Ghosts in the Shadow of the Mouse You can't go home again, but you can never really leave it. Dave Greene We cross the San Fernando Valley in the late afternoon, just as the sun begins to set over Los Angeles. It has been a six-hour ride with nothing much to see, and everyone is ready for a break. My wife wants to see the Hollywood sign, but we don’t have time to take a detour, so instead, we pull off the road to stretch our legs and take in the scenery between a gas station and a bodega, looking out on the city. “This place is strange,” my wife says. “It feels like San Francisco but more so.” L.A. does feel strange. And it’s not just the city. The land around us seems unsettling like an alien spiritual force is, somehow, indelibly baked into the earth and architecture. I have often fancied that the Western part of North America has a strange “memory-less” quality. History happens here, to be sure, but it is never remembered. People come and go, but the landscape does not recall ...
