SYREN SEA

SYREN SEA

You wind down out of the desert just outside Joshua Tree with the taste of dry air and dust in your mouth and the scent of orange blossoms in your head. You drive past the wind-whipped sand and the rows of date trees straight out of The Thousand and One Nights and find yourself along a barren highway stretch where the only things you see are fenced-in tracts of empty land. Your mind whirls chromesthesially from the shouting of the desert flower and you swear you hallucinate when to the side you see a vast ocean and smell the salt in the air. The vision is too immense for a mirage—Ocean water stretching for miles here amid the desert. As you drive further you come upon a sign that beckons you to follow a cosmic road:

“Welcome to the Syren Sea”

Syren Sea, California, is an oasis that rises wicked and inscrutable from the farthest corner of a near-endless desert. The desert rolls effortlessly, until it tumbles and falls, abrupt and heedless, into an emerald-green ocean. The ocean breeze wraps her inhabitants in a veil of lethargic bliss that lends itself best to idle pleasure and shameless indulgence. Though the climate is parched, the city is watered copiously and blooms abundant with all manner of flora and fauna. The palm trees sway in the hot breezes and the animals mate with abandon. There are ripe fruits and there is rich soil.

The guardians of Syren Sea are careful to maintain her image. They invest in her growth so that she devours more and more of the sand which surrounds her—without ever gaining a pound. Movies and gambling are her great loves. There are plenty of strip clubs, but nary a church. You feel like you need a forklift here just to send up a prayer.

When the sun sets and nighttime reveals its mystery, the lights of the city are unleashed like a plague of phosphorescent locusts and the rattle and ring of slot machines burst forth in a sinister buzz.

This is the draw, the excitement of this place. People come. They never stop coming. They come with portfolios of dreams that they invest in the dust and wind.

So it was that I fell into this place many years ago when I left New York. Back then, my soul was filled with artistry and my eyes hungered for pleasure. Now the world has emptied both of their wonder. I freeze in the hot sun wondering where the time went.

This is where we shall begin. Sit with me awhile. We've got stuff to talk about.