I can't sleep…
“When it’s cold you can see the song.”
A blue tit appears to be sending smoke signals as it braves sub-zero temperatures in a park in the city of Petrozavodsk, Russia. Mikhail Kalinin, 34, an electric locomotive engineer spotted the chirping bird’s condensation rising up out from it’s beak with the temperature below -5 degrees celsius. (via Solent News & Photo Agency)
Photo: Mikhail Kalinin. Thank you Beth.
Tuesday morning.
Early morning traffic is frictionless, commuters float down I-95 S.
It’s 42° F. It’s January. Soft, light rain. Electronics somehow (?) sense that the windshield is damp, wipers flap intermittently. Miracle. All of it.
It’s quiet in the cabin.
No radio.
No talk shows.
No podcasts.
No playlists.
The soft hum of the engine. The shifting of the sole of my right shoe on the accelerator.
And, those pernicious bumpin’ Thoughts. Continue reading “Driving I-95 S. With Freddie.”
“The hospital corridors were quiet, the midwife was quiet. She whispered—that’s how I remember it—that I needed to see the doctor and have an ultrasound. She helped me gather my things and sent us even farther down the corridor. I remember lying on the doctor’s examining table in a dark cubicle, only the ultrasound machine emitting light. I remember covering my face with my hands. After a while, the doctor touched my arm. “Look,” he said. My husband took my hand in his. The doctor pointed at the screen and moved his finger carefully around the sonogram, as though showing us a rare map, and then, because we couldn’t quite believe what we were seeing and what he was telling us, he turned up the sound so we could hear the steady beating of the heart…”
~ Linn Ullmann, ”Unquiet: A Novel” (W. W. Norton & Company, January 15, 2019)
Notes:
She likes it best when everything is very, very quiet.
~ Linn Ullmann, ”Unquiet: A Novel” (W. W. Norton & Company, January 15, 2019)
If I get up now, I can make coffee. I can walk down the stairs, go to the kitchen, and make myself coffee. Maybe sit down and write. I can hear my husband breathing. Our daughter breathing…The dog breathing. If I listen, I can hear cars out on the road, it’s still nighttime, or early morning, it depends on who you are, how you were raised, what experiences you bring to the different times of day, it’s three forty-five now, do you call that morning or night, I call it morning, but too early to get up, I check the time on my cell phone and then I check my messages, I sit up and lie down, a few cars drive past right outside my window, there and there and there, and farther off a gentler stream, cars driving past at night sound different from cars driving past in the daytime. Today is the first of _ _ _ _ _ ….
~ Linn Ullmann, ”Unquiet: A Novel” (W. W. Norton & Company, January 15, 2019)
Photo: Eric Rose