LEONARD KRIEGEL
N orth on 99
They are not so much states as states of mind - and in their current de–
cline, they loom against the demands of the imagination like that giant
white apparition at the end of Poe's
Narrative oj A. Cordon
Pym.
Yet the
weight of their collective presence still urges the nation toward getting
and spending. California and New York remain the raw alternatives for
our American future. They may struggle with that future and with each
other, but the ambitions of our coastal empires still anchor this nation.
A continent stands between New York and California, yet they take
their cues from each other. Like opposing trial lawyers delivering their
jury summations, our coastal rivals invent the future and define the past
with threnodies of irritation and envy intended to win plaudits from
Ohio and Maine, Utah and Georgia. Going under hasn't stopped either
of our coastal claimants from wanting to define this nation.
Texas and Florida may arm themselves with statistics on future
growth, but the dreams and nightmares littering the national psyche like
empty beer cans necklacing mountain roads belong to California and
New York. Even the decline in their fortunes reminds us that prosperity
in America is quixotic. Millenarian expectation walks hand-in-hand with
the prospect of imminent catastrophe, in a land where horror movies
existed long before Hollywood discovered the nation 's greatest passion
was the empty landscape.
California under siege offers the same possibilities it possessed when
word of the Gold Rush of 1849 first spread east. From that moment,
California romanced the rest of America. Today, as New York in de–
cline turns into itself, California continues to insist on licking its wounds
in public. An arresting contrast in facing adversity shows us one state
burrowing into its vanishing luster, unable to accept the loss of the
transforming power of wealth, its confidence evaporating so that its
proudest boast is that it isn't California. Meanwhile, the other feeds its
problems to the public the way the Santa Anna winds feed its brush fires
each autumn.
I stand on a concrete walk fronting a narrow beach at Santa
