:: Tuesday, March 6, 2001 ::

 

7:26 p.m. Here's solid proof that the sun did, indeed, come back to California. We spent the day drying out and fluffing up and even opening the windows!

In the early afternoon blissful syrupy golden sweetness, I walked to the post office and so did about a hundred other people at the same exact time. I have a feeling that every single person steaming in the long, centipedal line was a person who either gets paid by the hour or by the piece and I know the one or two folks in blue uniforms ambling among the brown boxes behind the glass and the cash registers and the scales and bins and stamp drawers ... I'm sure they get paid by the pure dint of their acceptance into the system.

That might have been the problem. Otherwise, how could people on two different sides of transparent glass have such different atmospheres? Labor under such different values? Live in such different time zones?

It's been debated that people are becoming much more impatient these days, and that may be so. Certainly, you can carry your phone and pager and PDA and even, as I noticed on a few of the people -- squaking big black chattering walkie-talkies -- so you really can't get very far away from the concerns of the office or the set, so maybe that keeps people tense.

Plus, there are those backpacks. They look so heavy, hunched between the shoulderblades. People carry a lot of burdens these days, even at the beach.

So, there was the big sky and I stood in the middle of the street and took a picture. Pedestrians have the right of way. There is the outside of the front of the house that needs sweeping. I made a mental note. There is the additional rain that is forecast. Maybe not. There is the very weird book, Ubik, that I'm trying not to finish, but alas and alak -- tonight will be the night.

And then what?