash and climbed the low rise beyond it, her shirt was sticking to her back and her thoughts had gone strangely bright around the edges.”