Premonitions

I'm not generally one for premonitions, but I had a terrible premonition as I was driving in to work today. It's time for the terrible San Francisco earthquake that I've feared ever since I first moved out there in the early 90s.

I'm sure that notion is just the cumulation of all that has been terrible in 2016. It's only natural to think, "Okay, now what's really the absolute worst possible thing that can happen next?" And I guess for me, that's it.

San Francisco's an odd place. At one level it's this beautiful tourist destination filled with all these wonderful, fascinating people and places. But when you live there, it's just home, filled with it's pluses and minuses, like any place you can live. San Francisco has much more in common with Detroit than it thinks it does or would ever admit. Having lived both places, I know. But the last couple of times I was out there I was struck by the sense that it's been living in a golden age lately, the sort of time when we'll look back and mourn all that was and has been lost. I felt that dark cloud on me this morning.

As I said above, the notion was probably just a reaction to all that has been terrible lately. Fortunately for my current state of mind it doesn't feel like a personal, nearby premonition of danger -- though too much of my life is tied into people in San Francisco for the notion of a major earthquake there to strike me as anything other than personally horrible. As we're reaching the end of 2016 I've been reduced to laying on our couch in the evenings, listening to Gregorian chants to sooth the soul. I'm usually pretty buoyant, but hours of Gregorian chant are not a sign of an optimistic brain.

Heck, maybe it's just this nasty cold I've been fighting off that last couple of days.

In general I think the premonitions are usually your subconscious telling you to pay attention to things that your conscious thinking patterns have tried to bury or deny. Well, there are lots of signs of bad things in the future out there right now for lots of people I love. Maybe my subconscious has decided to round up all the signs to give them a specific aspect.

But, man, it's hard to shake the feeling that something else bad is coming down the pike. I hope I'm wrong.