Chaos Is Fun, But So Are Hummingbirds

In one of my first winters in San Francisco, joined by a companion, I walked the glistening streets of the Financial District elated by the romantic spectacle of tall buildings curtained by rain, by sweeps of almost horizontal raindrops coming from the side streets and rippling across Montgomery. All I had on my head was a baseball hat, and a Dodgers baseball hat at that. Stop and smell the wet pavement, I thought to myself; rejoice in the halos of light surrounding the street lamps. All those soaring temples of commerce were just a background to my own concerto of joy. Poetry, romance, water gurgling in drains — what more could a person want? Nothing like walking the wet streets after midnight, brooding about romantic disappointment. The weather matched our mood, whatever mood that happened to be. The feel of damp trousers encircling my calves is more important me to me now than sidewalks gleaming in the moonlight. The wind still sounds mournful and magnificent, but I worry about the large redwood tree next door. To tell you the truth, I kind of liked chaos back in the day. I did tend to identify with the folks stuck in traffic, but I realized that even those people were sympathetic to the protesters. [...] I wrote about it, and the mail started coming in, awful, hateful stuff, and I felt even better about my beliefs. Potluck suppers and conversations with retailers and pruning bushes; I aspire to the bourgeois life. [...] chaos has an awful human rights record.