Imperial County

Devin Currens
Jul 22, 2017 · 3 min read

Locura y Belleza

“It may be that since this southeast corner of California is so peculiar, enigmatic, sad, beautiful and perfect as it stands, delineation of any sort should be foregone in favor of the recording of ‘pure’ perceptions, for instance by means of a camera alone; or failing that, by reliance on word-pictures: a cityscape of withered palms, white tiles, glaring parking lots, and portico-shaded loungers who watch the boxcars groan by; a cropscape of a rich green basil field, whose fragrance rises up as massively resonant as an organ-chord.”
-William T. Vollmann
“Imperial”
“Imperial does not need me to be itself”
“I felt hollowed out, ready to cross the border from life to death, from the urgent color and filth of Mexicali to the museum called Calexico, whose regular sidewalks empty long before dark.”
“And what should we do about the Salton Sea, which is to say what should we think, and on what basis, not to mention how should we live?”
“Why be exposed to the searing eye in the sky? Whatever doesn’t hide gets half-bleached, half-effaced, like the lettering on the welcome-signs of those visionary cities around the Salton Sea. Is that convenience store closed? To find out, it’s necessary to press one’s nose against its dark-glazed windows. That’s why the everydayness of Imperial is a mystery.”
“And now to our tale, whose plot might be summed up as follows: The Desert Disappears.”
“Progress is the delicious Mexicali whore who’s just had a happy orgasm with her hand in your hair and your head between her legs; when it’s your turn, and the condom breaks.”
“Nothing can touch this marriage of land and sky, of heat and salt, this hammer and anvil, this procreating couple whose only child is a plain which unlike a rainforest, an empire or a work of art can outlast anything the planet itself can, anything, even human beings even water or waterlessness; and if, God forbid, Imperial itself does someday get riddled with cities, its character will remain almost unaffected; it will go on and on, true to itself, long after such temporary superficialities as ‘the U.S.A’ and ‘Mexico’ have become as washed out as old neon signs in the searing daylight of Indio.”

words by William Vollmann
photos by Devin Currens

#WilliamVollmann #ImperialCounty #FarmingInTheDesert #Irrigation #SaltonSea #Borderlands #NoFilter

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