Sounds of the City

Journal Entry, May 29, 2004

I always thought that my life had this huge, great purpose. I'm hoping that is still the case, that it isn't all refolding laundry and sweeping chocolate chips off the floor. I just gave Niko his Zantac and a bottle. I'm trained to wake up at every sound now, and the city has a lot of sounds! The flashing of police lights woke me the other night, and I watched the whole ticket-giving exchange through the dark blinds like some voyeur. All of this life going on around me, these men twenty feet away away that have no idea that somebody is up here, that there's drama that unfolds in this space. Sometimes I look at the cars go by and I'm overwhelmed by the fact that inside every car is a life, or a bunch of lives, and that every life goes on and on and on. And all I'll ever see of that life is this five seconds of somebody in a car. That's all they'll ever mean to me, when in fact, that's not who they are at all. If the driver or the cop were to look up and see me peering out, they'd just chalk it up to some nosy, crazy woman in the middle of the night, and that wouldn't be right, either.