I feel like a Gondorian

.

Doing the dishes, I just looked up and realized the sunlight had changed. A pale orange pall has climbed about halfway up the sky and is touching the sun. My neighbour's parrots are irritable and restless.

Oh. Okay.

.

What Bill and Ted said.

The road to the post office leads out of the little hilly are where I live, so I just got a look at the sky to the north and east, which I cannot see from my house.

Gondor? Yeah, Gondor.

The sky here looks the way it must have looked there when Sauron was just kick-starting shit up again. The smoke is running in a river out of the gap between the San Gabriel and the Santa Monica Mountains, from southeast all the way across about a third of the sky northwestwards. It's orangey-brown, not dark smoke - yet - but it is wow. The light is a sunset color even though we're three hours or so away yet. I'm sure it'll be spectacular.

And when I left the house to go out, I smelled the smoke for the first time. I can't smell it now because I've gotten accustomed - it wasn't that strong to begin with - but that's there now as well. The air is hot and dry and still here.