This, That and Fear of the Other Thing

 

It has been a remarkable five-days straight of San Francisco summer without the fog coming in to crash the party. I actually floated in the Bay looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge! The water was still a bit chilly, but possible and believe me, this does not happen often in San Francisco! Perfect temperatures in the shade, that delicious sense of the outside and inside in perfect accord, neither shivering to keep out cold nor sweating to keep away heat. One of life’s little pleasures.

 

And so my days are spent walking in company with Dombey and Son on my phone’s Audible (4 hours out of 40 left!) or biking here, there and everywhere, the most constant exercise I’ve probably ever had in my lifetime, literally one day where I missed either a substantial walk, bike ride or swim in the past three months. I’ve heard tell that our present human body is the same as our hunter-gatherer ancestors who walked around 12 miles a day (how they figured that statistic out is anybody’s guess!), so I’m almost coming back to my ancestral inheritance. Regardless, it feels good and even better that I’m not in a gym, but out in the world in the fresh air (well, except for those smoky days), noticing the Coyote in the Arboretum, the small group of red-winged blackbirds singing in the bushes and ravens everywhere. 

 

Back home, the piano still beckons, I’m singing with my neighbors out on the streets, teaching Orff workshops online at least once (and often twice or three times) a week, occasionally practicing banjo from my online banjo class, enjoying new Netflix films like The Trial of the Chicago Seven, searching for the Get Out the Vote format that fits me and doing what I can to keep hope alive amidst the ever-tense shadow hovering over Nov. 3th. As I have many times in my life around Election Time, I’m “waiting to exhale,” either with a long-repressed triumphant shout or an anguished wail. And stupefied that this is even a question after all that guy has done. It’s simply beyond my comprehension.

 

But a slightly cooler (79 degrees) afternoon awaits me and my ancestral legs are eager to get walking. Just thought I’d check in before taking off, trivial as this all is.

 

Happy Sunday!

PS Went out I did into the sunny afternoon only to discover… the fog indeed had come! Oh well.