california, n.Definitions

California is an Italy without its art.

California is a state where blondes are the state flower.

California is a tragic country, like Palestine, like every Promised Land.

California is a place whose beaches are sun-drenched but so cold you come home with a frostbitten suntan.

California is a place where one loses one point of IQ every year.

California is a place where the only thing people read is the license plate in front of them.

California is a place where the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here is where we run out of continent.

California is once-and-future America, and much that is newest and biggest in this country, both its best and worst, is concentrated along our western edge.