Clarions call over the vault, upskirt

In which our Hero a little more than he expects to and hears a little more than he ever noticed

As I wait for my ride in the morning, I discover that I can just barely see the condensation of my breath, and yet the air I’m in smells clean from the torrential storm the night before, and it smells only barely cooler than room temperature. It’s gorgeous, it’s lush. It smells just a little wild, and a lot mysterious.

Mostly I read a book on my phone as I stand and wait, each morning, but sometimes I just look. Watch the cars drift by (or stop and block my driveway for 10 minutes while someone fixes their make up, rants at their steering wheel and has a snack, rather than rolling that extra few feet to wait by the curbside), or laugh at the squirrels. Monday morning, I spent about 5 minutes just watching the bumblebees raid my mother’s flowers for forage (they’re ungainly as they crawl inside the flower, flat on their tummies with their legs hanging out). It’s very peaceful, even with the students going back and forth to their various bus-stops and schools.

Along the road are maple trees spreading up and over, still greenleafed despite the season, like a row of mossy pillars supporting a vast, verdant roof over the promenade. I’ve been puzzling why one tree doesnt’t seem to fit with the rest and eventually I realized that it had been trimmed.

Most of the trees are leafed in what’s almost a hollow sphere formation. A big dome of leaves, over the fractal spread of branches, and under the dome a second tier of low hanging branchs that close the bottom in leaves solely tasked with catching the dawn and twilight sun. The trees stand like leafy maracas spiked in the soil.

Except for this one tree that has been cropped, to save the neighbor some raking, I assume. And I doubt the effect is intentional, but where the other trees are mysteries, hazy green clouds revealed only in winter, this tree is a grand, open vault. A canopy of green stained glass in the dawning sun, spreading, sacred, over the sheltered shade. I like how it catches my attention and steals my breath.

So I stand and have my moment of communion with the tree, and I wonder if I’m seeing the world as it was meant to be, or seeing something secret, unintentionally revealed.

I feel so often like I see more than the people around me. I feel like I am the only one who notices the rabbit under the bush, or the falcon riding thermals between buildings. Or the Japanese Autos Parts website being advertised on a Dodge pickup. Maybe I’m just the only one who’s willing to be interested in these things out loud, but regardless, it lets me imagine I’m a superhero, seeing what noone else sees, and chasing what nobody else squirrels.

Now I’m reminded of how much I also write off as background ambient noise in my urban environment, because now that the weather is so nice outside, my window is frequently open, and so is my microphone which means that Nocturne hears what’s around me, and because of that, I pay more attention to everything and I realize that there’s a lot more noise than I ever really thought about. I grew up in a townhouse that was about 50 feet from a train track. Now, we’re probably half a kilometer away, but I can hear the trains, and I realize I just ignore the sound. It’s normal, it’s background. Until I started paying attention again.

Emergency sirens (luring ambulances to their death on the rocks?!), airport traffic being routed the long way to runway 80L, the neighbor’s friend with the loud, rumbly car. The ohmygodloud shrieking of the kids in the backyard two over from mine.

And the yodelling. Wait, no, that’s my mom calling me to dinner.

Gotta go.