Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco and the heat-haze silvered all the cars as far as my struggling eyes could see.
It was too sickeningly hot for any European that day; I had no thermometer but estimated that the temperature must have exceeded a hundred. Being weighed down by luggage and misery made it seem warmer still.
This was as good a time as any to die, I imagined - might as well get hit on the short journey from Stonestown to the nearest municipal train stop, or be cut to ribbons by a nimble chancer, obvious tourist that I am, on the ride from Balboa Park to the airport.
What a romance there is in the idea of dying far away from home: dessicated on a street corner even as the sun searches without success for more moisture to suck away. He died for an idea, people would say, and this place would serve as both a warning siren and a magnet for those who are still to come.
The mind is like a pair of racehorses - one at the peak of its powers which corresponds to ideas, hurdling them all with ease and rushing along to the next jump, always higher than the one preceding it. The second is past its best and canters at a more sedate pace, and this horse corresponds to how events evolve in front of the eyes.
It is for me to rein in the horse which corresponds to ideas, and to encourage the other horse which trots instead of gallops.
It is for me to put the brakes on the wild horse which suggests I could conceivably dehydrate in the middle of San Francisco; and, more importantly, it is for me to force the second horse to match the pace of the former.
When this is done, and the two creatures are neck-and-neck, then what is experienced and what is idealised will be equated - and strange San Francisco, or anywhere else, will not be as fearsome in future.
