The fog doesn't sink low enough to comingle with degenerates. It hovers just above our heads as if to impede us from some blessed heaven that is, after all, imaginary. Beneath this bleak blockade of weather we forget the lie of eternal bliss above the grey, the hopeful myth that good behavior somehow manifests a reward of peace. Down here on the potholed pavement of an abandoned hotel, somewhere near the ocean shore, even parking has its dangers. The orange refinery casts cataclysmic light across the black ribbon of railroad tracks and complements the neo-gothic mise en scene. I hear the whistle and gathering gallop of a passing train, but see nothing. I feel that I have witnessed the appropriate wail of a ghost.

In the meantime a reunion of sorts takes place in one desperate corner of this darkened seaside dump. I "know" people here, but not well enough. Some I know more than others. Some, it seems, know each other. Some I wish I didn't know. Some I wish I knew, but have never met, and would probably regret knowing if I did. I feign oblivious enchantment with these vain, unsavory characters, the derivative cast of an 18th-century novel, complete with morose political and romantic intrigue. Yet they have corrupted and devolved, maintaining all the sensuality and sophistication of flies that need swatting. Is this self-contempt? Or simply cold observation and a hallucinogenic longing for the low clouds to open up and let me rise? Since I know that such glories do not happen, I linger in this seedy paradox and only dream of paradise.