The Diviners

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The light that illuminates the world begins in Los Angeles. Begins in darkness, begins in the mountains, begins in empty landscapes, in doubt and remorse. San Antonio Peak throws shadows upon a city of shadows. There are hints of human insignificance; there are nightmares. But just at the moment of intolerability there’s an eruption of spectra. It’s morning! Morning is hopeful, uncomplicated, and it scales mountaintops, as it scales all things. The light comes from nowhere fathomable, from an apparently eternal reservoir of emanations, radioactivities. Light edging over the mountaintop and across the lakes of the highlands, light across the Angeles National Forest, light rushing across skeins of smog in the California skies. Light on Redlands, light on the planned communities, light on the guy tossing the morning newspaper from a Toyota with a hundred and ninety-three thousand miles on it. Light on the Santa Ana River, on a drunk sleeping tenderly beside its dregs, light on the Santa Ana Mountains, the San Bernardino Mountains, light on the Prado Basin, where a stabbing victim welters in her wounds. Light on East Los Angeles, on gangsters who haven’t slept yet. Light upon the unvisited downtown expanses of Los Angeles. An empty city bus idles at a red light. Light on the La Brea Tar Pits, on the Pleistocene and Holocene residents of the city, light on the system of viaducts coming down from the mountains, from the trickle of the Colorado River, light on the faint traces of the San Andreas fault, light on the cracked and empty sidewalks, light moving faster now, or apparently faster, the Magic Hour of dawn on the tanning-salon faces coming out of endless parties from the night before. Light upon the freeways, light upon tinted windows, light upon limousines.

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