LAST OF THE BIG-FUCKUPS

My pocket buzzes mid-pull of my vodka disguised in a coconut water carton. I pull the phone out and thumb-press the notification from British Airways, which then opens a portal into warning-world anxiety and the big reveal I’d been on watch for: Another Brian Jonestown Massacre tour is starting out in true Brian Jonestown Massacre fashion. For me at least, and in the name of saving a few tour budget bucks, I’ve booked a connecting flight in London en route to Berlin, which now will suddenly have me landing into Storm Éowyn, some type of new global-warming phenomenon they are calling a “bomb cyclone.” The airline would like to suggest that I change my plans if I can, I assume for the unspoken but most obvious reason that first springs to mind, but also the great possibility that I will join the thousands of stranded from the hundreds of flight cancellations at Heathrow.

I’m already “on the bus,” as it were, in the form of a large, tour-size airport shuttle heading to San Francisco International Airport, the place that until recently I’d called my city for a collective 30 years. And so, with the die already cast, I look to the window wall and switch perception to reflective mode along the last of Sonoma County’s rolling green before it turns into the Marin section of all things the same.