WORKING ON MY SUNTAN

According to the calendar this is the middle of the warm season. Before the hot season strikes and the skies turn orange. You'd be forgiven if you hunted down a seal wearing your parka and mukluks in the foggy chill on Nob Hill this morning, however. And disparaged the twenty something year olds out there picking up their dog's offerings in their thin sportive shorts and tee-shirts from tech companies. Baby pudge beasts.

The old lady wearing fuzzy pajamas, a bathrobe, and an overcoat, while walking behind her yipping tea cup was perfectly sensible, however. She had probably also protectively rubbed all exposed skin surfaces with rendered bear fat.

There were no tourists about just after dawn. They come out to poo on the street much later, like they do in Europe or Mississippi.

At that time most sensible people are back indoors with their second hot cup of coffee and another pipeful. My apartment mate has left for the day, her bedroom door is firmly shut, and three windows are open. I'm breaking the household law in perfect freezing comfort, and smoking inside, which I can only do at home when she is at work. Fortunately her work schedule and mine are at complete odds.

Presently it's fifty four degrees outside and overcast. That's fifteen degrees or more colder than Valkenswaard and Dommelen, where the local highschool kids are probably starting to congregate on cafe terraces after dinner. I seldom think of the area where I used to live as "tropic", but they have real seasons there. In San Francisco, we've got cold and wet, cold and not wet, mostly overcast, warmish, too bloody hot, fading into mild warm, and the first rains. Half a dozen seasons, during any one of which tourists will be walking around wearing shorts because this is California and they've seen Baywatch. There is no one, absolutely no one, running toward the surf in slow motion wearing a red bikini! What is wrong with us?

Perhaps you should go to Mississippi? It's nearly ninety degrees there. It's kind of like Marrakesh. And culturally very similar, trust me. Fabulous weather and colourful!
And, if you've never had grits, you'll love it!


There was a bin of grits in the kitchen for several years.
I threw it out I don't know how long ago.
The thrill had faded.



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