Summertime Dreams

I am sitting on a chair on a porch overlooking the Petaluma River, or more precisely the slough that contains the Petaluma River as well as about 50 million bulrushes. I might with luck have found the baby that would one day lead our people out of Egypt, but actually I was reading a Thomas Perry novel and daydreaming. From the genius of Jon Carroll at SF Gate.com.

It just makes me think of all those long, lazy summers where you crawl into a lounge chair in the morning and by the evening it's shaped to your ass and makes removal impossible. You sit there all day, with period escapes for the beverage of your choice or a half-hearted game of badminton or horseshoes. Maybe a swim if you are at a pool or lake. But mostly it's watching the bees laze over the seductive lure of warm sage. Tracing lazy trenches in the dirt for ants to ford. Daydreaming about elephant-shaped clouds and anticipating the scent of steak bar-b-quing on a darkening porch. You think of friends chipping in to make salad and ruin dessert, and after dinner plans for either marathon games of cribbage and gin or perhaps a trip out to hear bad local music or drop a few bucks at one of the Lake Tahoe casinos.

But mostly it's about books. The fact that you backed more books than underwear in your weekend bag testifies to your desire to get lost in someone else's mind. A thumping-good read that leaves your mind free from cell phones, deadlines, e-mails, and bills. Spies and explosions. Retired colonels found dead in a vicar's library. A centuries-long galactic war for supremacy of the galaxy. A young immigrant woman looking for love in a culture not her own. Any store, any character you can attach your weekend to is what you want. That and a good strawberry margarita.