Smelly

There have been strange odors on the air tonight. They are woody odors, but unlike the woody odors normal to the place. It's as though an alien forest has crept up and displaced the ponderosas and mountain oaks. It smells incredibly old, like ages of leaf mold, like hollowed trunks ready to crumble, like fallen logs being consumed by fungus. There is also a slightly sweet floral scent, and the combination makes it seem as though someone tried to cover up the woody odor with perfume and then thought better of it. Of course, it could all be nothing more than my imaginary brain tumor acting up again.

Early light reveals that there is a haze above the valley. That condition often presages a warm day. I'd expected to be off this machine by the time it got this light, but I began loading a page of image files which has turned out to be huge, and I want to get it done now. It's coming up on an hour, and I think I've got at least fifteen minutes more to go. I hate dial-up.

This threatens to degenerate into a rant. I'll shut up.

Hotel

At the mention of the Cecil Hotel, the first thing that comes to my mind is the experience of one of my friends, back in the early 1960's. Arriving downtown one day, he walked south along Main Street from the bus depot. As he was passing the Cecil, a few doors south of the depot, he heard a whoosh and thump behind him, and saw horrified looks on the faces of recoiling pedestrians who had been approaching. He turned and saw a body crumpled on the sidewalk immediately behind him. Someone had jumped from an upper floor window of the hotel and had missed landing on him by three or four feet.

( Long and Rambling Ruminations, Supplemented by a Link )