anon

Last night, around 8:30, I ran out of red wine, which I need in order to write. I hiked down the hill, winding around on the cracked sidewalk through the Japanese houses and the advent calendar lighted facades of lanaied apartment buildings, beneath giant dark tropical trees, the headlights on the feeder avenue roaring by in the hot blackness like streaming hell. I love walking around in the night when I'm stoned. The stars were outrageous, teary glow-in-the dark spangles on a witch's skirt. Passing the unlighted concrete post office under the freeway--space is at a premium; earthquakes are rare--I attained the 24-hour Safeway on the corner of Beretania and Pensacola, where the round white and red S lozenge glowed soft as a hospital sign above the black parking lot.

Sale refrigerator box of cabernet sauvignon retrieved and reclining gaily in white plastic hammock bag dangling from my fingers, I then proceeded at a tangent for two blocks past the florist and the incandescent Thai restaurant--DEW DROP INN--smell of curry and lime leaves hovering in the air. And the Burger King, and the luxury condo building where the huge vents blow hot air straight out onto the street-- free steam cleaning. And the modernistic Methodist Church, loud voices floating out from choir practice for Sunday service in Tongan, and the shambling Deco-Japanese stucco art museum. At this moment, the bus, the last one of the evening, thundered past down the hill, lit like a submerging submarine.

There are drawbacks to living near the top of an extinct volcano, killer though the view is.