Bill Mesnik’s MESMERIZED, Episode 3 “SANTA ANAS”

The man trudges on, to where he doesn’t know. He just needs a place to land. The air is hot and choking, his brain is racing. Then, he realizes: it’s Santa Ana season. “The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior. ...[T]he violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.”— Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. (1968)