Sunday Night in San Diego

After a hot day, San Diego has exhaled its way into a cool Pacific coastal night. Thank you breeze. Thank you ocean. Thank you tidal wave of cool for flooding our heat island.

Ivano and I met three friends for dinner and...

sorry, I have to interrupt. I just squished a fruit fly on the screen of my laptop. It's gross. The remains are to the left of "Layout." Let me try to clean it up.



Where was I? Oh yeah, dinner with friends in another cool restaurant with meat exclusively from humanely and ecologically responsibly raised animals. Sustainable seafood too.

After dinner and goodbyes and a drive back to our hood, I took a walk. To revel in the exhale of the day, the weekend, the heat.

The utter lack of the remarkable.

I passed a few people on various sidewalks. A cross walk is still broken and I had to run to make it to the other side. A malfunctioning irrigation system turned the grounds of an apartment complex into what would be the grand prize winning stream in a Texas roughneck pissing contest. Look at that arching stream of water. Listen to it hit the pavement. Picture the splashback onto his dirty jeans.

So many apartment buildings. So many lights. Everyone is home. TVs on. Windows closed if you have ac. Windows open, fans on, if not. No amplified music. No-one sitting out on their stoop. No stoop. No conversations from window to window. No conversations.

Ones and twos. Humans in ones in twos driving home from mom's, from the grocery store, from Target, from a dinner out with friends, from a movie. Ones and twos. Ones and twos. In cars. In ones and twos.

Empty balconies. Unused grills. No scent of meat. No beer. No yells. Only flashing blues from tvs and computer monitors reflected through balcony windows.

The only pulse of life: a shirtless man on his balcony smoking a cigarette. The huge TV in his lit living room bathed his worked-out smooth chest in blue light. I couldn't see his nipples, but the outline of his chest suggested broad pinkish brown nipples the size of checkers atop pecs bathed in Sunday night TV light.