I am sitting at my computer in the front room of our studio. The lights are off. My “computer desk” is actually a digital piano with the music stand removed. The computer stands on the keyboard where the place for sheet music would normally be. The wireless keyboard sits on the piano keys as I type on it.
My toes are cold despite being in socks and shoes. The space heater I often use to heat up the front room is not on. The clock on the computer reads 10:19 PM. That’s a cold hour on a cold winter’s night.
I shake my seltzer water can to check for more liquid. There is one last swallow, which I pause my typing to finish off. I hear the sounds from the ceiling as our upstairs neighbor moves around. I hear the sound of a passing car outside. A siren in the distance.
The keyboard makes a light click-click-click as I type. These shallow keys are not like the computer keyboards I typed on as a kid. I have been using this keyboard for eight years, yet nothing compares with the engrained familiarity of childhood-era electronics.
My throat seems a little dry, which is no doubt why I wanted the seltzer water. Seltzer water is our drink of choice in this household. I swallow to clear a dry throat.
For the past six or seven hours I have been fighting off drowsiness, the result of having run 13 miles this morning. Yet right now I am alert, as I contemplate the next sensory thing I can describe on this blog post. I hear what sounds like something chewing on something dry, and then the unmistakable sound of our cat’s meow. I get up to see if our female got into the cat food but I see her innocently strolling into the middle room. She does not appear to be eating anything verboten during these non-eating hours. All is well.
The sound of the air outside is audible. The hush of the wind. Our male cat strolls across the floor, patrolling the area. Click-click-click. Another sentence. Another observation. Another moment in time that I do my best to capture in words.
I feel that tonight’s post is an exercise in presence. It is like a verbal meditation.
the loud wild scramble as our male runs across the floor of the apartment. His meow sounds concerned as he enters the room, as if he does not know how he got there. Seized by mysterious instincts to run laps.
I scroll up and down my post draft with my mouse. What is sufficient? Have I done what I aimed to do here? Is this any good? Just a little more and it will be, as long as I give this a fair shake then yes, and I hope so but I won’t worry about it if it’s not.
Another act of self-expression.