A handful of neighbors, and there are so many of them, must have been either watching a sporting event in Asia or playing a visceral video game that made them holler like drunks last night, past 12. No different than usual, except that behind their backs, outside, an old, ragged phantom dragged its chains through the sky, causing sparks; every moment or so a new flash, sometimes a classic crooked finger, sometimes the flickering strobe of Pegasus flapping his wings followed by the crash of cymbals, a military drum salute. Even the loud bass boom overhead, a five-car-alarm deal that made horns sing like coyotes, didn't seem to distract these Monday night revelers. The power never went out.

The rain was intermittent, so I could leave the windows open. In fact the water that fell seemed an afterthought, as if shaken from an emptied bottle, the last remaining drops. And it was still hot, as it will be today when this dead Mexican hurricane disippates like fragile cheesecloth and scatters north and west. It was the most apoplectic storm I'd seen in years, seemingly more resentful in its tantrum because it could not find an audience. The vigorous crashing overhead surpassed the quota for thunder in Southern California. Most storms, like those of last spring, dump like waterfalls with a boom here and there; this was a sick monster dry heaving to no avail. How anyone could ignore its attempts to claim our attention, I don't know; I could not read or watch TV or turn away from the redolent ozone in the air, recalling wilderness and danger centuries old. In this new millennium, Nature can be turned away; it is, as I've mentioned before, a mere nuisance now, an afterthought unless it really breaks things up and becomes a spectacle worthy of being televised. And still people will leap to their mobile phones so they can laugh about it with their friends. Keep the booze flowing and the lights on, don't evacuate us from floods, don't shake the ground we walk on too violently, and we can go on with our lives pretty easily. Nature disrupts, but not much.