a very blustery day

today i found myself digging on my bookshelf for joan didion on the santa ana winds. i'm pretty sure i did this last year as well, and yes, she had the answers and the affirmations i needed.

from "some dreamers of the golden dream"

The San Bernardino Valley lies only an hour east of Los Angles by the San Bernardino Freeway but is in certain ways an alien place: not the coastal California of hte subtropical twilights, and the soft westerlies off the Pacific but a harsher California, haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devestated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that ocmes down through the passesa t 100 miles an hour and whines thorugh the eucalyputs windbreaks and works on the nerves. october is the bad month for th ewind, the month when breathing is difficult and the hills blaze up sontaneously. There has been no rain since April. Every voice seems a scream. It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread, wherever the wind blows.

and i feel wind whipped, chapped, beaten and dry. this morning as i drove through the 241 that carves up the mountains between corona and irvine i blasted my way through dust storms, gripped the steering wheel as my little jeep swayed side to side as those santa anas slapped me silly. and when i got to class i felt for no explainable reason lonely and sad. one snarky comment from a student had me devestated. everyone i loved seemed desperately far away. the seventy papers i just collected seemed like the onslaught of a nasty desert storm. then i grabbed the didion and i remembered, chap lipped: right, october.

so i made an intense french press pot of some blue bottle coffee and cried for most of my office hours and sorted through all that guilt, fear, and anxiety. mostly though, i just needed some rain (and it didn't hurt to hear m.'s voice on the other side of the phone). and now i need to pack up and get back home--perhaps i'll watch some winnie the pooh with mr. owen.