The sea lions bark out in the Sound. You can hear them from here, loudly, if I opened the window. The seagulls are louder. They will fly themselves to where you are, making sure to not be ignored. Spring will come soon, and the birds with better singing voices will pay a visit and cause me to pause during my morning, appreciating the musical undertones of the daily turbulence.

You must peel away layers of noise to hear the strange sounds, sometimes; to hear the life instead of the machine that the world has become. Or you must remove yourself from that tumultuous place you’re in to a place where you can listen to the earth breathe.

When I fly in a plane, high above everyone’s lives, I imagine all the stories down below me; thousands of people living and dreaming. From 20,000 feet, I watch people’s dreams float up from the ground to be scattered by the airplane wings into thousands of pieces like dandelion seed pods floating to find the best soil to plant themselves.

My dreams have been floating up there for so long, the pieces of them must be nearly unrecognizable from the aerial abuse of planes and currents and pressures.

I hear them calling to me, those dreams; lowering themselves slowly toward some fertile ground. I may have to go meet them once again; renew myself with lost but not forgotten hopes: an omniscient and omnipresent trip to a place that feels like home.

I wrote this in February ‘09.

Photo credit:Nikonsnapper