Reversals

If the literary critic Edmund Wilson is to be believed, San Diego was at one point in time the suicide capital of the United States. "On the West Coast today, the suicide rate is twice that of the Middle Atlantic coast, and the suicide rate of San Diego has become since 1911 the highest in the United States." He wrote in 1932.

"The Americans still tend to move westward, and many drift southward toward the sun. San Diego is situated in the extreme southwestern corner of the United States; and since our real westward expansion has come to a standstill, it has become a kind of jumping-off place." Wilson, in a fit of morbid fatalism, chalked some of this up to an attraction of both physically and mentally ill to San Diego. "The sufferers have a tendency to keep moving away from places, under the illusion that they are leaving the disease behind. And when they have moved to San Diego, they find they are finally cornered, there is nowhere farther to go."

Unsurprisingly, San Diego is no longer the suicide capital of the country, and California is ranks 43rd in the latest figures, so I think it's pretty safe to say Wilson might've been a little melodramatic.

Migrator I & II

In response to Shut.

Migrator, watercolor on watercolor paper, approx. 5" x 3.5"

Migrator II, watercolor on watercolor paper, approx. 5" x 4"