Well, some things occurred to me during the Great Fire of 2007. Nothing like a little windy inferno to get those ideas flowing again. And seeing all those BMW's and Mercedes driving around...caked in ash and dirt and filth, wondering what the owners were thinking...if they could stand to be dirty. It was a guilty pleasure. It was a guilty pleasure watching the whole town coated in dirt, the trees blowing sideways in the brown haze. It was the Wild West all over again. Back to square one, or two, or whatever square the West was at...at the time. And the smoke smelled a little like anarchy.
Don't get me wrong. I didn't care to hear about all the houses burning down. No one deserves such a thing. Well, pretty much no one. Aghast. Bad thoughts. A sky like that has to put bad thoughts in your head. A constant glowing, smoldering orange sun, distant in the brown haze...it casts a strange orange light. 12 hour sunset. Couldn't tell what time of the day it was...all day. A dream state with the swaying trees and the dirt.
And the fatigue and the labored breathing. The towering black and gray clouds. Plumes. Hell, they made for fantastic sunsets. When the sun did actually set. And this morning's sunrise was excellent. Too bad I was being pushed through a river of bastards in my car. I had but seconds to glimpse what I could have sat and watched for its entire course. Such is an allegory for California life. Modern life, maybe. And today's sky was a blue one, finally.
I haven't felt like writing till now. Even with all these ideas bouncing around weeks ago. Work has a dehumanizing quality to it. It is so automatic and mechanized at this point. Even selling and people interaction is automated now, when you get a routine. Whole spans of hours are gone. I have no idea what I was doing during them. Gone. Never to be recovered. And all I have left is a body ache that tells me I was in fact doing something. But what? For what? And school? The days are going by so fast, and without color and blurred past recognition. Unsettling.
What else is unsettling are the thoughts that come to mind every time someone says to drive carefully. All I can think of is my body twisting itself apart in a head-on collision. And sometimes, if I have more time to stare into space I imagine the funeral. Unsettling, yes. Must stop staring into space so much. Sometimes I forget what I was even thinking about, and in someone else's presence it becomes most awkward.
But what am I doing here with words again anyways? Sure as hell beats writing a paper that I need to write tonight. A paper that's due tomorrow. Along with studying for a midterm that will take me...take me to death...tomorrow. Ah, the funeral. This work I should probably get to.
