Status Updates From The Long Take: A noir narra...

Original cities were contained, concentrated social collectives. But Los Angeles is the opposite. Immune to everything but the limits of its host,the city expands at pace - to the edges of its territory: the mountains, its neighbors, the ocean’s verge - an infestation, a carcinoma.

He stayed in for New Year’s Eve, as usual, because of the noise.
Rolling pieces of wet paper into earplugs, he sat at the window,
nursing a bottle, watching the lights.
Always reminded him of the tracers – red, blue and yellow –
our guys firing back from the boats
at the planes coming over. The explosions.
He couldn’t even hear the splash of whiskey in the glass.

The fishermen with the long stares would say the haar is the sea’s breath, and the sea over shingle a dying man’s rattle. It was true for Lachlan from Pleasant Bay, with his face full of shrapnel and the death-shudders. I spaded his pack in after his remains; we were under fire, so a foot-deep had to do.