THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE AIR

You do not belong here. And neither do I. No one except the bronze-hued federwilden actually belong in California. We are an invasive species that the local environment rejects, casts out, and forcefully discourages. And California will never let you forget that you are special, sonny boy, and it hates you, and everything you represent.

Last night I went out drinking with the lads. That being precisely and exactly one lad, who is no longer laddish but a young and still vibrant early middle aged Italian American of the book merchant persuasion with whom I have been drinking once a week for several years. If I tell you how many you will think me ancient and be disinclined to jump my bones -- and assuming that you are a petite damsel of barely graduate school age or just at the PHD stage, that sounds very splendid to me -- so I won't mention how long that is and leave the specifics vague and abstract, just guess, but it's an established tradition at this point.

As a physics or math major you can appreciate that.

A real subject. Like a science.

Not basket weaving.

In any case, it was NOT my right leg that bothered me one the way home. Which it should have, because I managed to damage something three years ago while tossing and turning -- ripped a muscle or a nerve, dang that right leg hurts, hip to ankle, technically I probably qualify for a handicapped plaque except that I do not have a car, and I hide it very well so no one will notice, I work with very unobservant people -- and heading up over that hill hurts like Billy-o. Nor was it the staggers, because I do not drink beyond reason.

It was not old-age or decrepitude.
Good lord no.


It was my nose.


Ninety nine plus percent of the inhabitants of Northern California will become allergic to something.


This is the furthest part of the world, the end of the continent, the back of beyond. The water cascades down into the abyss a few miles beyond the shore. This is the ultimate end of the line.

Our ancestors were not from here. Natural selection did not adapt us to the plants. The pollens and micro-dusts are foreign to us.

I spent the last five blocks sneezing .

And sneezing. And sneezing.

And sneezing.




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