Thursday January 2, 2025, 34* Sun arriving
Quiet Night, first night ended about one o’clock with a trumpet louder than the staccato chirping of the smoke alarm; louder than Zsolt barking at wind, barking at things unknown, trumpeting me suddenly from reverie to awareness. I have become accustomed to the chirping new smoke alarm with its new 10-year battery interrupting my thoughts, sometimes going away for hours before returning with the same song. “Something’s wrong.” Hard-wired to the furnace breaker, there’s no turning it off.
While you are thinking about the trumpet, the stream feeding the beaver pond flows freely making ripples like a breeze. It could be a spring morning. The sun shone briefly; not long enough to paint designs on the plaster woman. Not long enough to cast shadow windows on interior walls; not long enough to dry drops clinging to the fence or to make them fall.
The mystery, the trumpet--from reverie to revelry. ‘Wake up’ even when you don’t want to; when you think you need more sleep. To wake us, my dad sometimes played a record at full volume--John Phillips Sousa Marches. Startle factor. Perhaps that’s why I wake early. Lately, I don’t flow as smoothly as the stream but that’s another story. At bedtime, I did not choose a play list, I chose just one song. ‘Quiet Night.’ When it ended, something went wrong. The trumpet began blaring on and on and on.
May we all have a day of wonder. I Love You.
Photo: LJ Austin
