A PERSON WHO is nightblind might be a nyctalope. So, what is a person with day blindness? Or a person who won’t work? Jobalope?” “That would be Ivy.” “We’re both squinting. How about diurnalope?” “If it weren’t for these shades,” Lavinia said, “I’d have driven straight into that cemetery wall.” It was one of those mornings we Californians like to think happen only in California, which may be one thing we’re right about. No humidity, of course: none. Which means cool in the shade, warm in the sun. Predawn, it’s cool with the certain prospect of future warmth. A few wisps of coastal fog remain in the east, as if deliberately, a small committee to welcome the tangelo hues of the ascending dwarf star. The blues of the sky run a gamut from cornflower, backlighting the wisps, to blueberry, straight up, and violet as you move west, all the way to the contusive horizon, where sky and sea can’t be determined as agreeing on a boundary. The latter color is a disturbing one, as of an integument having sustained a mighty pummeling in the night, implying that now, as of yore, we have no idea of the terrible machinery that animates it.
