Sound and volume

I’ve been distracted from what I was going to write. It was some reflection on the tension between decay and maintenance that inevitably arises from creating and from life itself. I was looking forward to fitting these thoughts to story, but the moment left me.

Afterword

I followed a thought to this conclusion quietly on the porch this morning while sipping coffee and watching reddened leaves fall through a light breeze from the backyard tree as playful Cardinals fluttered them off their branches. The soundscape was subtle as it matched the serenity of the scene, but was soon made retrospectively precious by the introduction of a landscaping crew that arrived to groom the grass and blow the fallen leaves “out of the way” with motors that drowned out everything, including my train of thought.

I had gotten up and headed to my computer just before this drastic change of stimuli so that I could find words to describe the original thought. Needless to say, I had to write this afterword first.

Sound and volume can be as polluting as they can be lively.