[wjrb]

I think I'm misunderstanding you; Gibson doesn't live in California.

I took the quote as Gibson believing that nobody at all can imagine the past as it was, objectively, but only their own personal past, colored as it is by all of the moments that they have lived since that (past) moment.

[fasbiner]

Traveling to california and then becoming a (faux) draft dodger and participating in the summer of love were pivotal experiences in his life and core influences, I'm not sure why his zip code would be relevant to that.

I think we simply disagree: I think plenty of people can capture the past of other places and times as it was and imagine it fairly faithfully with sufficient lack of emotional bias, while nobody has ever written a memoir without a clear agenda.