Yesterday the Northern California sky put on a breathtaking display of puffy clouds from horizon to horizon. Yesterday the daytime temperatures were still in the seventies.
Today the skies are clear, the clouds have been swept away by a stiff breeze, and the mercury (or whatever they use nowadays in thermometers) has fallen by a dozen or more degrees F. The fragrant blossoms of the flowering plum tree outside our kitchen window have been blown hither and thither, carpeting a part of our redwood deck in bright pink.
So from an early spring we are now back to a cold and windy February. And the prospect of rain hangs in the chill air. The moisture-laden cumulonimbus clouds can be expected here around this weekend. As I type this, the wind is whistling through the dark trees outside.
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The double issue of The New Yorker, for February 13 and 20, has some fine articles. "Hutong Karma" by Peter Hessler, is about life in a Beijing alleyway, and Joan Acocella's piece "The Saintly Sinner" covers the many lives of Mary Magdalene. And the ever-reliable Haruki Murakami is also there with his short story "A Shinagawa Monkey," a subtly-rendered Kafkaesque tale worthy of inclusion in next year's Best American Short Stories.
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A different workman was here today, preparing to install a new bathroom window. There was much pounding of hammers and rasping of files, producing enough vibrations to tilt my oil paintings into a cartoonish arrangement on the walls of the adjoining room.
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Depending on one's political perspective, the current furor over the Vice-President's hunting accident, where he peppered a companion with birdshot, is either the White House press corps going out for blood against the Administration, or another example of the Administration's unseemly secrecy and hubris in not keeping the public informed. Perhaps one day we will find the answer somewhere between these two extremes.
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My tooth hurts like the dickens. Surgery may be in the cards, but I sincerely hope not.
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