Dedicated to everyone out here in this dusty metropolis with me...to show those elsewhere why we persist in this place.

"A city named after sacred but imaginary beings, in a state named after a paradise that was the figment of a woman's dream; a city that came to fame by filming such figments; a city existing now on sufferance from the ever-hotter desert and the ever-rising sea, and that feels every day, to so many of us, like a mirage as it waits for its great quake. Its suffering is real enough, God knows. But its beauty is the beauty of letting things go; letting go of what you want for what you are, or what you are for what you want; letting go of so much - and that is a hard beauty to love."

Michael Ventura, "Grand Illusion."