atsukan

San Francisco has three types of skies.

80% or so of the time, the sky is gray. And not just a little gray, but a vast sea of gray. The Japanese call it the "unkai" or sea of clouds. Actually, that's what they call it when they're looking down on the sea of clouds, where they can't see the ground because they're up so high, like on Mt. Fuji. Anyway, it's REALLY gray most of the time, at least where I stay.

We do get a few weeks in the Spring and a month or so in the late summer/early Fall where the weather is warm and beautiful. The skies are cloudless. Like Alex Delarge from Clockwork Orange who said, its "an azure sky in the deepest of summers." What he said. Anyway, we're at the tail end of that right now.

What else do we have? There's this weird, very occasional period, where just after the rains, the skies turn blue again, but with a difference. A few small clouds here and there appear, and when the skies start to darken, the magic happens. The clouds turn pink. I can only sit and stare. So beautiful you could cry.