Though I didn't get to Safeway I did walk to CVS for a six pack of beer, and also found a package of two gel pens with ultra-fine points. These have not been in stock for the longest time, and I've been making do with mere fine point pens, so I'm very glad to have these. But then walking home I found myself quickly running out of breath. I'm sure that being stuck in last year's fire, and the days of smoke that followed, has permanently diminished my lung capacity. CVS really isn't very far away.
I also stopped by the Goodwill store on my way to CVS, and found an omnibus edition of seven Jules Verne novels. It lacks a dust jacket, but is otherwise in good condition. I'm not a huge Verne fan, and his stuff is after all in the public domain and thus free on the Internet, but seven novels! In one volume! For $2.99! How could I resist that?
The weather service is now predicting a wind event this Wednesday, which means large parts of the state will have their power shut off again. After that the daily highs will be getting lower, remaining in the sixties, and a week from Wednesday a period of rain could begin. Chances of showers are set at 40% from the 27th through the 30th. If it turns into a good sized rainstorm then California's fire season might be over for the year. Everyone will be relieved at that.
Along with the cooler days will come colder nights. It will soon be getting down into the thirties every night. In fact there is a low of 36 forecast for next Saturday night. It's definitely going to start feeling like fall. A lot of Chico's leaves are already on the ground, but the big leaf falls are yet to come. I won't be seeing much on this street, which has only a couple of big trees in front yards, but I'll probably see a lot of them along the side streets the bus line crosses. The only place I'll be walking through them though is the parking lot at the Plaza. That's probably just a well, considering the havoc their dying dust plays with my deteriorating lungs.
Here's something that's been crossing my mind a lot recently:
Sunday Verse
To Elsie
by William Carlos Williams
The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky
or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and
valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between
devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure—
and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday
to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no
peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt
sheer rags-succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror
under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum-
which they cannot express—
Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood
will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder
that she'll be rescued by an
agent—
reared by the state and
sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs—
some doctor's family, some Elsie—
voluptuous water
expressing with broken
brain the truth about us—
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts
addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes
as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky
and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth
while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in
the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us
It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off
No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car
