Lights on the water

It's a cold, wet night in San Francisco. Finally, tonight, with the season half-over and the Giants' fate as a last-place team pretty much sealed, we made our first trip to the park.



Barry Bonds didn't play (after last night's 13-inning marathon) but young pitcher Noah Lowry was masterful and the Giants beat the Braves, 2-1.



We were able to go courtesy of my friend Tom, who supplied us with tickets. From a few rows above the visiting dugout, the view was perfect -- the best way to watch a baseball game. The players are so close; the sounds of the game so loud.



Walking back to the parking lot afterward, we saw the kayaks, a ferry, and the Hornblower yacht hovering offshore in McCovey Cove. As the night aged, the winds fell, the sounds of the ballpark echoed over the Bay, and the happy crowd dispersed home -- to the east, south, west and north.

My house is barely ten minutes away from the park.



I'm only a few days away from my first trip to France in 20 years. The rest of my family that is going has already arrived in Nice. I continue working in the Valley, as if the times were normal.



If this post is boring, I apologize. Sometimes all of our lives become small. Right now, tonight, I'm avoiding big thoughts or ideas. I'm thinking about the sound that the home run Rich Aurilia hit made. There's a certain crack of the bat that signals a homer, and I've been around long enough now to recognize it, as easily as I recognized the small caliber handgun shot that rang out in the night a week ago, or the low rumble of the earthquake that struck here pre-dawn last Friday.

Little moments, like the shards of seaglass I collect. That's me in these types of moods. I see my fan twisting back and forth, I hear it, and twice in every cycle I feel the fresh relief from these hot flashes that course through me.

I think again of Kipling's India.

The local night may not be hot, and no one else around me is, either, but I am drenched in night sweats, unable to find relief. This, too, will pass; all things must.

-30-