blue.

I don't think there's ever a doubt as to what season it is in San Diego. It's summer.

Forever.

But here. Here where I am right now. San Jose. It's strange. North California has seasons. South has summer. In the Bay, you get strange mixed seasons, esp. at the junctions of summer and fall, winter and spring.

Take yesterday. It was cold yesterday. Really cold. So cold I had to wear a jacket. And overcast. Gray above, everywhere, stained here and there with that ugly purpled black that just oozes storm. Windy. I thought it was going to rain, and rain, and rain, until next March.

But then take today. 24 hours later, not even. This morning, the day broke so clear the sky was crystalline overhead. Literally. Not in that way English majors mean when they sit in the grass and rhapsodize about the summer sky; not just clear, or beautiful. I mean LITERALLY crystalline, in an edged, hard way that hurts the eyes when you go outside in the morning and get in the car and drive off. Crystalline. Like there were crystals in your eyes, brilliant blue ones, nothing but blue, grating, scraping, and it hurts to look up but then damn, you just have to look because that blue--who knows if it'll ever be that blue again for you?

The ability to perceive color decreases as we age. I find that sad, that every day the sky's a little less blue.

And it's hot today, so hot I can't imagine anything but that it's gotta be late summer still even though it's September. It's gotta be that fabled last gasp of the hot days. Except you can't really call it a last gasp because that really suggests some degree of weakness. I think of drowning men grasping at straws, starving people wasting away in gutters, and if you were here right now, you would not think of that at all when you went outside.

Summer's still here, at least today. Summer's an amorphous, hot drug that hangs in the air and collects in your joints and under your skin, until you feel kinda heavy, kinda daydreamy, and mostly lazy. Summer isn't just heat, and it's not just that crystalline blue sky I told you about. It's not ballpark hot dogs, either. You can't really describe summer, and even if you could, it won't be the same as someone else's description of summer. But that's okay. When it's summer, you KNOW it's summer.

Sometimes it can be mid-July, and feel like fall.

And then sometimes it can be mid-September, and be summer.

Goddamn, I do love the summer in California. There's nothing like it, ya know, and the best thing is that the memories get sweeter and hazier every passing year. It's walking outside and getting blinded not by the sun but just by the sky; it's sitting inside and wishing you were outside because it's so bright out there and the sky is so blue. It's a heat wave that you hate right now because you can't go 20 minutes after a shower before needing to shower again, but also a heat wave you're going to look back on and remember fondly because godDAMN, night felt good that night when the temperatures dropped and the crickets chirped and you looked up into the sky and the Evening Star was still there and so was Orion and the Milky Way and Jupiter and Mars. It's daydreaming about sitting outside on your nonexistent balcony tonight, sipping a margarita you can't possibly mix, at least not well, eating chilled melon and talking but not really talking to, just being with, your girlfriend and listening to sugary tinny little beats coming out of your 8-year-old boombox with the broken tape deck while the moon slides down the sky and falls into the sea that you can't actually see from your imaginary balcony. But you can pretend.

I think, when I'm old and shaky and sitting in a wheelchair in a nursing home, I'd like to die on a day like this. Warm, drowsy, full of buzzing bees and the whizzing dragonflies, crystal-hard blue skies and blazing sunshine, green grass, young people walking around and falling in love even though they've got a world of problems waiting for them, streams and mountains and the shimmering sea. That'd be a good way to die. Close my eyes on a scene that convinces me the world is still a damn good place to be.

Summer's a beautiful time. Late summer takes that beauty and tempers it with age, gives it a laziness that stretches the days out like taffy even though you're working and busy and sometimes frustrated. Late summer laces summer's beauty in a certain sadness, that maybe the sky won't ever be this blue again for you, that maybe you'll be too busy next year to enjoy the warmth and the sunshine. Late summer's one of my favorite times of the year.

The sky's still that dazzling crystalline blue...