At some point soon I'll really need to get my lazy, paranoid ass out onto the diseased and sultry streets, though, as it's getting to be that time of month when I must mail my rent check. Certainly I could just take the envelope down to the end of the driveway and put it in my inadequate mailbox for the mail carrier to pick up, but putting something in that box provokes even more anxiety than going over to the big mailbox by the plaza does. I've become domestic mailbox phobic. Someone should write a song about that, so I could convince myself that it was an actual thing in the world and not just my personal eccentricity, and I could thus feel a bit less severely deranged about the whole weird thing.
I did remember to put the wheelie bin out tonight, so the week's accumulated non-recyclable trash can be hauled off in the morning and trouble me no more, except of course when I think about the landfill it's going into. The thought of all that trash sitting under the ground creeps me out sometimes. Not that I generated very much of that trash myself. I have the very smallest wheelie bin the refuse company provides, and seldom get it more than a third full. Compacted, my weekly non-recyclable trash accumulation is probably not much larger than a shoe box. The other tenants sometimes have so much that their own bins are inadequate, and I'll find a big plastic bag or two of their trash stuffed into my bin. For an American who eats a lot of packaged goods I generate surprisingly little trash. But still. I think about that stuff in that landfill and feel a bit revolted.
Anyway. The night air is now pleasant enough, and the yard smells much batter than it did in the afternoon when a breeze from the west was bringing copious diesel fumes from the many trucks traveling the busy freeway. Now only an occasional car passes, and the diminished foulness is noticeable. It would be nice if it could be this clean all the time, but alas, that freeway isn't going to go away. I wonder if Paradise still smells of domestic wreckage and charred trees? It used to smell of jasmine this time of year.