Soundtrack

Inside my head, there is a large chorus singing in a minor key, with thematic counterpoints from cellos and violins.

I woke this morning to the call of the fog horns on San Diego Bay. Next to the sound of a lover's sigh as she snuggles against me and tries to hang on to the last vestiges of sleep, fog horns are my favorite thing to wake up to. They remind me of summers in Maine, of when I was young and the world had not shown me any of her crueler jokes.

I had a meeting this morning, out of the office and across the Coronado Bridge, just past my favorite part of San Diego: the beach in front of the red-roofed Hotel Del Coronado. I'd been asked to give a fifteen minute presentation, and the drive would be forty minutes there and back.

The sky was dark and low, especially out over the bay, where the clouds came right down to the water.

Given my mood, this was a welcome change from the perpetual sunshine we've been given for more than a week. The fog rolling in late yesterday afternoon, sweeping across the sea and pouring up the hillside below my office, gave us the first clouds we'd seen since Tuesday last. I'm not sure if the clouds were a precursor to my mood, or if the billowing vapor was manifested by my discontent.

Cresting the overpass on Pacific Highway, where the view of the airport and downtown is always best, the sun broke through the overcast for a moment, and I knew that neither the overcast nor my mood would last. This, too, shall pass, as my boss is fond of saying.

But what if I don't want the mood to pass? What if I don't want blue skies and warmth and sunshine? What if I just want an excuse to retreat a while, to hunker down under the covers to hold in warmth and ward off the daylight?

I don't want to spend today in the real world.

I don't want to spend the day in a world where selfish people act as though the rest of us should be okay with their erratic, cell-phone-impaired driving.

I don't want to spend the day in a world where babies have infantile spasms, and impaired cognitive development, and symptoms of autism.

I don't want the winter of my discontent to be made glorious summer by this sun of San Diego.

Just for a day, I want my world to be about biplanes with wires that sing in ninety mile winds and smell of gasoline and oil and leather, set to playful music on a single classical guitar.

Just for a day, I want my world to be about the softness of a loving woman's touch and the perfect eagerness of her kiss, set to Harry Connick or Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra, or simply to the beat of my heart.