Talib Jabbar

As U.S. global power shifts, Zócalo is taking a look at what is emerging in its stead. “What Is the New World Order?” is a series of editorial essays and a public program, presented in collaboration with JLF Los Angeles, that draws on history, literature, and politics to help us understand the world’s next turn. Is a “new world order” emerging as the U.S. abdicates its global leadership, as a recent New York Times essay put it?

Hold on a sec—let me just pull this marine layer back over Santa Monica … OK, cool. What was I saying? I forget. Fog brain. Happens when you’ve been hanging out between the Pacific plate and the North American plate for a few geological epochs. You lose track of details. Is it August? Is it May gray? Does time even exist when you’re constantly pounding shale into sand? Now I remember why I’m taking a quick break from slowly eroding Big Sur into the abyss.

With apologies to Raymond Chandler. The Santa Ana winds were blowing hot and mean over the mountains. It was the kind of weather that curls the edges of your sanity, and sends councilmembers and rats scurrying for deeper shadows. I’m a private dick—name’s Marlowe—and I was in my office off Hollywood Boulevard, nursing a lukewarm bourbon out of a glass that had seen better days. Just like the city outside my window, Los Angeles. But something was shifting in the smog.