REFUSNIK

There's something about the dazzling sunlight and its mindless persistence that makes life in Southern California a culvert of concussed hopes and shattered dreams. Many people - among them, my good friend David Schoffman - migrate there in search of absolution only to find distended suburbs and slow moving traffic. The lucky who are indigenous to the area treat leisure like a deity and therefore seek neither indulgence nor mercy. We call those wretched souls 'the happy.'

The Happy try not to tax their compassion by reading too much serious literature. They avoid wheat and eggs and typically don't own cats. They enjoy the outdoors and teach their children to swim by throwing them into warm, bubbly pools shortly after birth. They're partial to repetition and nothing soothes them more than the sound of a vibrating iPhone.

Schoffman fits in like a third rail. He leads his volatile life, outcast and in parallel. The only converging vanishing point between David and his environment is the inevitability of extinction and even that seems uncertain.

In Paris where they value their intellectuals in excess, Schoffman felt a constant thud of shame. After serving his necessary apprenticeship in the early 1980s he returned to California and the certain misery of total alienation.

He's been living in blissful terror ever since.