Writing Weather

It's gray down here on the Peninsula, that sort of light un-storm sky that still chokes out the sunlight and leaves everything cool and autumnal. There are rumors of rain further north, but here it's the perfect weather for a couple light layers, and a scarf as a comfortable fashion statement. I'm sitting on Caltrain, watching the reel of trees and buildings and bundled passengers scroll by, and I'm wishing for an emptier stomach, a nice clean desk, and a beatific Saturday quiet. I'd reflect on the trees thrashing outside my house, and the here-and-there hiss of passing cars. If I got really lucky, halfway through my writing I'd get rain and the steamy, loamy scent of wet asphalt and earth.

This is the kind of weather that gives me ideas. Not dirty ideas, but just ideas, rooms and witticisms and facial expressions all bound together with midnight.

But today, for wonderful reasons, I am instead headed north to Sonoma County, my laptop left alone at home; and so I must settle for the people, and the cold, and the rattle of the train tracks under my feet.

For today, this special day, that's enough; but I hope the writing weather is back tomorrow.