Impressions from A Road to Nowhere by Jacob Levi

It is eight in the morning, it’s forty-five degrees, and I am sitting on the passenger side as we zoom down the highway through the Mojave. Endless orange-brown sand is highlighted only by the occasional shrub, damned by the lottery of birth to grow in this inhospitable, arid climate. We pull over to pee. I watch my feet for rattlesnakes, thorns, spiders, or any other unfriendly creature that might ruin this otherwise picturesque morning. Don’t forget to face downwind.

I’m not sure why or how I got here, only that I haven’t slept in what feels like days, and my skin is beginning to meld to the leather seat. I hope I remember how to walk because I’m not sure I can feel my legs. The sun is glaring overhead, but nothing can hurt me through my sunglasses. Sonic Youth blasts over the stereo. Thurston Moore screams, “Incinerate!” over and over, an anthem of urban decay and rebellion. A propos. I sit idly by as the desert passes by me.

This is nowhere. There are no gas stations, no 7-11’s, no restrooms. Only sand and dirt for miles and miles. Every car that crosses our path is an event on this two-lane road to nowhere. Or should I say, road from nowhere. The end of this road leads to the center of it all, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the beaches, the bars. But here! Here we are free. The traffic, the drama, and the light—it’s all strikingly unreal in the midst of sand dunes that extend as far as the eye can see.

But somehow it has crept. Yes, the dirt and the dust and the tumbleweeds creep steadily towards Los Angeles, the tropical city built upon a desert. The desert has crept into my car—sand in my nostrils, in my mouth, between my toes, in the car. However, what I mean is that Los Angeles has crept toward the desert. From behind a rolling hill of red sand emerges a conglomerate of hundreds of prefabricated houses, meticulously ordered such that the cloister could almost pass for a community. There is not a single car in a single model home. Someone must’ve thought this was a good place to build homes. In the middle of the Mojave Desert. Surely there are people who, seeking solitude or natural beauty, want to live in the desert. Apparently none of them were interested in a prefab’ home surrounded by a hundred other identical prefab’ homes. It appears that little boxes on the hillside are more marketable amidst the lush palm trees of San Diego and Thousand Oaks.

We pass a small ranch with a sign on the highway. It reads, “GET THE US OUT OF THE UN,” in ever-patriotic red, white and blue-stenciled lettering. Really? I didn’t know there were people who felt that way. Was I lost? Had I made a wrong turn and crossed into unfriendly lands? I don’t even think Sarah Palin wants to leave the UN—and she can see Russia from her house!

My mind once again returns to Sonic Youth. Maybe there is something to be said about the parallels between urban decay and the state of affairs in the Mojave this morning. Yes, indeed we should pull out of the UN. Look at all these Mexicans stealing our jobs. Look at all these tumbleweeds in need of mending. To think that nobody has bothered to water those scraggily bushes on the side of the highway! Travesty. Bring American jobs back home to the Mojave, where they belong. I hear that the housing crisis hit the central Mojave the worst. Lost jobs everywhere. Wall Street has no idea. Whoever put that sign up was certainly on to something; Sonic Youth was clearly talking about the same thing. There is something very, very wrong with this country, and it is clearly France. Politics tire me out and I return to watching the car’s shadow cross the melting asphalt.
Sometimes this city doesn’t know where to stop. I thought I had freed myself from it, at least for this Saturday morning, but the sprawl already caught up. It is difficult to imagine that the Valley looked much like this desert less than a century ago, but it is easy to envision that this area will probably look like the Valley does now in due time, scattered with affordable housing, fast food and expensive gasoline. If you can’t bring the people to LA, bring LA to the people. So far I don’t see too many of either, but that is certain to change. I find myself constantly repeating the last line in Roman Polanski’s neo-film noir classic, “Chinatown” in my head: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” This city does not seem to know its own limits.