Ionized!

The black clouds mounted high and the wind howled in from the west and I wanted to write. Does anyone else know this, the weather that fills us like a muse? It's the negative ions, I'm told, some phenomenon associated with the approach of a precipitous front, but it feels more romantic in the moment. Yesterday, on the other hand, I could not write and could not think. Yesterday we were in San Francisco's "summer fog pattern," a state as bleak and boring as the name. Gray sky pressing down, unmoving air, a wet chill in your shirtsleeves that somehow becomes a muggy sweat as soon as you put on a jacket. And then there are the sunny days that are so rare in this town: pale blue with a snapping wind most often, but sometimes bright and hot. Those days fill me with inspiration as surely as the black clouds, though unfortunately not inspiration to sit and pour out words. They take me outside and fill me with remembrance of things I absolutely must get done before I can write.

When I was a young writer I was mysteriously drawn to the North Sea, and would picture myself holing up for a year in someplace like the north of Scotland or the Shetland Islands to write my books. I finally understand why: it was the weather. Since I've chosen to live in San Francisco I'm grateful for having at least a shred of discipline. If I depended on my rainstorm muse, and her negative ions, I'd only work about twelve days a year.