There's doubtless a metaphor here - other than the general extreme dryness of California - but I'm not sure that I'm up to extracting it. The dryness (as in fire-fuel, etc) is felt everywhere: things crackle. I'm peculiarly susceptible to static electricity (or maybe I just have an exaggerated startle response) - but I'm getting little electric shocks off my car, off the shelves in the supermarket, off a drawer handle. It's as though I'm a character in Naomi Alderman's The Power - a 2016 novel in which women start to emit electricity through their finger tips, practicing through burning tiny holes in a Kleenex. I haven't yet arrived at that combustible point, although I'm tempted to tell you I seared a rift in that leaf.
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