Chilly day. Sun angled low on the palms, damp in the earth, that’s the native winter I remember. Tamalpais with its head in the clouds. Wildcat Creek at the Aqua Vista trail running low enough to ford by stepstones, with caution for one’s expensive new face. Loop back home through the canyon, mound-shapes of cloud mirroring the hilltops as they go.
I like walking through these suburbs even with everything set up like a well-kept fortress (some badly kept fortresses too). J. was asking about a political theory for this time and place, and I didn’t know, except that everything seems driven by fear: I don’t fear the same things as another, nor act on them in the same way, but the universal affect that I’m not safe, I won’t have enough... after Four Ecologies I read City of Quartz and was most struck by the power of the homeowners, the terrible impulse to stasis. That once you’ve found your own unlikely berth your only move is to pull up the ladder behind. Quiet byways. No traffic but Amazon trucks, corpuscles carrying nutrients.
