Musings on the Monotonous
Winter Writing Sanctuary 2023-2024: Skin Thinning
The quiet hum that has become a part of my day to day is actually barely noticeable unless I intently focus on it. I always get asked if the highway noise bothers me at any point of the day and those are the only times when I actually even think of it.
Every second of each day, give or take a few more in the late evenings, cars and other forms of vehicles come and go in front of my writing desk window. For the non-observers, they could be very random and it does feel so. Overtime, I realized that the randomness is an illusion because they all come with a certain tempo.
They come in twos or threes, but seldom alone.
They come in both directions, East to West, West to East, never just one.
They come in almost all sizes and types, but mostly in shades of blacks, whites, or grays with very occasional reds and bright blues.
They come pulling trailers that carry horses, fruits, or anything they could travel with.
And, regardless of what they are, what they carry, and where they are going, a speed of and around 65 miles per hour is what they have to travel at.
What they rarely or close to never do, though, is stop. They never do, unless they have to. And, they almost never have any reason to.
So, they probably never even notice the beautiful ponds that dot this portion of this beautiful state, always lush in Springs and Summers, golden in Autumns, and frozen in Winters. They probably never notice the milkweeds in their vibrant hues of bright tangerines and pinks when the monarch butterflies are back from Mexico. Nor would they have a chance to give a glance at the red barn with its dramatic grain silos from long-forgotten days that just refuses to come into terms with the modern times.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
Then, they should never even give a second thought about this unassuming white house with big windows facing the ponds and the barely noticeable shadow of this writer typing her heart away.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
Photo credits: Jen T., 2024
Lesson 2.7 of the Winter Writing Sanctuary 2023-2024 with Beth Kempton