Shouldn't…but Do

Fog reminded me of California.

Coastal morning fog, hugging trees, houses, the shoreline.  Not pea soup – but still humid, cloaking.

Morning commute, fog does not deter that crowd.  Sideline erasure renders a homogenous world.  Emphasis on destination, not journey.   A thousand lives, a thousand faces.  Tense 30-something in the crosswalk, relaxed 50-something waiting for a bus.

Any place, any day, decades  beyond or ago – the same lives pass by,  same frustrations lived.  Fog is a great leveler.

California freeways, semi-tropical, moving along, moving through – going somewhere, sometimes out of the fog.

Then and now fog burns off, detail returns, detachment subsides.  California dreaming.