By Vivian Simon SC ’28

I was in New York for exactly twelve hours this summer. I landed at Newark in my Canadian tuxedo and I stepped out and it was 96 degrees and glorious. The off-city stench filled me with an unprecedented joy.

It’s hot in Claremont. I can’t breathe. Week two or three and it is one hundred eight degrees. It’s so hot. My feet are burning. Being in this desert shuts me up and dries my brain. It bangs around inside my head and I don’t know what the future holds. There is no home here. My feet hurt. The gravel would scald. I am constantly trying to fight. The slightest wind is god kissing. The heat pisses me off and the sun hurts my eyes. I need to sneeze but I’m over my cold. It’s been so hot in Claremont since I’ve gotten back. I want to skin myself.

If you write over here, you’re being very 

Dramatic and likely have no idea what

you’re talking 

about limits and Rogerian theory and if Ethiopian jazz does not 

work, nothing will. It is possible to 

Feel, I suppose, except I know nothing 

will ever make Sunset feel, 

And the beach is just sand and water,

when Santa Monica isn’t trash

Mimicking every other part 

of limits of a desert of a land:

Los Angeles where few things feel 

boxers in Central Park snow slush dogs in red 

leashes gripped in fleece gloves one lost and grounded 

in a week of putting a hand on your stomach in Sheep Meadow

What I know

is limited to this side 

of Divinity: everyone is being spat

Out of New York, one up out of 

just reaching the limit you can 

claim all of that, yes,

you may, and I will let this seep

into you, your new convinced reality, 

But ultimately New York was never

supposed to be lived in, 

and I must return, like you, and we 

Might say O Glory It Is Wonder-

Ful, Central Park, 

A strong sense of New York 

Epicenter. I left New York 

may there never be equilibrium 

Americans are always on the quest

To go as west as they can. Hence,

I am in California. And I do love it 

— perhaps because of a girl, not to

say I don’t have a distinct 

appreciation and yes, perhaps even love

for Elliott Smith and Bret Easton Ellis

and the Los Feliz Flea, and Will Rogers

and when Caeser Chavez becomes

Sunset, driving on Sunset all 

the way through, roasted and nude, 

I certainly do live in California. 

When we pass the Getty Villa, my mother

says it is so ugly because it is meant to 

look old, but this is Los Angeles, 

so it was built in the seventies

Which is really what this is all about

This is to say: I will return to New York, for 

the same ineffable reason that I left I say 

reason because there must only be one, 

standing alone on the corner of 72nd and Broad-

Way, where I stood before, alone and with and Ultimately, it all comes back to New York. after 

The End of Something that seemed to be 

so worthy of sadness