We couldn't ask for better weather this first day of summer here in the city by the bay, but half the world away on England's Salisbury plain druids don their dress whites and celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge, Britain's premier prehistoric monument, alongside fellow neo-pagans, new agers and a motley gathering of other crunchy hippie types (like poi dancers and hooping enthusiasts). The magic, mystery and mysticism associated with said sacred megalithic structure understandably commands a sense of awe and wonder among all walks of humankind, that is, when it isn't generating incredibly memorable jokes worth revisiting time and time again, like comedian Eddie Izzard's take on Stonehenge from his fabulous Dressed to Kill DVD (filmed in San Francisco no less) and Spinal Tap's staged shortcomings concerning their would-be comeback throwback hit as seen in the classic mock rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap.

I’ve spent the last month or so moving, filling my new apartment and emptying my previous life. Funny, once my old house was bare and the garage was cleared of all its natural debris, I wanted to stay. Then again, no surprise there, just a few weeks earlier I wanted to torch the garage with all my crap inside: the thousands of records, the hundreds of books, the furniture, memorabilia -- destroy everything that wouldn’t fit into a Trader Joe’s shopping bag and my pants pockets, and the rest just send up in an electrifying whoosh of a bonfire. I could have used a purifying ritual about then, no matter how cruelly naked the results. Sorry to muff such a blissful moment, an unfulfilled act I needed to execute decades ago. I just didn’t have a gas can or matches this time around.

Actually, I couldn’t hang onto the mindset I’d need to genuinely cleanse my life. Besides if I did burn it all down, I would have ruined this fine-looking tableau of rafters, conduit and cobwebs. Right now, with my weary, worn back, boxes weighing down every square inch of walk-able space in my new digs, living in an empty garage staring at the rafters seem so much more appealing than sorting through my fifth edition dog-eared books and my bubblegum records and the scraps of paper that explain who the hell lives here.

Summer began June 20th at 23:59PM, coordinated Universal Time, which is mean solar time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in London, overlooking the River Thames -- Coordinates 51° 28′ 40.12″ N, 0° 0′ 5.31″ W.  And here in sunny ol’ Tinseltown -- coordinates 34° 6′ 0″ N, 118° 20′ 0″ W, summer began at 4:59 P.M, June 20th.