September brings full-on summer here. It is a purely Los Angeles day, hot blue sky and anyone beyond the age of 23 staying indoors with the air conditioning. But once, in another life, we drove with the windows down and the freeways were open and we sang. We didn't sing like Joni, but we sang anyway.
And because the freeways were open we could drive fast and it was before gas costs what it costs now and there was music that made the accelerator seem to control itself. The Doors really don't hold up (may be encroaching fogeydom) but I feel this does as an official LA road song.
Showing posts with label Running on Empty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Running on Empty. Show all posts
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Sunday, August 12, 2012
It's hot and some of us are running on empty
This will not be a whine. I have no cause to complain. For at least two years we had summers so mild they were nearly unnoticeable. And then it was now.
I am made of flimsy carnival material, not meant to hold its integrity under extreme conditions. Los Angeles is hot, not Santa Ana winds hot but high pressure system over Four Corners drawing tropical moisture up from Mexico, 78 degrees at 4:45 a.m. hot, make a reasonable mind turn dull hot, forget you ever had a plan hot. Running on witless sweat and empty hot. Thank the weather gods that Jackson Browne makes me feel that if I drove fast enough (oh, those were the days) I could become temperate of body and sharper of mind.
It is not just age, thought this 1978 band in which neither Browne nor David Lindley has a single gray hair does conjure days of some now-absent vibrancy. I come from people, well, some of them, who lose their personalities and memories in August. I throw out things I need not even 3 seconds later, purchase non-perishables, heavy ones that my son has to carry upstairs, that are already on my shelves. If the music gods and the weather gods can agree, maybe "Running on Empty" as an iconic summer road song will appease while I'm looking for any unoccupied time machine to give me back my oomph and an undimmed notion of what I was going to do next.
I am made of flimsy carnival material, not meant to hold its integrity under extreme conditions. Los Angeles is hot, not Santa Ana winds hot but high pressure system over Four Corners drawing tropical moisture up from Mexico, 78 degrees at 4:45 a.m. hot, make a reasonable mind turn dull hot, forget you ever had a plan hot. Running on witless sweat and empty hot. Thank the weather gods that Jackson Browne makes me feel that if I drove fast enough (oh, those were the days) I could become temperate of body and sharper of mind.
It is not just age, thought this 1978 band in which neither Browne nor David Lindley has a single gray hair does conjure days of some now-absent vibrancy. I come from people, well, some of them, who lose their personalities and memories in August. I throw out things I need not even 3 seconds later, purchase non-perishables, heavy ones that my son has to carry upstairs, that are already on my shelves. If the music gods and the weather gods can agree, maybe "Running on Empty" as an iconic summer road song will appease while I'm looking for any unoccupied time machine to give me back my oomph and an undimmed notion of what I was going to do next.
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