On Nicolette Polek’s “Bitter Water Opera”

WHEN I FIRST moved to Los Angeles, I was enraptured—not by the sun, nor by the looming specter of celebrity, but by the novelty and variety of the landscape. Back in my suburban Maryland hometown, the terrain had been flat and monotonous; lawns, soccer fields, and stretches of forest were all painted the same sleepy shade of green. In Los Angeles, craggy golden mountains rise above hotels, marquees, and parking garages; freeways run parallel to the vast, blue Pacific. Even the city’s infamous traffic jams offer opportunities to reflect on (and in) nature’s radiance. Soon after my arrival, I set out for Joshua Tree National Park. In the desert, surveying the sheer emptiness of the expanse, I finally understood what the transcendentalists meant when they’d spoken about “the sublime.”