Written on 09/08/20.

Am I one of those spirits of the recently deceased who has not yet realized I’m dead? Is this Hell or Purgatory? Some sort of lonely limbo?

I stepped outside. It is as quiet as San Francisco on burning man weekend 10 years ago. The air is brown and tastes like ashes. I walk down and back up the outside staircase to the alley. It feels as if I smoked a cigarette. There is no birdsong and no birds flying. I do hear an occasional distant, distressed sqawk. There are no cars, no people, no squirrels running along the fence by the garden or up scavenging for food in the avocado tree.

The sun is an orange disk the size of a silver dollar. Everything is covered in soot, although we are many miles from the burning fires.



The temperature is a comfortable 64 degrees, but there is no pleasure being outside — the grime settled onto my clothes, my hair, my skin.

Back inside it is dark and close. Even indoors, the air appears to be a bit misty with smoke. I have closed all the windows and am running the air conditioner because heat builds up even though the outside air is cooling a bit. I light lamps, but they do not brighten the rooms very much. I close the curtains and try to make things cozy. It works, but only a little.

And there’s no end in sight. Hell is murky. This morning, I really don’t know what else to say.

Except, maybe: