Friday was warm but grey. Eerily grey. Everyone in the street knew it wasn’t just another foggy day, but grey from the ash and smoke spewed by the wildfires raging up and down the state. It hung in the air, obscuring a blue sky and hiding the full shine of the sun. It was as if God Himself was hiding his face in shame. As I reflected on this, I decided the days had been fairly apocalyptic, in a dull sort of way.

I got on the “L,” and sat in a pretty crowded section, in the middle of a convoy of summer camp kids, on their way to some field-trip funland. The counselors—not much older than me, some younger—shepherded their kids off the bus with raised voices and comically stern admonitions

As the bus lurched back into movement, I looked out the window to my left and I saw an older Latina woman walking a small white dog, a curly-haired poodle with a trot like an equestrian. I realized that she had worked in the administration at my middle school—some wellness counselor or secretarial worker. I even recall having a friendly rapport with her, those memories had become as hazy as the as the grey sky. A man popped up in front of me, talking excitedly in my face, effectively pulling me out of my mind. At first I took him to be one of those manic muni schizos you see every now and then, until I saw the clipboard.

“Sir, are a registered democrat in the Sunset District?!”

I told him yes (though I wasn’t sure if it was true) and he launched into a diatribe on putting some supervisor back on the ballot to replace some recently disgraced city politician. I knew a little about the whole story, I felt there was no harm in humoring him, so I signed it. I noticed there were no other signatures, that mine was the first! He thanked me and at the next stop walked off the bus. I hadn’t heard him talking to anyone before me, and he declined to get anyone else’s signature after me. I felt so oddly happy with this strange behavior as though it made special. I got off after the woman to the right of me fell asleep and began snoring. Not sure where I wanted to go from the stop I was on, I headed in the direction to Golden Gate Park, hoping to find a sufficient adventure there.

A bus ride like many I had during my days of the summer...